Pre­vi­ous­ly, only car man­u­fac­tur­ers had a pos­i­tive out­look for elec­tric vehi­cles (EVs). How­ev­er, the recent boom has changed this, wor­ry­ing major oil com­pa­nies. One of the biggest rea­sons for the switch is that elec­tri­cal ener­gy is reusable. New­er tech­nolo­gies have allowed auto­mo­bile man­u­fac­tur­ers to invest in clean ener­gy resources for elec­tric cars. The mul­ti-decade pro­jec­tions are being trimmed for both EV and oil sales. The indus­try con­sen­sus indi­cates boom in oil demand by late 2020s, after which it will flat­ten out as EVs will out­sell tra­di­tion­al vehi­cles.

Where are the EVs headed ?

Joel Couse, Chief Ener­gy Econ­o­mist for TOTAL, shared his opin­ion at Bloomberg New Ener­gy Finance’s (BNEF) con­fer­ence in April this year. Accord­ing to Couse, EVs will make up 15-30% of new vehi­cles by 2030. This fore­cast exceeds any of the exist­ing fore­casts by oil man­u­fac­tur­ers ; as well as the stats from BNEF itself. Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ers will be the major play­ers, fol­lowed by USA, Europe and Japan. By 2040, BNEF pre­dicts EVs will con­sti­tute 35-47% of new cars. The expec­ta­tions are grow­ing, espe­cial­ly with the new highs achieved every year. For instance, in 2015, the Orga­ni­za­tion of Petro­le­um Export­ing Coun­tries (OPEC) fore­cast­ed EVs will con­sti­tute as many as 46M cars on the road by 2040. Last year, the pre­dic­tion indi­cat­ed that the num­bers will reach 266M by 2040. Here are oth­er impor­tant forecasts : 
  • Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency raised its fore­cast for EV fleet size from 23M to 58M by 2030
  • BP indi­cates as many as 100M EVs will be on the road by 2035, increas­ing the val­ue up to 40% from their pre­vi­ous year’s outlook
  • Exxon Mobil increased its esti­mates from 65M to 100M by 2040
  • Nor­we­gian state oil com­pa­ny, Sta­toil ASA, indi­cates EVS will account for 30% of new car sales by 2030

Automak­ers plan­ning ahead for the boom in sales !

Need­less to say, auto­mo­tive man­u­fac­tur­ers around the world are more opti­mistic than oil pro­duc­ers. They plan to sell a total of 6M EVs by 2025, hope­ful­ly ris­ing to 8M in 2030. While most man­u­fac­tur­ers are increas­ing their pro­duc­tion share to incor­po­rate more and more EV mod­els, some of major man­u­fac­tur­ers plan to go all elec­tric. For instance, Vol­vo AB plans to have an elec­tric motor in each of their cars by 2019 ! The com­pa­ny has joined Tes­la Inc. and Geely Auto­mo­bile Hold­ings Inc. as major EV manufacturers. 

The inter­est­ing rea­son behind the rise

Elec­tric vehi­cles need to com­pete on two fronts : price and per­for­mance. Bat­ter­ies con­sti­tute half of the over­all costs of EVs. How­ev­er, bat­tery-free mod­els are on their way. Recent research indi­cates that graphene based super­ca­pac­i­tors may put bat­tery-free mod­els on the road with­in 5 years. This will sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect the boom in EV sales, per­haps out­per­form­ing recent fore­casts much soon­er. These are envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and will cost less due to absence of high-cost Lithi­um. More and more research is being con­duct­ed in the field to find elec­trolytes that will allow super­ca­pac­i­tors to achieve bet­ter capac­i­tance than Li bat­ter­ies. We cur­rent­ly pro­vide a list of elec­trolytes that you can order, including :