I will start with the findings and then explain what and how I researched for this investigation.
- EVs take up about 32% of the information market on car news websites.
- ICE cars still hold a solid share of news - about 22%.
- EVs haven't grown much in news coverage since January 2023.
- British websites tend to write less about EVs than US websites.
Now, I'm going to show you how I came to these conclusions and what I did to count those results.
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Research data and outlines
For this research, I took 4 of my favorite (and it would be fair to say, pretty popular) auto news sites from the US and the UK and analyzed the titles of their articles in January 2024.
My aim was to find out if the market of automotive news is actually shifting towards EVs.
And some of the findings were actually extremely interesting, so I decided to turn them into this investigation.
What I actually analyzed?
I took 4 websites:
Then I manually analyzed all the titles posted on these websites in January 2024. I got 680 titles to analyze.
My prior goal was to find titles that directly tell the reader about EVs or non-EV vehicles. And here's what I found out:
1) Major automotive news websites focus on both EVs and ICE cars
I should tell you that I expected the results to be a little different. It appeared to be that the major leaders of thought in the automotive market still focus on both EVs and ICE vehicles.
Overall, 217 articles about EVs and 155 articles about ICE vehicles were found during the research.
And while EVs hold a stronger position, I should say that journalists now have to try hard to find some news about non-EV cars, so the fact that 22% of all articles were about ICE vehicles is pretty shocking while about 32% of articles were about EVs.
The rest are so-called general articles. They are about racing, new technologies in car interior, safety, etc. These general articles can be described as all-purpose and aren't included in the calculations for pure EVs or pure ICEs.
2) US news is more saturated with EV news than UK news
I analyzed two US websites and two UK-based websites with their audiences coming from those countries, mainly. And I was surprised to find out that UK websites tend to write just a little more about EVs while US journalists mainly try to highlight EV topics.
Here are the figures. UK websites published 450 articles for the period, 123 of them were EV articles and 94 - non-EV ones. This makes up 27% of EV topics and 21% of non-EV topics.
US websites published overall 230 articles for this period. 94 of them were EV-based while 61 were about ICE cars. This means that in the US journalists wrote 41% of articles about EVs and 27% about non-EV cars.
3) EVs lost some part of the news for 1 year
I analyzed titles in one of the websites in this research that were published in January 2023, a year ago. I used the same methodology to count the share of EV, ICE, and general articles.
Surprisingly, among 194 articles, 66 topics or 34% were about EVs and 50 topics or 25% were about ICE cars with the remaining 78 articles being general.
This proves that a year ago, this website wrote more about EVs covering 34% of its content for electric vehicles while this year, it's 31% for this website.
So, EVs didn't gain much popularity in car-related news for 2023, at least this is what I managed to find with pretty scarce data that I could get.
I expected this to be a huge growth since electric vehicles are now all the hot topics but it appears that the EV revolution in the car news industry happened long ago and they even lost some traction in the news.
Final thoughts
Although EVs are certainly gaining more popularity on the market, car news tends to split attention to ICE cars, hybrids, EVs, and other alternative technologies.
The share of the information market isn't currently growing for the EV market. But the news about EVs still gets about a third of the information space.
About the authors
The CarAraC research team is composed of seasoned auto mechanics and automotive industry professionals, including individuals with advanced degrees and certifications in their field. Our team members boast prestigious credentials, reflecting their extensive knowledge and skills. These qualifications include: IMI: Institute of the Motor Industry, ASE-Certified Master Automobile Technicians; Coventry University, Graduate of MA in Automotive Journalism; Politecnico di Torino, Italy, MS Automotive Engineering; Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Mechanical University in Skopje; TOC Automotive College; DHA Suffa University, Department of Mechanical Engineering
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