Electric car sales are up in Germany by similar amounts. Completely without any force applied. The same in many European countries.
Toyota is in a good position with their fleet emissions because they've been selling hybrids for so long. They're not under as much pressure to start selling BEVs in high volumes.
The answer is: there are enough customers interested in buying an electric cars but both the available product range and production count limited their ability to do so. With the offerings of electric cars improving, the consumers are happily buying into them.
Nobody is forcing anyone to sell BEVs, what is forced is efficiency. Full BEV is only one way to achieve that goal. Look at Hyundai Ioniq hybrid - a perfectly capable midsize family car, affordable, introduced to the market in 2017. It will meet emission standards all the way until 2029.
https://electrek.co/2020/12/07/toyota-electric-suv-battery-e...
Volkswagen must sell BEVs to meet its fleet emissions standards. Unfortunately for them, they missed their 2020 target so they will be paying a fine:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUS...
Volkswagen doesn't want to waste money on fines so they've made a big commitment to EVs. They've become the biggest BEV maker in Europe and in time they'll be the biggest BEV maker world wide, which isn't that surprising. Volkswagen owns 12 automotive brands and they're the world's biggest car company.
(Edit) Battery Electric Vehicle
However, what I do see in Germany, are more and more electric cars in car sharing, rentals and company fleets. Upper middle class is going pretty electric as well to appear cool/caring about climate. Several Teslas in front of my building now since the new upper middle class apartments went up across the street. Several Audi e-Trons in the area as well. What's curiously missing is the ID.3 somehow - I expected to see many more at this point.
Volkswagen and many other well-known manufacturers are pushing out really decent electric models. I see a ton of Renault Zoes cruising around, electric Smarts as well. They simply fit well into the European market which is dominated by dense cities and short commutes (<100km).
> Renault Zoes
In Berlin, Renault Zoes were (maybe still are?) _free_[0] to get for small businesses. I know multiple freelancers who took advantage of that deal. Yes, that might not be the "average person", but it's probably not insignificant either.
[0]: https://efahrer.chip.de/news/elektroauto-gratis-leasen-so-ko...
However, in 5-10 years we should start to see a mature market for good quality used EVs, making them much more accessible. At that point, better reliability, better driving experience, much lower operating costs, etc will make EVs the obvious choice for many, if not most, buyers.
The average price paid for new US cars was $40K [0]. There are now plenty of models below that without subsidy, including Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, VW ID4, Kia Niro, Hyundai Kona and even the low end of the Tesla 3. That's just the upfront price, of course TCO is lower than a same price ICE car because fuel and maintenance are lower.
[0] https://www.carscoops.com/2021/01/average-new-car-prices-in-...
Fossil fuel industry is the industry that have made it possible for us to live longer, and feed as many people as we want while at the same time making the environments much cleaner over time.
I believe Amazonia air quality is much better than air quality in Milan (where I lived for 10 years).
https://www.iqair.com/italy/lombardy/milano
> Fossil fuel industry is the industry that have made it possible for us to live longer
I'm not at war with fossil fuel industry, I was simply answering to this question
> what deductions are we giving for the positive externalities?
My dad worked in pulmonary oncology for 35 years, I think that better air quality, less lung disease and better overall environment is a reward itself, that's the prize we get for positive externalities (and in case of EVs the State incentives, in Italy they are up to 10k euros if you buy a new EV car and get rid of an old ICE one).
There have been State incentives for at least two decades to buy new cars that produced less emissions on fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel industry benefitted of enormous deductions for over a century for their contribution to the industrial revolutions.
For example they never pay for the disasters they create [0][1].
[0] The oil spill of the Exxon Valdez in 1989 only costed $ 125 million to Exxon https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-and-state-alask...
[1] even when they paid a just fine (like the 60 billion BP paid for the spill in the Gulf of Mexico) it's peanuts compared to the environmental damages that the future generations will inherit (the mangroves still carry the damages from the Ixtoc spill of 1979, 40 years later)
Ixtoc soiled hundreds of miles of beaches, all the way to Texas. The fishermen also said that oysters that used to be found clinging to the mangrove roots seemed to have vanished after the spill and never returned.
Automakers must sell increasing numbers of full electric and/or hybrid vehicles in order to meet their emissions targets, otherwise they face potentially huge fines.