The first derivative is still strongly positive. The second derivative is what’s been reported as falling, which is common in the typical S-shaped adoption curve.

I have the feeling the person you replied to knows that, hence the weird phrasing of "on the downward trend".

Climate denial and related arguments seem to involve a lot of people who know they are wrong but have chosen a side.

I'm reminded of the research that showed climate denial increased with science education. Dumb Republicans don't have enough science education to know what the right and wrong answers to specific questions are. Educated Republicans (as you find here at HN) know what the right answer is, but also know what the accepted answer in their tribe is, probably even have a little misleading factoid at the ready to deploy.

An article on the research:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/education-plus-ideol...

Flagged for making assumptions about my intentions and using very unkind and ugly language towards your fellow citizens.

In the EU current short-term trends don't matter that much as long as the scheduled fleet emmision rules will come into force as is the current regulation.

That means from 1.1.2025, for passenger cars 93,6 g CO2/km average (which is impossible with ICE-only cars of current sizes and technology) and the manufacturer pays a fine for anything above that. But that can be relaxed if they sell at least 25% EVs (0 g CO2/km), and higher percentage of those means higher permissible average emmisions. So the manufacturers will be highly motivated to sell more EVs and we can expect all the big manufacturers will hit the 25% quite soon.

Then from 1.1.2030 this goes down to 49,5 g CO2/km and at that point ICEs are goint to be increasingly niche. From 1.1.2035 the limit is 0 g CO2/km.

It's pretty easy to achieve fleet goals with plugin hybrids, since they have ridiculously low emissions on the standard tests (unlike in reality).

Which is why new vehicles (since 2021) have a On-Board Fuel Consumption Meter and this data is then collected by the EU.

Oh I didn’t know that. Does the eu do something with the data? Is it just collected to inform some hypothetical future law? In the latter case that will likely be overtaken by the market favoring BEVs

There is not a lot of info about that, but as far as I could gather the data started to be collected only last year, so probably not a lot right now.

For the downvoters, look it up - this is objectively true and has been well reported.

And I’m not saying don’t buy an electric car, just that EV sales have decreased.

I couldn't find anything substantiating this claim, everyone is reporting record sales. What is decreasing is sales growth [1]. As in: each year more EVs are sold than the last year, but the difference to previous year's sales is shrinking

1: https://www.ev-volumes.com/

Sometimes the difference is still increasing year on year, but due to the higher baseline, the percentage increase has declined.

… Wait, how are you defining ‘downward trend’? The rate of _growth_ has slackened, which you expect as a product category matures, but sales are still very much growing.

I’d be a little more sceptical of the media sources doing this well-reporting, if I were you.

The legend on that chart says "U.S. electric-vehicle sales, change from a year earlier"

That's a plot of the first derivative (which is still positive [+42% at the last measure, meaning for every 100 EVs sold in Nov 2022, there were 142 sold in Nov 2023]) and the slope of that line is a derivative of the first derivative, or a second derivative.

tl;dr: EV sales are growing. That rate of growth is slower than it was before.

As I said, the rate of growth is decreasing, but sales are still growing. That article is kinda misleadingly couched, tho (I mean, Murdoch media, what can you expect?), and I can see how people could misread it as saying that sales were actually decreasing.

No, the absolute sales and percentage of sales is up, it's just the rate of acceleration that's decreased. https://www.ev-volumes.com/

This literally has sections labeled “Lower European Expectations” and “North American” fall.

You will need to read the sentences or look at the charts rather than just skim the headings.

Yes. Poor reporting is incredibly common and most journalists seem to have no clue about the difference between a first and a second derivatives. See also, most articles about the economy.

But note that the actual data presented shows an increase in sales.

“Look it up” is not a good way to make a point. If you are making the claim, then you need to substantiate it.

I dropped some links into several comments. Should I for every single response? Look it up.