EVs look poised for slower sales growth this year
Every year, BloombergNEF’s team of analysts pauses to reflect on what’s happened in our industry and make some predictions on what might be in store next. Each year presents its own challenges, and 2023 is no exception, with economic uncertainty riding high, geopolitical tensions rising and the policy landscape shifting.
Here are three things we’re expecting for the EV market this year:
We expect EV adoption to continue to rise in 2023, but at a slightly slower pace than the past two years, which saw sales jump from 3.2 million in 2020 to more than 10 million in 2022. We expect 13.6 million plug-in passenger vehicle sales in total for this year, with around 75% of those being fully electric. The U.S. is poised for a breakout year due to the combination of new EV manufacturing capacity and refreshed federal tax credits.
Sales of zero-emission vans and trucks will continue to rise quickly and should hit almost 600,00 globally in 2023, up over 80% from 2022. Since 2020, sales have jumped almost fourfold against the backdrop of a largely stagnant market for commercial vehicles. Commercial vehicles are used much more intensively than passenger cars, so electrifying them can lead to large reductions in both emissions and oil demand. The U.S. could turn into a surprise market for zero-emission vans and trucks. After very low sales in previous years, there are signs of change.
Annual public charging installations more than doubled to just shy of 1 million in 2022, from 450,000 a year earlier. BNEF expects annual installations to reach 1.3 million in 2023, and for the cumulative network to reach 4.1 million. The fate of global growth depends heavily on Chinese industry, which has been installing a huge number of chargers. Europe and North America are much further behind but will also post record years for public installations.