Electric Vehicles (EV) gaining ground globally
Studies show that two renewable energy factors are speeding up the global access to electric vehicles. The costs of solar panels have fallen by 85 per cent in the last seven years at the global market, and battery costs dropped by 73 per cent. This has caused a 60 per cent leap in the demand for electric vehicles due to their lowering costs, the Bloomberg reports.
Energy analysts at the Grantham Institute of Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London and Carbon Tracker think tank said the progress in EV sales could trigger a supply cut by two million barrels a day by 2025, causing a protracted glut. A Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) report notes that in the next eight years, electric cars in Europe and North America would be more affordable to operate than the conventional vehicles that work on combustion and contribute to environmental pollution.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in the first quarter of 2017 said an estimated 11.5 million vehicles ply Nigerian roads and raises the issues of environmental pollution as they are all combustion based vehicles, operating on petrol and diesel. The NBS report said 53.8 per cent of the vehicles are used for commercial purposes in a country where there are poor regulations for vehicle standard, emission level and operational duration of vehicles before being phased out as obtained in nearby Ghana.
Just like most commercial vehicles, a significant number of the other 44.5 per cent private vehicles are said to be vehicles that may have been removed from other countries but brought into Nigeria mostly via Cotonou Port as used ones – Tokunbo, adding to the already risk of population.
The Telegraph newspaper in the United Kingdom cited a researcher, Hawkins Troy and his colleagues in 2013 adducing that modern EVs in Europe are powered by energy mix of solar and conventional electricity and that they offer up to 24 per cent decrease in Global Warming Potential (GWP) which is better than diesel or gasoline vehicles in a lifetime of 150,000 km.
Bloomberg reports that sales of electric vehicles reached a new record in 2016, with 750,000 pieces sold worldwide. China, the biggest car market in the huge world, sold over 50 per cent which was about 336,000 electric cars. Over two million such vehicles were operating globally in 2016 marking a 1,500 per cent growth since 2005 when there were just 1,000 pieces operating. It estimates that by 2040, 54 per cent of new car sales and 33 per cent of the global car fleet will be electric.
China currently has the highest number of electric cars in the world. About 650,000 electric vehicles are on its roads, representing about 30 per cent of the world’s total. The US is now the second after China overtook it in 2014.