Electric Vehicles in the News, 2019–2026: Attention, Geography and Tone of Global Coverage, and How It Compares with Research and Invention

We measure how electric vehicles were covered in a global news index from January 2019 to July 2026, using 505,323 de-duplicated articles, and set that coverage beside 57,163 research papers and 124,376 patent families on electric vehicles. Six results stand out: Rise and fall of attention. Electric vehicles took 23.99 of every 10,000 news articles in 2019 and 41.38 in 2023, a 1.72-fold rise. The share then fell 22.1% to 32.25 in 2025. The low point was 2020, at 20.18. Geography. India's share of located electric-vehicle news is 1.83 times its share of all news. The United States, the largest source of located articles (31.8%), is under-represented at 0.66. Among the ten largest sources, China (3.87) and Germany (2.6) are the most over-represented. By continent, only Asia (1.78) and Europe (1.03) are above 1. States. Within India, Telangana (3.31), Tamil Nadu (2.97) and Karnataka (2.42) lead. Within the United States, Michigan (5.19), California (2.3) and Nevada (2.16) lead. Tone. 77.7% of electric-vehicle articles are positive in tone (all news: 56.8%), and 20% are negative (all news: 33.6%). In India the negative share is 7.8%, against 41.2% for Indian news overall. Shifting attention. Between 2023 and 2025 the topic's share of national news fell in France (0.33 times), Canada (0.4) and China (0.59), and rose in Nigeria (1.4), the Philippines (1.37) and Turkey (1.21). Research and invention. Electric-vehicle papers grew from 3.73 to 14.51 per 10,000 papers between 2015 and 2025 (3.89 times). Patent families grew 2.65-fold from 2015 to 2024, and China's office held 78.9% of office filings.