The Evolving Global Electric Vehicle Trade Ecosystem: Network Structure and Trade Network Resilience

International electric vehicle (EV) trade has expanded rapidly, but greater connectivity does not necessarily reduce structural concentration or dependence. This study constructs directed and weighted EV trade networks for 80 major economies from 2018 to 2025. Social network analysis, geospatial visualization, core–periphery analysis, structural hole measures, and the Hubness Measurement (HM) index are used to evaluate connectivity, spatial concentration, hierarchy, brokerage, and bilateral dependence. The number of directed trade links increased from 1804 in 2018 to 2884 in 2023, before declining modestly to 2820 in 2024 and 2740 in 2025. Clustering remained high throughout the period, while average path length declined, indicating greater structural accessibility despite persistent regional concentration. A relatively small group of economies continued to occupy core positions. At the same time, lower betweenness centrality and declining peak effective-size values suggest that brokerage became less exclusive as alternative connections expanded. In the bilateral case analysis, export dependence shifted toward a broader set of destination markets, although exposure to several important markets remained. Overall, the results show that stronger integration can coexist with persistent hierarchy, regional concentration, and bilateral dependence. These findings provide evidence for trade and industrial strategies aimed at improving diversification and the resilience of the global EV trade network.