The world is entranced by electric vehicles (EVs), but people’s interest in the clean energy machines may have little to do with global warming, according to the latest Google Trends data.
And one environmental expert has put the shift down to the politicisation of climate change.
Google Trends data from August showed that online searches for the terms “electric vehicle” and “EV” had steadily increased over the past decade, with “China EV”, in particular, reaching a new peak this year.
It reflected the success of China’s EV sector, which also hit a new milestone this year with annual production volume surpassing 10 million units.
Google Trends provides a sample of actual search requests, and “a spike in a particular topic means that more users than usual are searching for it”, according to Google.
At the other end of the scale, though, searches for the term “global warming” hit their lowest number since records began in 2004 – only reached once before during the Covid-19 pandemic.