Self-Driving Cars: From 7,000 to 6 million Robotaxis | The Decade Ahead

**Bryce** (0:00)
Six years ago, the world sold 2 million electric vehicles. Last year, it sold 20 million. And in the next decade, it's less about what's powering and more about whether we're actually going to be driving them.
Welcome to The Decade Ahead, a 10-part series on Equity Mates where we're exploring 10 themes that we think are set up for the decade ahead. My name is Bryce.

**Rene** (0:23)
And I'm Rene. And today we are talking about electric vehicles and robotaxis.

**Bryce** (0:28)
This episode of Equity Mates is brought to you by ANZ Business Start Right. Starting a business comes with a lot of what ifs. And ANZ is here to help you with what's next.

**Rene** (0:37)
All right. Well, Bryce, let's get into it. I said it's an exciting theme. For me, the excitement is more robotaxis than electric vehicles. I know you've been lukewarm on me updating the robotaxis rollout story from time to time.

**Bryce** (0:52)
Lukewarm on the continuous update that they've just rolled out more. I'm very bullish on this as a development of technology.

**Rene** (1:01)
Okay. All right. Well, hopefully, we can keep you excited throughout this episode because it is going to change the world around us. Not so much EVs but robotaxis. Let's start with EVs though just to set the scene. In 2019, there were around 91 million new cars sold globally. About two million were electric, so less than 3 percent.
By 2025, the total number of cars globally hadn't changed. 89.6 million new cars sold globally.

**Bryce** (1:32)
Crazy how consistent it is.

**Rene** (1:34)
Yeah, it is, isn't it? From 91 to 89.6. But of that, more than 20 million were electric, so more than one in four were electric. That's in six years.
Ten times growth, yeah. Thirty-nine countries now have electric vehicle sales above 10 percent. In 2019, only four countries had that. So it's been an incredible growth journey. To put it in perspective for you, I've got a bit of a game for you. Now, you haven't seen the answers to this. No. I want to talk about the top countries for EV adoption. So as a percentage of new car sales, what countries had the highest percentage of those being electric vehicles? These numbers are from 2025 I've got the top five and then I've got some additional context for you.
Do you want to have a guess?

**Bryce** (2:25)
Okay. Top five countries.

**Rene** (2:26)
I would say just to give you some-

**Bryce** (2:29)
I reckon it's all red herrings.

**Rene** (2:30)
There's some very obvious ones that aren't not at tricks and then there are some very non-obvious ones.

**Bryce** (2:36)
Okay. China.

**Rene** (2:39)
No.
But no, think about it. China in terms of raw EVs would be really high. But we're talking about as percentage of total cars sold. So if Luxembourg sells 10 cars in a year and eight of them were electric.

**Bryce** (2:52)
Okay.

**Rene** (2:54)
Luxembourg isn't in top five.

**Bryce** (2:56)
Okay. What about Scandinavia? Let's start there.

**Rene** (3:00)
You're in the right direction.

**Bryce** (3:01)
Okay.

**Rene** (3:02)
Scandinavia is not a country.

**Bryce** (3:03)
No, I know.
Okay. Let's go with Sweden.

**Rene** (3:09)
That's number five on the list. 61% of new cars sold were electric.

**Bryce** (3:14)
Okay. Well, I'll stick with the Scandinavia theme then and go. So I've got so far.

**Rene** (3:21)
You've got Sweden.

**Bryce** (3:21)
Sweden. Norway.

**Rene** (3:24)
Norway. Yes. Nice. Well done. Well done. So Norway is number one. It is far ahead of any other country.
96% of new cars sold in 2025 were electric. I wonder what the other 4% was.

**Bryce** (3:39)
Combustion.

**Rene** (3:40)
Yeah, but it's like surely at some point you reach a tipping point where it's like just all in petrol stations start to close down because they don't have enough cars. You know, obviously there's legacy logistics.

**Bryce** (3:48)
I wonder if it's cars versus could be trucks. Yeah.

**Rene** (3:51)
So no, no, no. Sorry. This is new car sales.

**Bryce** (3:53)
Yeah.

**Rene** (3:54)
Doesn't include trucks.

**Bryce** (3:54)
Okay. So we've got Denmark. We've got Sweden.

**Rene** (3:59)
No, Denmark. Denmark is not on the list.

**Bryce** (4:02)
Denmark is not on the list.

**Rene** (4:03)
So you've got Norway at number one, Sweden at number five. Okay. Greenland. We might need to fast forward this. Greenland? No.

**Bryce** (4:10)
Iceland.

**Rene** (4:10)
Iceland. Yes. So Iceland, 62% of new cars sold came in at number four. Okay.

**Bryce** (4:15)
Anymore in Northern Europe.

**Rene** (4:16)
You've got the Northern Europeans. Good.

**Bryce** (4:18)
How many left?

**Rene** (4:19)
Two.

**Bryce** (4:20)
Geez. Probably somewhere in Asia.