Even if every car sold today was electric, it would take over a decade for all cars on the road to be electric. Use the controls below to explore how quickly the transition could happen.
Solid = historical · Dashed = projection
Solid = historical · Dashed = projection
Data source: IEA Global EV Data Explorer (2025) via Our World in Data. Model projections by author.
The model tracks each year's car sales as a cohort. Cars are retired based on age using a scrappage curve that keeps most cars on the road for their early years but accelerates retirement around the average lifespan. The projection is anchored on the real 2025 stock share and evolves year by year — tracking EV and non-EV cars separately as old cohorts retire and new cohorts enter.
Sales growth is modelled as a linear increase in percentage points per year. This is deliberately simple — in practice, adoption tends to slow near saturation (the last stretch from 90% to 100% typically takes longer than any earlier gain of the same size). Fleet growth defaults come from IEA data (2018–2025) and are held constant; in fast-motorising countries, growth will slow as car ownership saturates, so very long-run projections should be treated with caution.
This is a simplified model, but it captures the key insight: fleet transitions lag sales transitions by a decade or more.