The focus is very much on the future, and what is likely to happen when the “ticket price” of electric cars falls closer to that of their petrol and diesel equivalents, spurred on new emission standards, technology progress and customer preference.
We include this remarkable graph, courtesy of Professor Ray Wills from Future Smart Strategies (and a director of Horizon Power and an adjunct professor at UWA) from It’s taken Tesla just 10 years to end Ice Age for Big Auto and Big Oil:
It sparked a lot of interest, so we decided to find out more. Is this just a wild prediction? And how does Wills back up his forecast? This is what Wills told us.
In the mix, hybrid sales have improved – but not to such an extent that would suggest that a breakout and swap from ICE (internal combustion engine) to hybrid is in the offing:
While sales of some models of electric car sales have slowed a little during Covid-19, lead models like Tesla have not stalled, and overall growth of comparative market share of electric vehicles is still positive.
The continuing erosion of ICE sales through 2020 as the Osborne Effect continues to impact on overall car sales will convince car makers to release EV models faster. The Osborne effect is a social phenomenon of customers canceling or deferring orders for the current soon-to-be-obsolete product as an unexpected drawback of a company’s announcing a future product prematurely.
And when they do, there will be greater tension on pricing. All major car makers have at least one model of electric vehicle, and have factories able to be retooled to produce electric cars rather than ICE cars. Volkswagen factory produces last ever combustion engine car, shifts to EVs only).
The article asks “is this just a wild prediction?” It leaves you to decide on an answer.
What you can’t see in the extract here is that these forecasts are strongly based on an assumption of mass adoption of fully autonomous vehicle technology in under a decade. And the vehicle sharing models that often accompany that. That’s what underlies the surprising forecast of the global population of cars falling to a third of the current stock in just 20 years.