Electric vehicle sales have risen sharply this year, led by growth in China and a strong demand for hybrid vehicles in particular, according to a report from Counterpoint Research. 

The report, released Monday, showed that sales of EV units globally, including fully battery-powered vehicles (BEVs) and hybrids, were up 18% in the first three months of 2024 compared with the same period last year. 

Sales of hybrid vehicles, which have both electric motors and combustion engines, vastly outpaced those of full battery-powered alternatives, rising 46% year over year. BEV sales rose 7%.

“The cheaper upfront cost of [hybrids] when compared to [battery EVs] and the availability of a fuel tank that eliminates range anxiety were among the main reasons for high [hybrid] demand,” Counterpoint research analyst Abhik Mukherjee said in the report. 

The data follows recent reports that suggest hybrid adoption is now outpacing that of fully electric vehicles amid concerns about weak resale values of the former and the possibility of current BEV technology becoming obsolete soon.

“Buying mid-priced [hybrids] is a more logical choice for consumers since their prices are comparable to or lower than most of [battery electric vehicles],” the report said.

According to Counterpoint, EV sales in China jumped 28% in the first quarter of 2023, amid an ongoing price war that has pushed down costs for consumers. 

The country’s largest EV maker, BYD, saw sales of hybrid vehicles increase by 7% in the first three months of this year, accounting for nearly one-third of the global hybrid market, followed by Geely Holdings and Li Auto. 

Sales of EVs in the United States were second highest globally, followed by Europe. But, while overall EV sales in the U.S. rose 2%, those of battery electric vehicles declined by 3% in the quarter.

Tesla, the leading U.S. EV maker, which only produces BEVs, saw a 9% year-on-year decline in sales in the first quarter. It was still in the top position globally in BEV sales in Q1 2024, commanding a 19% market share. BYD and Volkswagen had a 15% and 6% share, respectively.

Among the top three BEV makers only BYD recorded growth, with sales jumping 13%, while Tesla and Volkswagen’s sales declined 9% and 4% respectively, the report said. 

BYD’s strong performance comes as the company aggressively expands globally. According to the report, the company exported almost 100,000 EVs last quarter,  a 152% year-on-year growth, driven primarily by shipments to Southeast Asia.

Liz Lee, associate director at Counterpoint, said BYD’s remarkable exports highlight the growing global demand for EVs, including hybrids, with the market “poised for significant growth.”  

“[Y]et signs of a slowdown also loom and the annual growth may dip below 20%,” she added, noting that companies such as Tesla face declining interest in BEVs. 

A Gallup poll in April found that less than half of U.S. adults — 44% — said they were seriously considering or might consider buying an EV, down from 55% in 2023. Meanwhile, the proportion of those not looking to buy an EV rose to 48% from 41%.

Other headwinds to the market could include an increase in protectionist measures in 2024, with both the EU and the U.S. reportedly set to enforce new tariffs on EV imports from China. 

High-performance memory chips are likely to remain in tight supply this year, as explosive AI demand drives a shortage for these chips, according to analysts.

SK Hynix and Micron – two of the world’s largest memory chip suppliers – are out of high-bandwidth memory chips for 2024, while the stock for 2025 is also nearly sold out, according to the firms.

“We expect the general memory supply to remain tight throughout 2024,” Kazunori Ito, director of equity research at Morningstar said in a report last week.

The demand for AI chipsets has boosted the high-end memory chip market, hugely benefiting firms such Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the top two memory chipmakers in the world. While SK Hynix already supplies chips to Nvidia, the company is reportedly considering Samsung as a potential supplier too.

High-performance memory chips play a crucial role in the training of large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which led AI adoption to skyrocket. LLMs need these chips to remember details from past conversations with users and their preferences to generate human-like responses to queries.

“The manufacturing of these chips are more complex and ramping up production has been difficult. This likely sets up shortages through the rest of 2024 and through much of 2025,” said William Bailey, director at Nasdaq IR Intelligence.

HBM’s production cycle is longer by 1.5 to 2 months compared with DDR5 memory chip commonly found in personal computers and servers, market intelligence firm TrendForce said in March.

To meet soaring demand, SK Hynix plans to expand production capacity by investing in advanced packaging facilities in Indiana, U.S. as well as in the M15X fab in Cheongju and the Yongin semiconductor cluster in South Korea.

Samsung during its first-quarter earnings call in April said its HBM bit supply in 2024 “expanded by more than threefold versus last year.” Chip capacity refers to the number of bits of data a memory chip can store.

“And we have already completed discussions with our customers with that committed supply. In 2025, we will continue to expand supply by at least two times or more year on year, and we’re already in smooth talks with our customers on that supply,” Samsung said.

Micron didn’t respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Big Tech companies Microsoft, Amazon and Google are spending billions to train their own LLMs to stay competitive, fueling demand for AI chips.

“The big buyers of AI chips – firms like Meta and Microsoft – have signaled they plan to keep pouring resources into building AI infrastructure. This means they will be buying large volumes of AI chips, including HBM, at least through 2024,” said Chris Miller, author of “Chip War,” a book on the semiconductor industry.

Chipmakers are in a fierce race to manufacture the most advanced memory chips in the market to capture the AI boom.

SK Hynix in a press conference earlier this month said that it would begin mass production of its latest generation of HBM chips, the 12-layer HBM3E, in the third quarter, while Samsung Electronics plans to do so within the second quarter, having been the first in the industry to ship samples of the latest chip.

“Currently Samsung is ahead in 12-layer HBM3E sampling process. If they can get qualification earlier than its peers, I assume it can get majority shares in end-2024 and 2025,” said SK Kim, executive director and analyst at Daiwa Securities.

Venture capital firm Accel said Tuesday it’s raised $650 million for its eighth fund targeted at investing in European and Israeli early-stage startups, in a sign the venture capital market may be showing signs of a recovery.

The firm, which made prolific early bets on the likes of social media app Facebook and music streaming service Spotify, said in a press release it raised the fund to “support ambitious founders building global category-defining companies” in Europe and Israel.

Harry Nelis, general partner at Accel, said the European tech ecosystem in particular has evolved drastically in the nearly 25 years since it opened up its London office as a separate fund in 2001.

“The environment has dramatically changed since then,” Nelis told CNBC. “People would ask us, can Europe generate $1 billion outcomes?”

“Now, there are more than 360 venture-backed unicorns across Europe and Israel, and the whole ecosystem has evolved from one that raised about $1 billion in capital to now $66 billion in 2023.”

It comes after Plural, a venture capital firm established by the founders of Wise, Skype and Songkick, raised its own 400 million euros ($431 million) fund in January to back technology startups in Europe.

Climate-focused VC firm World Fund closed a 300 million euro fund in March.

Magnus Grimeland, CEO of seed investor Antler, told CNBC earlier this year that early-stage venture activity and private company valuations have been inching up since the start of this year — and he expects Europe to follow the trend.

“It’s on its way back,” Grimeland said in an interview at Antler’s London office in March. “We see a lot more activity in the portfolio. In New York, we made eight investments in January, and seven of them already have follow-on investments. The U.S. tends to always act quicker.”

The firm has previously invested in Synthesia, a $1 billion generative AI startup backed by U.S. chipmaker Nvidia that helps companies make presentations with AI-generated avatars.

Victor Riparbelli, CEO and co-founder of Synthesia, told CNBC his company partnered with Accel last year as the firm’s team knows “how to strike the right balance between visionary and useful technology.”

“Over the last year, there have been a lot of cool demos and perhaps too much frothiness in the AI industry,” Riparbelli told CNBC via email. “It was really important to us to partner with a fund that is as focussed as we are on delivering real, tangible business value.”