Two new analyses show electric vehicles approaching a “tipping point” for mass adoption, with global sales rising 43% last year, battery costs plunging, and the number of models available in the United States expected to triple over the next three years.
While government subsidies in some countries have brought down the purchase price of a vehicle type that is less expensive to own and operate (and more fun to drive) than internal combustion, The Guardian looks ahead to a day when EVs will be cost-competitive without any financial boost.
“The latest analyses forecast that to happen sometime between 2023 and 2025,” the paper says. But “the tipping point has already been passed in Norway, where tax breaks mean electric cars are cheaper. The market share of battery-powered cars soared to 54% in 2020 in the Nordic country, compared with less than 5% in most European nations.”
University of Exeter geographer Tim Lenton said EVs hit 48% of market share in Norway in 2019, when they were 0.3% less expensive than conventional cars. In the UK, where they were 1.3% more costly, their share of sales languished at 1.6%. “We were really struck by how non-linear the effect seems to be,” he told The Guardian.
“There’s been a tipping point in one country, Norway, and that’s thanks to some clever and progressive tax incentives,” he added. “Then consumers voted with their wallets.”
Which means EVs that are cheaper without subsidies are “definitely an inflection point,” said James Frith, head of energy storage at BloombergNEF. After that, “we really see the adoption of electric vehicles taking off and real market penetration.”
BloombergNEF expects lower battery costs to push EVs below the cost of petrol and diesel cars in 2023, The Guardian says, while Lenton foresees the crossover occurring in 2024 or 2025.
Until then, “the single biggest barrier to a driver choosing an electric car has to be cost,” said Rod Dennis, senior press officer with the UK’s Royal Automobile Club. Last Thursday, the RAC published a poll of 3,000 drivers in which 78% said EVs are too expensive—and only 9% said their next car would be electric.
But perhaps not for long, with BNEF forecasting average battery prices of about $60 per kilowatt-hour by the end of the decade, down from $1,200 in 2010. “It is an incredibly exciting time,” Frith said. “We see so much innovation coming from all areas, whether industry or research, and so much money being poured in by governments and everyone, that it seems like there will be a lot of changes to come and it’ll just get more exciting.”
Smart Cities Dive cites lower battery costs as the main factor driving the expected explosion in the number of EV models on the U.S., from 40 to 127 over three years. The U.S. Department of Energy is targeting a price of $80/kWh for vehicle battery packs by 2030, the publication states.
At the same time, it takes almost two decades for the U.S. vehicle fleet to change over, so this is not like an iPhone adoption,” said Dan Bowermaster, senior program manager for electric transportation at the Electric Power Research Institute, during a webinar last month.
Batteries for transportation vehicles need to be designed for maximum recycle capability & should part of a lease program. They have a secondary market after vehicle use when power to weight ratio drops to about 75% of original capacity. After use in stationary secondary market such as energy storage they are recycled back into batteries. Need to be kept out of land fill sites. Part of this lease would cover the loss in gas tax collected. Government incentives should be part of this lease program.
The development of an “Refurbish Industry” for used internal combustion engine vehicles,(ICEs), could turn this into a “like I-phone” adoption with the battery lease program. This would be an engineered process both from design & industrial engineering as well. It could as sophisticated as running an assembly line in reverse doing 25, 50 or 100 of a model at a time, remove ICE parts & replace with EV parts, replace wheel bearings, front windshield glass, shocks, detail interior, etc. When finished you could have a “Certified – Refurbished – EV”. What makes a used ICE vehicle loose its value, mostly the moving parts that may fail overtime. By removing 90% of the moving parts & renewing others you could have a like new vehicle at an affordable price. This could work for many models.
Example: I have a 2014 Jeep Cherokee, 200,000 kms, value $11,000 & going down, new 2020 or 2021 ICE vehicle $45,000. With a battery lease program I would invest up to $15,000 to have my vehicle “Refurbished & Certified”. It would fit my life style for another 5 years. I would install recharging capability in my garage & that investment would add to the resale value of my property.
At some point when an EV come along that fits my life style I will get one, I’m lucky I can afford it but that maybe 2025. If I get a new EV what happens to my worthless 2014 Jeep. May end up a landfill site along with millions of others. Not what I want to have happen.
The development of this industry would allow more people to participate in the conversion of ICEs to EVs, speed up the conversion & reduce GHGs. Do not wait for the North American car industry to do it. They have had only one innovation since it started. That was Ford introducing the assembly line. The Japanese taught them about JIT, California drove the emission standards & Tesla EVs. The rest is just marketing features to fit life style changes.