Electronics and Semiconductors

Global Electric Car Stock Surpasses 2 Million Vehicles

07 June 2017

The forecast for EVs on the road could reach between 9 million and 20 million by 2020. Source: IEAThe forecast for EVs on the road could reach between 9 million and 20 million by 2020. Source: IEAThe market for electric vehicles (EV) continues to expand adding another 750,000 cars worldwide on the market in 2016. Now, there are more than 2 million total EVs on the road globally, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Norway has been the most successful with the rollout of electric vehicles with a 29 percent market share, followed by The Netherlands with 6.4 percent and Sweden with 3.4 percent. China, France and the U.K. all have a market share close to 1.5 percent, the IEA says. China, the world’s largest car market, was not surprisingly the largest EV market as well accounting for more than 40 percent of all electric cars sold in the world, doubling the amount sold in the U.S.

As EVs have grown in number, so have the number of private and public accessible charging ports with the annual growth rate of publicly available charging stations growing at 72 percent. This is slightly higher than the annual growth of the electric car stock which was down to 60 percent in 2016 from 77 percent in 2015 and 85 percent in 2014.

Still, EV stock pales in comparison to the number of internal combustion engines with just 0.2 percent of the total car stock worldwide. IEA notes that EVs have a long way to go before reaching deployment scales that will make a significant dent in the development of global oil demand as well as greenhouse gas emissions.

The good news is that the IEA forecasts that electric car stock will jump in the coming years as technology improves, knowledge of the benefits of the vehicles increases and battery costs decline and energy density expands. The result is that there is a good chance that the electric car stock will range between 9 million and 20 million by 2020 and between 40 million and 70 million by 2055, the agency says.

These scenarios depend on up continued R&D efforts on innovative technologies, mandates and regulations from governments, financial incentives and policy support to increase the value proposition do driving electric, IEA says.

To contact the author of this article, email PBrown@globalspec.com


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