Electric vehicles registered in the US

Somewhere in the vastness of consumer behaviour, electric vehicles and chocolate bars have decided to become best friends, moving in near-perfect synchronisation across twelve years like two dancers who never met but somehow know all the same steps. One might reasonably expect that a person buying a Tesla would have nothing whatsoever to do with a person buying a Snickers, yet here they are, correlating at 0.968, which is the kind of number that makes statisticians weep quietly into their spreadsheets. The universe, it turns out, is not above a practical joke.

What's actually happening here is almost certainly far more boring than it appears, which is somehow both reassuring and disappointing. Both EV registrations and chocolate sales are almost certainly riding the same economic wave—a rising tide of disposable income and consumer confidence lifting all consumer boats equally, from the aspirational Tesla buyer to the person standing in a supermarket aisle at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, reaching for something with almonds in it. Add in population growth (we had roughly 8 million more people in America in 2022 than in 2011, each one wanting things), coupled with seasonal spending patterns and the general march of inflation making everything cost more, and you've got a very boring but entirely plausible explanation for why two utterly unrelated industries move together like synchronized swimmers who have never spoken.

This is what pattern-seeking creatures like us do when we look at enough numbers: we find meaning in the mathematical equivalent of clouds shaped like things. The correlation between electric vehicles and chocolate sales tells us almost nothing about vehicles or chocolate, but it tells us quite a lot about how thoroughly entangled consumer behaviour becomes when you zoom out far enough. Perhaps the real question isn't why these moved together, but whether we'll keep asking until we find a correlation that actually means something. Or just keep enjoying the absurdity. Either seems fine.