Electric vehicles on the road are set to triple in two years: Report
and Nissan Leafs are likely to become a much more common sight on the world’s roads in the next two years, the International Energy Agency says.
The global fleet of electric vehicles is likely to more than triple to 13 million by the end of the decade from 3.7 million last year, according to a report released Wednesday from the Paris-based institution, which was set up to advise industrial nations on energy policy. Sales may soar 24% each year on average through to 2030.
The findings illustrate the speed at which the world’s transportation system is shifting toward cleaner fuels as governments focus on limiting pollution and greenhouse gases.
Tesla Inc. and Nissan Motor Co. have some of the best known EVs on the road now, but major automakers from Volkswagen AG to General Motors Co. and Audi AG have followed suit in announcing dozens of battery-powered versions of their models.
“The dynamic policy developments that are characterizing the electric car market are expected to mobilize investments in battery production, facilitating cost reductions and ensuring that battery production takes place at scales that exceed significantly what has been seen so far,” said Pierpaolo Cazzola, senior energy and transport analyst at the IEA and one of the authors of the report.Electric vehicles are expected to take just over a quarter of vehicles sold in China by 2030, up from 2.2% last year, according to the IEA’s estimates. More than half of global sales in 2017 were in China, followed by the US. The Chinese government has put a number of policies in place to encourage EVs, party of an effort to cut air pollution in smog-choked cities. In 2017, the government in Beijing it set minimum requirements for domestic carmakers on electric vehicle production through a credit trading system. It also extended a 10 percent tax rebate for consumers until 2020.
Electric cars run on batteries charged by power plants, instead of on gasoline or diesel fuel. With an estimated
130 million light-duty vehicles expected on the world’s roads by 2030, the IEA estimates about 2.57 million barrels of oil per day won’t be needed.