EVs to displace ICE sooner than expected
A report titled “Why electric cars will take over sooner than you think” has been published by the BBC‘s chief environment correspondent Justin Rowlatt.
He says many industry observers believe the tipping point where EV sales will very rapidly overwhelm petrol and diesel cars has already passed.
The BBC then lists major global automotive manufacturers’ plans to start selling electric cars only from around 2025 and 2030.
Various governments’ goals to ban petrol and diesel vehicle sales provide impetus, it says.
The end of the internal combustion engine (ICE) age is inevitable with a technological revolution that is likely to happen very quickly, the report says.
Rowlatt postulates the EV market is about where the internet was around the late 1990s or early 2000s, just before it took off.
“Its growth was explosive and disruptive, crushing existing businesses and changing the way we do almost everything. And it followed a familiar pattern, known to technologists as an S-curve.”
As the market grew, prices fell rapidly and performance improved in leaps and bounds – encouraging more people to log on to the internet, Rowlatt explains.
“The S is beginning to sweep upwards here, growth is becoming exponential. By 1995 there were some 16 million people online. By 2001, there were 513 million people.
“Now there are more than three billion.”
He picks EVs to do the same.
“We’ve seen massive improvements in the motors that drive electric vehicles, the computers that control them, charging systems and car design.”
But Rowlatt says the sea-change in performance comes from battery improvements and price reductions.
“Just a decade ago, it cost US$1000 per kilowatt hour of battery power, says Madeline Tyson, of the US-based clean energy research group, RMI. Now it is nudging US$100.”
That is reckoned to be the point at which they start to become cheaper to buy than equivalent ICE, Rowlatt explains.
According to Tyson, EVs are already cheaper than ICE when the costs of fuel and servicing are taken into account.
Battery energy density is rising, they are lasting longer, EV range is expanding and EV prices are dropping, Rowlatt notes.
“Global sales of electric cars raced forward in 2020, rising by 43% to a total of 3.2m, despite overall car sales slumping by a fifth during the coronavirus pandemic.
“That is just 5% of total car sales, but it shows we’re already entering the steep part of the S.”
By 2025, 20% of all new cars sold globally will be electric, according to investment bank UBS.
It says that will leap to 40% by 2030, and by 2040 virtually every new car sold globally will be electric.
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Reality for ICE drivers will be when they go to their usual petrol station to find it closed or switched over to electric chargers. Petrol companies are not in the business of selling petrol, their business is selling energy, and the tipping point will be when they realize there is more money to be made by selling electricity.