Japan meets all the conditions that should make it a front-runner in electric vehicles: above-average incomes, a robust auto industry, high rates of new car purchases and a culture that generally embraces technology. Instead, EVs made up a measly 1.8% of new cars sold in the country last year.
Last month, Bloomberg published an analysis of 31 countries that have crossed the tipping point for widespread adoption of fully electric vehicles. Now it’s time to look at the bottlenecks — the countries that aren’t as far along the adoption curve as one might expect.
The EV laggards come in several flavors.