https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/tech/electric-car-revolution-may-come-sooner-we-thought-ncna780516
The Electric Car Revolution May Come Sooner Than We Thought
All around the world, electric cars are edging out gasoline-powered vehicles.
Brian Kahn, Climate Central
Jul.07.2017
The Tesla Model X. at the Paris Motorshow in 2016. Romauld Meigneux / SIPA Via
AP
The internal combustion engine had a good run. It has helped propel cars — and
thus humanity — forward for more than 100 years.
But a sea change is afoot that is forecast to kick gas-powered vehicles to the
curb, replacing them with cars that run on batteries. A flurry of news this
week underscores just how rapidly that change could happen.
A quick recap: On Monday, Tesla announced that the Model 3, its mass-market
electric car, would start rolling off production lines this week with the first
handful delivered to customers later this month. Then on Wednesday, Volvo
announced that every car it produces will have a battery in it by 2019, putting
it at the forefront of major car manufacturers. Then came France’s announcement
on Thursday that it would ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2040.
All this news dropped just in time for Bloomberg New Energy Finance's latest
electric car report, which lays out why electric cars are the way of the future
and when they’re projected to take over the market. The authors said although
electric vehicles are currently a tiny fraction of the car market, that market
could reach an inflection point sometime between 2025-2030. After that,
electric car sales are slated to increase rapidly.
Driven by the falling cost of batteries and the growing number of automakers
producing a wider variety of electric cars, Bloomberg NEF expects that electric
cars will account for 54 percent of all car sales globally by 2040. That’s a
huge uptick from its forecast last year of electric vehicles accounting for 35
percent of all sales.
The shift to electric vehicles will disrupt the fossil fuel industry. The 530
million total electric cars forecast to be on the road by 2040 will require 8
million fewer barrels of oil a day to run.
A new forecast for electric cars shows explosive growth in new sales,
particularly in China. Bloomberg NEF
One of the big pitches for electric cars is their positive benefit for the
climate because they reduce the use of oil. But they will require a lot more
power from the electric grid. Energy use from electric vehicles is expected to
rise 300 times above current demand, putting more strain on power generation.
How that energy is produced will go a long way toward determining how
climate-friendly electric cars actually are. A recent Climate Central analysis
looked at all 50 states and found that the energy mix was clean enough in 37 of
them to ensure electric cars are more climate friendly than their most
fuel-efficient combustion engine counterparts.
That’s a sharp uptick from a 2013 analysis, which found that there were just 13
states where electric cars were cleaner than gas-powered ones, and it’s driven
in large part by a precipitous drop in coal use.
While the U.S. is projected to be one of the biggest drivers of the electric
vehicle revolution, China and the European Union will also be major players. By
2025, Bloomberg NEF’s projections show that China will be the biggest buyer of
electric vehicles in the world, a trend that continues through 2040.
That means how China's energy mix develops will be one of the most important
factors to determining how climate friendly all the new electric vehicles on
the road will be.