The Electric-Car Boom Is So Real Even Oil Companies Say It’s Coming
QuickTake: The Drive Towards Cleaner Cars
Electrical cars are coming prompt — and that’s not just the opinion of carmakers anymore. Total SA, one of the world’s fattest oil producers, is now telling EVs may constitute almost a third of new-car sales by the end of the next decade.
The surge in battery powered vehicles will cause request for oil-based fuels to peak in the 2030s, Total Chief Energy Economist Joel Couse said at Bloomberg Fresh Energy Finance’s conference in Fresh York on Tuesday. EVs will make up fifteen percent to thirty percent of fresh vehicles by 2030, after which fuel “request will flatten out,” Couse said. “Maybe even decline.”
Couse’s projection for electrified cars is the highest yet by a major oil company and exceeds BNEF’s own forecast, said Colin McKerracher, head of advanced transport analysis at Bloomberg Fresh Energy Finance.
“That’s big,” McKerracher said. “That’s by far the most aggressive we’ve seen by any of the majors.”
Source: Bloomberg Fresh Energy Finance
Other oil companies have been trimming their long-term forecasts for oil request. Royal Dutch Shell Plc Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden said in March that oil request may peak in the late 2020s. It set up a business unit to identify the clean technologies where it could be most profitable.
Electrified cars are beginning to challenge with gasoline models on both price and spectacle. The most expensive part of an electrical car is the battery, which can make up half the total cost, according to BNEF. The very first electrified cars to be competitive on price have been in the luxury class, led by Tesla Inc.’s Model S, which is now the best-selling large luxury car in the U.S.
But battery prices are ripping off by about twenty percent a year, and automakers have been spending billions to electrify their fleets. Volkswagen AG is targeting twenty five percent of its sales to be electrified by 2025. Toyota Motor Corp. plans to phase out fossil fuels altogether by 2050.
Electrified cars presently make up about one percent of global vehicle sales, but traditional carmakers are preparing for transformation. In 2018, Volkswagen plows into electrification with an Audi SUV and the very first high-speed U.S. charging network to rival Tesla’s Superchargers. Tata Motors Ltd.’s Jaguar and Volvo Cars both have promising cars on the way too, and by 2020, the avalanche indeed commences, with Mercedes-Benz, VW, General Motors Co. and others releasing dozens of fresh models.
“By two thousand twenty there will be over one hundred twenty different models of EV across the spectrum,” said Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg Fresh Energy Finance. “These are fine cars. They will make the internal combustion equivalent look old fashioned.”
— With assistance by Chris Martin