Electric Vehicle Sales to Surge in the Coming Decades
The number of electric vehicles on
the road worldwide could reach 125 million by 2030, up from just over 3 million
last year, according to a new analysis by
the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization that tracks
energy trends.
The rapid growth isn’t limited to
personal vehicles, but will also be seen with electric buses, two-wheelers
(such as motorcycles), and trucks.
The number of EVs worldwide jumped
54 percent between 2016 and last year. China is currently the largest electric
car market, with 580,000 EVs sold in 2017, accounting for half of global sales.
The United States was the
second-largest market, with 280,000 cars sold last year, up from 160,000 in
2016.
In terms of market share, Nordic countries still dominate. In Norway, for example, 39 percent of all new car sales in 2017 were electric vehicles.
Private charging stations are
keeping up with the growth in EVs, with almost 3 million of them worldwide in
2017. There were 430,000 publicly accessible chargers last year, but only
one-quarter of them are fast chargers.
The IEA report warns that
the uptake in EVs has been, and will likely continue to be, driven by
government policies.
It also warns that lithium-ion
batteries need to continue to be improved upon to deal with global supply
issues for nickel, lithium, and, especially, cobalt.
Nearly 60 percent of the world’s
cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 90 percent is refined
in China, and yet demand for the element is expected to be 10 to 25 times
higher by 2030.