Venezuela's oil and the EV 'leapfrog'

Hey Reader, welcome to The Energy's weekly data newsletter. This week we explore the role of EVs in emerging markets in shaping the energy transition.

A shifting world order

Anyone with a passing interest in energy markets is by now an armchair expert in Venezuela’s massive oil reserves, the size of which is only matched by their under-utilisation, “heavy” nature and the decrepitude of the nation’s production infrastructure.

In a substack elaborating on these features, Our World In Data’s Hannah Ritchie adds a timely rider: “Note that here I'm looking at oil purely through the lens of supply, demand and resources. I'm not looking at the climate implications. To stay anywhere close to global climate targets, most of these reserves will need to stay in the ground.”

Amid the US-led backlash against EVs and clean energy, along with the debate about the prospects for much more Venezuelan oil entering the world market via US producers, few pause to mention the climate implications.

But the whole world does not dance to Donald Trump’s off-key tune, and the US and a handful of legacy manufacturing making countries no longer call the tune in the rest of the world's light passenger vehicle markets.

Indeed, many developed and developing countries are spectacularly defying the regressive lurch in policy away from electric vehicles and back to oil production and internal combustion vehicles in the US and some other countries.

An end-of-year report from Ember, a London-based think tank that aims to accelerate the shift to clean energy via data and policy, found growth in emerging markets turbocharged global EV sales in 2025.

‘Profound impacts’ on oil

The report, The EV leapfrog - how emerging markets are driving a global EV boom, labels this a “globally significant trend... set to have profound impacts on future oil demand” — even as sales in the US and Japan stagnate.

Some surprising nations are leapfrogging rich economies in EV take-up — some quite large.
Source: Ember, from public data; 2025 figures are estimates

It is pretty widely known, for example, that sales of electric vehicles in China — the world’s largest car market — have topped 50% of new vehicle sales, and that Norway's EV share has topped 90%.

(Ember counts battery EVs (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEVs) as EVs in this report.)

It is less well known that the tiny nation of Nepal is nearing a 75% EV share, that Ethiopia is at 60%, that Vietnam’s share doubled in 2025 to nearly 40%, or that the global EV share topped 25% over the first ten months of 2025.

Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam all exceeded the EU’s 27% EV share of new vehicle sales, Indonesia’s 15% eclipsed the stagnant 10% US share and India, Mexico and Brazil all exceeded Japan’s laggardly 3%.

Australia, by the way, is the largest orange (for Oceania) blob on the chart, at 14%. Of note, given all the headlines suggesting Australians EV buyers are hedging their bets en masse by buying hybrids, only 3% are PHEVs, and 11% BEVs.

These figures are broadly consistent with the Electric Vehicle Council’s estimate that sales of BEVs and PHEVs in Australia were about 13% of total new vehicle sales in 2025.

Buy less oil, enjoy cleaner air

“Emerging markets are no longer catching up, they are leading the shift to electric mobility. These countries see the strategic advantages of EVs, from cleaner air to reduced fossil fuel imports,” Euan Graham, Ember’s Electricity and Data Analyst, wrote.

Emerging markets are no longer playing catchup — they are leading the shift to EVs.
Source: Ember

Uruguay’s EV share exceeding the EU’s 27% share is another surprise, while Türkiye’s 17% made it the fourth largest EV market in absolute terms in Europe.

These surprise outcomes echo Pakistan’s massive rooftop solar uptake, and while some of the countries are tiny, many — Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, India, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Türkiye — have large populations and growing economies.

Some — such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Türkiye — want to develop their own EV industries, while others such as Nepal and Ethiopia just want to spend less on oil and enjoy cleaner air.

Vietnam’s homegrown manufacturer Vinfast boasts the nation’s top-selling vehicle — its flagship V3 EV, while Türkiye has attracted a BYD plant and Indonesia has won pledges from seven EV makers as well as battery giant CATL.

*For Chinese carmakers, unfettered access to the US, Japan and EU would be nice to have, but it isn't a must-have.* *Source: Ember*

Flood diversion

Still, it’s the flood of lower cost Chinese EVs being turned away from legacy markets such as the US, Japan and Europe with punitive tariffs and other trade barriers that is helping developing countries to leapfrog rich nations into EVs.

The chart above shows the stunning impact of legacy car making nations’ backlash against Chinese imports over the past two years. Almost all the growth in Chinese EV exports in that time has come from sales to developing or emerging markets.

Exports to rich OECD countries have barely moved from 2023 levels, while sales to emerging (or non-OECD) markets have surged to be almost three times as valuable in absolute terms.

Four of China’s ten largest EV export markets — Brazil, Mexico, United Arab Emirates and Indonesia — were non-OECD countries in 2025.

Those in the “western hemisphere” may come under US pressure to change their suppliers, but the trend is clear, as is its implication: For Chinese carmakers, unfettered access to the US, Japan and EU would be nice to have, but it isn't a must-have.

Inefficient explosions

Finally, shifting to EVs is one of the surest ways for nations — not to mention individuals — to cut their carbon emissions, even if their power grids are still fossil-fuel dependent.

Even in countries with heavily coal-and-gas dependent grids, the reduction in “primary” fossil fuel demand from switching to EVs is large. Source: Ember

That’s because setting fire to liquid fuels to trigger an explosion in a cylinder is much more wasteful than using an electric motor — three to four times as much. Internal combustion vehicles only make use of 20%-30% of the energy they use, compared to 85%-90% for EVs.

That means even in countries with heavily coal-and-gas dependent grids, such as Indonesia, India, China and Vietnam, the reduction in “primary” fossil fuel demand from switching to EVs is around 50% to 60%.

In countries with clean grids, such as the UK and Brazil, it’s as high as 81% to 94%.

Ember concludes with a swipe at the International Energy Agency, which assumes in the Trump-friendly Current Policies Scenario of its World Energy Outlook 2025 that EV sales penetration everywhere but China and the EU stalls at current levels (along with global penetration of solar energy):

“This assumption is already shown to be flawed.”