Global energy demand spiked in 2024, driven largely by surging electricity use, according to a new report released today by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Electricity consumption jumped by nearly 1,100 terawatt-hours – a hefty 4.3% increase – nearly twice the annual average growth of the past decade.

This dramatic rise was largely fueled by the electrification of transportation, record-breaking global temperatures that ramped up cooling needs, coupled with increased industrial activity, and growing energy demand from data centers and AI applications.

Renewables were the real stars in meeting this rising energy need, according to the IEA’s latest edition of the Global Energy Review. The world installed roughly 700 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable power capacity last year, marking the 22nd consecutive record-setting year. Renewables, together with nuclear power – which saw its fifth-highest growth in three decades – accounted for a massive 80% of the global electricity supply increase. Together, renewables and nuclear reached a milestone, covering 40% of total global electricity generation for the first time.

IEA executive director Fatih Birol highlighted the key takeaway: “What is certain is that electricity use is growing rapidly, pulling overall energy demand along with it to such an extent that it is enough to reverse years of declining energy consumption in advanced economies.” He also emphasized the positive shift: “The strong expansion of solar, wind, nuclear power, and EVs is increasingly loosening the links between economic growth and emissions.”

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Among fossil fuels, natural gas saw the largest increase, up by 115 billion cubic meters (bcm), or 2.7%, driven primarily by rising electricity demand, compared with an average of around 75 bcm annually over the past decade.

EV sales surged by over 25% in 2024, now making up 1 in every 5 cars sold globally, and this had a notable impact on oil demand, which grew modestly, at just 0.8%. Oil notably fell below 30% of total energy demand for the first time ever, 50 years after it peaked at 46%.

Coal, despite increasing by 1%, slowed its growth significantly compared to previous years, with intense heatwaves in China and India accounting for over 90% of this rise.

Meanwhile, emissions data painted an encouraging picture: CO2 emissions in advanced economies fell by 1.1% to to 10.9 billion tonnes in 2024 – a level not seen in 50 years, even as their economies have tripled in size. Record temperatures contributed significantly to the annual 0.8% rise in global CO2 emissions to 37.8 billion tonnes. But the rapid adoption of clean energy technologies since 2019 is now preventing 2.6 billion tonnes of CO2 annually – the equivalent of 7% of global emissions.

Dr. Birol summed it up: “From slowing global oil demand growth and rising deployment of electric cars to the rapidly expanding role of electricity and the increasing decoupling of emissions from economic growth, many of the key trends the IEA has identified ahead of the curve are showing up clearly in the data for 2024.”

Read more: Tripling renewables globally by 2030 is doable, says new IEA report

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We already know that BMW closed off 2024 with a banner year for its electrified “i” models – but it took a while for the larger picture to become clear. Not only is BMW succeeding with EVs, the Bavarians are outselling their two closest competitors combined. (!)

First things first – we need to look at the numbers: BMW sold delivered 368,523 units to customers globally, representing a nearly 12% growth in EV deliveries for the brand year-over-year (YoY). Perhaps more EVs made up fully 16.7% of the brand’s 2,200,217 unit total for 2024.

Arch-rival Mercedes-Benz, despite their highly publicized EQ branding and bespoke electric vehicle platforms, could only move 185,059 of its lozenge-shaped EQ models in 2024 (down a staggering 23% from 2023, which could be attributed to the cancellation of several German EV incentive programs if it weren’t for its competitor’s growth).

Over at Audi it’s more of the same, with the four rings brand moving 164,480 EVs in 2024 (7.8% less than the 178,429 units they managed to move in 2023).

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Neither of the Bavarians’ German rivals’ EVs cracked 10% of their companies’ overall sales, either – which begs the question: what gives? Are BMW’s electric vehicles really that much better than Audi’s and Mercedes’, or is something else driving the Ultimate Driving Machines’ successful growth in the electric vehicle segment?

BMW is setting, exceeding expectations

The 2025 US Electric Vehicle Experience (EVX) Ownership Study from J.D. Power tells us that more people are more satisfied with their EV experience than last year – and (in the US, at least) the EV owners who are the most satisfied with their rides can be found behind the wheel of the BMW iX, followed closely by the BMW i4.

The reason BMW is consistently pulling ahead comes down to education. “First-time EV buyers are receiving minimal education or training,” explains Brent Gruber, executive director of the EV practice at J.D. Power. “Dealer and manufacturer representatives play the crucial role of front-line educators, but when it comes to EVs, the specific education needed to shorten the learning curve just isn’t happening often enough. The shortfall in buyer education is something we’re seeing with all brands.”

When an average car buyer is told, “this car can add 200 miles of range in 20 minutes” by an enthusiastic salesperson, they’ll expect that to be the case whenever they connect to a public charging station. And why wouldn’t they? If their entire fueling experience has been with gasoline, it’s highly unlikely that they’ve every thought about kW or kWh or amps or volts or what any of those things have to do with one another.

BMW dealers fully explain these things as part of their standard delivery practice through the company’s Genius program. Cunningly cribbed from Apple’s Genius Bar playbook, BMW (and, by extension, Mini) offers the best EV customer training in the car business. “With that in mind,” I wrote, when BMW’s second consecutive J.D. Power win came to light, “it’s hard to imagine this going down any other way.”

This advice applies everywhere

I stand by that, but what do you think? Is this a question of customer service, are BMW’s new EVs really the best in the business, or is Audi’s “expensive Volkswagen” business model simply not viable in 2025? Scroll down to the comments and let us know what you think makes the electrified BMW’s the Ultimate Selling Machines.

On your way there, check out a few of these great deals on new BMW EVs:

Original content from Electrek; source links throughout.

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) is stagnating with no real improvement in miles between disengagement in months just as CEO Elon Musk said it is going exponential.

The stagnation of FSD could be explained by Tesla making a pivot and focusing on its geo-fenced ride-hailing service instead of its long-standing promises.

Since 2016, Tesla has claimed that all it vehicles produced onward have all the hardware capable of self-driving at a level enabling a robotaxi service and that a software update would eventually enable it.

For the past six years, CEO Elon Musk has claimed that Tesla would achieve that goal by the end of the year, and he has been wrong every time.

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Lately, Musk has been focused on hyping Tesla’s latest Supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) updates.

FSD is technically a level 2 advanced driver assist system (ADAS). It requires driver supervision at all times, and Tesla takes no responsibility in the case of a crash.

Miles between critical disengagement is the primary metric used to track progress with each FSD update. Tesla and Musk have both used the metric in the past.

In January, we reported on Musk sharing a crowdsourced FSD dataset, claiming that it showed Tesla had now reached “exponential improvement” with FSD v13. We noted that this was both false since exponential improvement would require an extra data point that he didn’t have and misleading since he focused only on highway miles between disengagement and Tesla had just introduced its long-used city driving neural network stack to highway driving.

FSD v13 has now been out for 3 months, and it received several point updates, but the same data praised by Musk a few months ago shows that it is stagnating – not going exponential:

Musk had previously claimed that v13 would enable “a 5 to 6x increase in miles between disengagement compared to v12.5.”

The data now shows that v13 barely brought a 2x improvement, going from ~200 miles to ~400 miles.

After over 33,000 miles reported through all versions of FSD v13, the datasets now point to 495 miles between critical disengagement on average:

Ashok Elluswamy, the head of FSD at Tesla, has previously stated that for Tesla to enable unsupervised self-driving, Tesla needs to achieve the average in miles per critical intervention “equivalent of human miles between collision,” which stands at 700,000 miles, according to NHTSA.

Musk is moving the goal post on Tesla Full Self-Driving

The current stagnation is disappointing for Tesla fans and surprising even to critics. Even those who don’t believe Musk’s ambitious timelines for Tesla to achieve self-driving believed that the system would improve faster.

It needs to improve faster if Tesla wants to go from ~500 miles between critical disengagement to 700,000 miles – the company’s own goal of being safer than humans.

We believe that a possible reason for the current stagnation is that Tesla is focusing on a new strategy for self-driving.

Last month, we posted a report called ‘Elon Musk is about to masterfully move the goalpost on Tesla Full Self-Driving‘. After years of being wrong about Tesla achieving unsupervised self-driving, Musk badly needs a win on that front.

That’s why instead of delivering on its long-stated promise of consumer vehicles achieving unsupervised self-driving, Tesla is shifting to releasing a ride-hailing service in a geo-fenced area around Austin, Texas in June.

Using an internal fleet of vehicles helped by teleoperation in a limited area is a complete change of plan for Tesla self-driving, and it is a service similar to what Waymo has been offering for years. Musk has even thrown colder water on Waymo’s approach, calling it “too difficult to scale.”

We believe that part of the reason why Tesla FSD is stagnating is that the automaker is currently using its engineering power as well as its training compute toward this new program rather than its broader FSD product.

Electrek’s Take

You know my take on FSD. I think that if it was developed in a vacuum without Tesla selling it as “Full Self-Driving” and Musk promising that it would be unsupervised by the end of every year for the last 6 years, I think it would simply be praised as the best level 2 ADAS system out there.

Unfortunately, it’s not the case.

Instead, Musk has tainted the product with lies and false promises and we are not even getting into HW3 in this post.

I think Musk has been really successful at misleading people with FSD, and now he thinks that this pivot to a Waymo-style product will enable Tesla to claim a win on self-driving without most people realizing that it’s actually a loss for millions of Tesla owners.

He might be able to pull it through, but we are going to keep reporting it for what it is on Electrek.