Energize Weekly, September 12, 2018
The pace of electric vehicle (EV) sales is accelerating, reaching a total of four million vehicles on the roads worldwide this September, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
China has emerged as the key market for EVs, responsible for around 37 percent of passenger EVs sold globally since 2011 and for about 99 percent of the 421,000 e-buses sold.
The time required for selling one million vehicles is shrinking dramatically, Bloomberg said.
The first million in sales posted in the fourth quarter of 2015 took 60 months, with 39 percent of the purchases in North America and 33 percent of the sales from Europe. China accounted for 15 percent.
Since then, China has increased its support for EVs, leading to a sharp increase in its market. It took 17 months to reach 2 million EV sales and 10 months to get to 3 million, according to Bloomberg.
“We estimate it will take just over 6 months to hit 5 million EVs sold,” Bloomberg said. “The acceleration aligns with the major markets—China, Europe and North America.” Bloomberg projects the next million EVs will be sold by March 2019.
In the second quarter of 2018, EV sales were 4.2 percent of all new car sales in China, 2.3 percent of sales in Europe and 1.6 percent of sales in North America.
“There are several new EV models that we expect to come to the market before the end of 2018, which should help increase sales numbers globally,” Bloomberg said. “We also expect the Tesla Model 3 to arrive in Europe in mid-2019, which will likely boost EV sales in the region further. China’s so-called NEV [new energy vehicles] quota kicks in in 2019 and will also push sales forward.”
Bloomberg projects that 42 percent of the new sales will be in China, followed by Europe with 26 percent of sales and North America with 25 percent.
“If Tesla Model 3 sales continue to accelerate, North America could catch up with Europe quite quickly, with both regions having roughly 1.3 million EVs sold by then,” Bloomberg said.
At the end of June 2018, there were more than 3.5 million passenger EVs and about 421,000 e-buses on the roads, bringing the total cumulative EVs sold to 3.97 million.
