For the last decade, EV adoption has been presented as a smooth global curve.
The U.S. was expected to follow that path.
It didn’t, and a lot of major forecasts aged badly because they treated three very different markets as one.
Here’s the reality:
- China pulled global numbers up through industrial policy, price controls, and a government-directed battery supply chain.
- Europe moved steadily because of CO₂ rules, high fuel prices, and strong incentives.
- Forecasting models blended China, Europe, and the U.S. together and assumed the adoption curve was universal.
It wasn’t.
U.S. adoption lagged for reasons those models didn’t fully weight:
• unreliable public charging
• high EV transaction prices
• slow utility permitting
• IRA credit restrictions
• dealer resistance
• fragmented state policies
• strong demand for trucks and large SUVs
• consumer habits built around long-distance, suburban driving
Those aren’t minor variables, they’re core to how Americans buy vehicles.
A few examples of how forecasts shifted once reality sank in:
• BloombergNEF once had U.S. EV sales hitting 48% by 2030. They cut that to 27%.
• J.D. Power trimmed its 2030 outlook by almost 10 points in six months.
• US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board leaned on aggressive adoption paths shaped by global data, not U.S. behavior.
• OEM business plans and production assumptions followed those early curves, and many are now being rewritten.
The result:
Global EV adoption surged because of China, while U.S. adoption never matched the slope, yet policy and industry planning treated them as if they would.
This is exactly why I track U.S.-specific regulatory and market signals every day at M5 Partners.
Global EV charts can be interesting, but they don’t reflect how the U.S. market actually moves, and that gap is where planning goes sideways.
If you want the full breakdown, I wrote a longer version as well.
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