Volvo Plans To Go All-Electric. Fresh Data Suggest Others Won’t Be Far Behind.
Volvo Cars became the very first major automaker to all-but abandon the combustion engine when it announced plans on Wednesday to build an electrified motor into every car by 2019.
But a fresh forecast released Thursday by Bloomberg Fresh Energy Finance suggests it won’t be the last.
By 2040, electrified vehicles are predicted to make up fifty four percent of worldwide fresh car sales, or sixty four million automobiles, according to the latest projection. That’s up from the thirty five percent figure laid out by the data rock hard in its annual forecast last year, a major boost for advocates who say the technology is key to reducing pollution and slowing climate switch.
“We think the next twenty years are going to bring a revolution of individual mobility that we haven’t seen since the car substituted the pony carriage,” Salim Morsy, a senior advanced transport analyst at BNEF, told HuffPost by phone.
In just the next four years, electrical vehicle sales around the world are expected to rise to three million from 700,000, the record set in 2016. By 2021, electrified vehicles will account for toughly five percent of light-duty auto sales in Europe, up from one percent now, and for four percent in both the United States and China.
By 2040, electrical vehicles are set to predominate, with sixty seven percent of the market in Europe, fifty eight percent in the U.S. and fifty one percent in China. The report did not account for buses, commercial trucks, motorbikes or low-speed “microcars.”
The falling price of lithium-ion batteries is driving the shift. The average price of the batteries plummeted last year to $273 per kilowatt hour from $1,000 in 2010. That number is expected to fall to $73 by 2030. The outlook did not include a forecast beyond two thousand thirty because there are too many breakthroughs in fresh battery chemistries that could alter the market by then, but prices are expected to keep declining by about five percent per year, Morsy said.
The two thousand forty projects are based on the $73 per kilowatt figure, meaning the findings are “actually on the conservative side,” he added.
Major automakers certainly seem to be planning for a future in which electrical engines prevail. In 2014, Tesla CEO Elon Musk liberated up most of his electrical automaker’s patents in hopes of spurring competitors to invest in electrical vehicles. Three years later, almost every major car company seems arched on hammering the Palo Alto, California-based rock-hard at its own game.
In May, Volkswagen ― still reeling from a diesel emissions-cheating scandal in the U.S. ― vowed to build a million electrified cars per year by 2020, claiming, “Anything Tesla can do, we can surpass.” BMW plans to unveil an all-electric 3-Series sedan in September, Handelsblatt reported last week, putting it in direct competition with Tesla’s hotly-anticipated Model three line. General Motors already hammer Tesla to market with the Chevy Bolt, its flagship affordably-priced, mass-appeal electrified car.
By pledging to introduce only hybrids or battery-powered vehicles in two years, Volvo is “on the more aggressive side of” car companies’ decisions to electrify their offerings, Morsy said. But the automaker is in a unique position to bet big on technology that has yet to gravely challenge the internal combustion engine on price.
The Sweden-based hard is possessed by the Chinese conglomerate Geely Automobile Holdings, which is encouraged by Beijing officials to increase its output of electrical vehicles. Volvo, sold by Ford Motor Company in two thousand ten amid slumping sales, has struggled to regain its share of U.S. and European luxury car markets predominated by BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen-owned Audi.
“They’ve had a bit of a tumultuous past, with different owners putting them through the wringer,” Jessica Caldwell, a senior analyst at the auto site Edmunds.com, told HuffPost. “Now, [electrification] seems like a good differentiator inbetween Volvo and other luxury brands.”
Even if Volvo completes its shift to an all-electric fleet, it’ll be a lil’ fraction of a market set to boom in the coming decades.
“Volvo sells about half-a-million cars per year,” Morsy said, adding for comparison that “the Toyota Corolla sells a million cars a year.”
Volvo Plans To Go All-Electric
Volvo Plans To Go All-Electric. Fresh Data Suggest Others Won’t Be Far Behind.
Volvo Cars became the very first major automaker to all-but abandon the combustion engine when it announced plans on Wednesday to build an electrical motor into every car by 2019.
But a fresh forecast released Thursday by Bloomberg Fresh Energy Finance suggests it won’t be the last.
By 2040, electrified vehicles are predicted to make up fifty four percent of worldwide fresh car sales, or sixty four million automobiles, according to the latest projection. That’s up from the thirty five percent figure laid out by the data stiff in its annual forecast last year, a major boost for advocates who say the technology is key to reducing pollution and slowing climate switch.
“We think the next twenty years are going to bring a revolution of individual mobility that we haven’t seen since the car substituted the pony carriage,” Salim Morsy, a senior advanced transport analyst at BNEF, told HuffPost by phone.
In just the next four years, electrical vehicle sales around the world are expected to rise to three million from 700,000, the record set in 2016. By 2021, electrical vehicles will account for harshly five percent of light-duty auto sales in Europe, up from one percent now, and for four percent in both the United States and China.
By 2040, electrified vehicles are set to predominate, with sixty seven percent of the market in Europe, fifty eight percent in the U.S. and fifty one percent in China. The report did not account for buses, commercial trucks, motorbikes or low-speed “microcars.”
The falling price of lithium-ion batteries is driving the shift. The average price of the batteries plummeted last year to $273 per kilowatt hour from $1,000 in 2010. That number is expected to fall to $73 by 2030. The outlook did not include a forecast beyond two thousand thirty because there are too many breakthroughs in fresh battery chemistries that could alter the market by then, but prices are expected to keep declining by about five percent per year, Morsy said.
The two thousand forty projects are based on the $73 per kilowatt figure, meaning the findings are “actually on the conservative side,” he added.
Major automakers certainly seem to be planning for a future in which electrified engines prevail. In 2014, Tesla CEO Elon Musk liberated up most of his electrified automaker’s patents in hopes of spurring competitors to invest in electrified vehicles. Three years later, almost every major car company seems arched on hitting the Palo Alto, California-based stiff at its own game.
In May, Volkswagen ― still reeling from a diesel emissions-cheating scandal in the U.S. ― vowed to build a million electrified cars per year by 2020, claiming, “Anything Tesla can do, we can surpass.” BMW plans to unveil an all-electric 3-Series sedan in September, Handelsblatt reported last week, putting it in direct competition with Tesla’s hotly-anticipated Model three line. General Motors already hammer Tesla to market with the Chevy Bolt, its flagship affordably-priced, mass-appeal electrical car.
By pledging to introduce only hybrids or battery-powered vehicles in two years, Volvo is “on the more aggressive side of” car companies’ decisions to electrify their offerings, Morsy said. But the automaker is in a unique position to bet big on technology that has yet to gravely challenge the internal combustion engine on price.
The Sweden-based stiff is possessed by the Chinese conglomerate Geely Automobile Holdings, which is encouraged by Beijing officials to increase its output of electrical vehicles. Volvo, sold by Ford Motor Company in two thousand ten amid slumping sales, has struggled to regain its share of U.S. and European luxury car markets predominated by BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen-owned Audi.
“They’ve had a bit of a tumultuous past, with different owners putting them through the wringer,” Jessica Caldwell, a senior analyst at the auto site Edmunds.com, told HuffPost. “Now, [electrification] seems like a good differentiator inbetween Volvo and other luxury brands.”
Even if Volvo completes its shift to an all-electric fleet, it’ll be a lil’ fraction of a market set to boom in the coming decades.
“Volvo sells about half-a-million cars per year,” Morsy said, adding for comparison that “the Toyota Corolla sells a million cars a year.”