Electric mobility is booming, but change is still too slow.

In 2020 it is as clear as never before:

The age of fossil cars is coming to an end.

Thanks to economic, political and societal forces it is just a matter of time. But speed matters.

I am glad to share my highlights from the Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) 2020 EV Outlook.

2020 overview of worldwide e-vehicles

• 7m passenger EVs, out of a total of 1bn+ passenger vehicles. In 2020, 1.7m EVs were sold corresponding to 3% of sales.
• 400k E-vans and trucks (<1% of total)
• 500k E-buses out of 3m in total (More than 90% in China)
• 184m E-mopeds, scooters and motorcycles (More than 90% in China) out of 900m in total

Passenger Vehicles

• In 2020, Covid19 will make auto sales plunge 23% and they will recover to 2019 levels in 2025. And in the graphic below see the mixed impact of shared mobility.

• Shared mobility will go from 5% in 2019 to contribute 16% of all mobility in 2040. Robotaxis coming in the 2030s.

• Geographical Distribution: China and Europe combined represent 72% of all passenger EV sales in 2030, driven by European vehicle CO2 regulations and China’s EV credit system, fuel economy regulations and city policies restricting new internal combustion vehicle sales. Automakers focus their passenger EV efforts on the markets with the most stringent regulations for the next 10 years, leading to low rates of EV adoption in the Rest of World category. The U.S. falls further behind leading EV markets over the next few years, but catches up in the 2030s. Nearly 60% of U.S. households have two or more cars — and many have the ability to install home charging.

• By 2025, EVs hit 10% of global passenger vehicle sales, rising to 28% in 2030 and 58% in 2040.
• Plug-in hybrids represent 28% of global passenger plug-in vehicle sales in 2025 and 26% in 2030, but their share drops quickly in the 2030s as battery electric vehicles continue to get cheaper.
• Passenger vehicle sales peak in 2036 and never cross the symbolic 100 million per year mark. The motorization rate still rises steadily in India and other emerging markets, but this rise is not enough to offset the demographic-driven sales declines in mature auto markets, or offset the trends of more urbanization and more shared mobility.
• By 2040 there are just under 500 million passenger EVs on the road, out of a total passenger vehicle fleet of 1.6 billion. This means about 31% of the world’s passenger cars are electric — but some regions go much higher, with China and parts of Europe at over 50%.
• In 2040, there are still more kilometres driven globally by internal combustion passenger vehicles than EVs.
• EV purchasing price parity with ICE will be achieved by max mid-2020s but not for small ICE vehicles like those in India.
• Fuel cell vehicles will stay very limited and just pick up in the 2030s.

• Sales of internal combustion passenger vehicles peaked in 2017 and are in permanent decline, but the fleet keeps growing until 2030.
• The reason as seen in the graphic below is an already high and increasing aging population and urbanization, and with it more cycling, walking, shared mobility.

Other vehicle types

• e-buses comprising over 67% of the global bus fleet in 2040. Electric buses do not fully take over the market. Diesel and eventually hydrogen fuel cell buses round out the rest of the fleet by 2040 in areas:

1. Where installing charging infrastructure is difficult
2. Where temperatures are extreme
3. Near industrial clusters where hydrogen production is being deployed
4. Where local incumbents favor such technology

• Road freight demand continues to grow to 2040, but the growth is uneven between segments and countries. Small vans and trucks increase in importance, with demand rising more than 50%.

Electric & battery demand

Electricity demand will grow by up to 10% in some regions and the power fluctuations will be even bigger so smart charging will be needed.

• Plenty of gigafactories are in the pipeline worldwide:

• There will be challenges related to cobalt, Nickel but probably no material shortages for the battery production.

Charging points

• About 290 million charging points are needed globally by 2040 to support the growing EV fleet. Home charging is by far the largest category, but around 12 million public charging points are needed as the number of EV owners with access to home charging options saturates.
• Almost 1 million public charging points are already installed globally. This is rising much faster in Europe and China than elsewhere.
• Then 150kW chargers become the speed of choice for fast charging, but higher speeds of 350kW and up also play a small role.
• Cumulative investment in all types of charging hardware and installation reaches $500 billion globally by 2040.
• Home, workplace and private commercial charging account for 78% of all investment, so most of this is funded by private individuals and companies looking to take advantage of the lower costs of going electric.
• Public charging investment is much lower, requiring a cumulative $111 billion across all countries by 2040.
• Infrastructure might slow down electric mobility because of stakeholders who have no home/work charging possibility.

• With these developments, we will save a significant amount of emissions but to reach the 2-degree target we need to do more!

• Quite many governments have announced they’d take actions, more need to follow and with legally binding announcements!

Some personal comments to end with:

I believe BNEF (Find the executive summary and video in this link: https://bnef.turtl.co/story/evo-2020/page/3?teaser=yes) has among the best predictions for electric mobility but of course, in the long term, many things are uncertain. Particularly around the impact of these areas:

• Policy changes (see the pandemic measures support for EVs, or the recent Californian ban of ICE sales)
• Autonomous driving
• Shared mobility
• Developing countries growth path
• Charging development

I’d love to see in future editions more focus on aviation. I believe their prediction of the electrification of trucks as well as the use of shared mobility is a bit too conservative. The numbers for the developing world like Africa seem a bit fluffy. Nevertheless, the work gives very good insights on the main trends of electric vehicles.

Let’s act to get there even faster.