At a recent staff meeting one of our team raised questions about the future of the automotive industry, job security for technicians and the future of the internal combustion engines in the Australian market. These are all questions that have begun to sneak up on those in the automotive industry as we prepare for the inevitability of change.
According to ResearchAndMarkets.com‘s recent Electric Vehicle Outlook: 2021 and Beyond report, Electric Vehicles will represent almost 50 per cent of all new cars sold globally in 2030. That is new vehicles sold, not vehicles on the Australian roads.
The rapid acceleration toward an electric vehicle future is being driven by a number factors. The main one is a world that is becoming more a wear of the damage the human race is doing to the environment and the ecosystem we depend on for survival. The result is governing bodies globally are tightening the laws around legal vehicle emissions to the extent that at some point in the future the production of internal combustion engines will be a thing of the past.
To date fourteen countries have committed to the complete phasing out of the production of internal combustion engine vehicles that rely on fossil fuels, including 2030 in the UK, 2030 in Germany and 2025 in Norway, where more than 70 per cent of new car sales in 2020 were electric.
The phasing out of the internal combustion engine has forced many major car companies to sett targets to go fully electric.
- Jaguar/ Land Rover (currently the same company) by 2025
- Volvo by 2030
- Mazda by 2030
- Ford by 2030
- Nissan by 2030
- General Motors by 2035
- Daimler Benz (parent company for Mercedes Benz) by 2039
- Honda by 2040
China has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2060, it hasn’t yet set a date to ban the sale of internal Combustion engine vehicles. This means we may see brands such as MG, LDV and Cherry much slower to become fully electric.
Having said that, the forecast for Chinas Electric vehicle sales is that almost twenty five percent of all new car sales in China will be electric vehicles by the year 2025.
Germany on the other hand is forecast to have the number closer to forty percent.
Tax breaks and other incentives in countries like the UK and Norway are also helping to push Electric Vehicle sales up, but the lack of similar schemes in Australia is one big reason why Electric Vehicle sales here in 2020 made up a dismal 0.78 per cent of new-car sales.
We have discussed the pricing of the electric vehicles in this article.
Why are Electric Vehicles so Expensive?
There is no way to accurately predict when will electric cars will take over completely. However it’s a guaranteed change that is coming.
These figures all focus on the new car sales. This means that whilst the goal is to stop producing and selling internal combustion engines by the year 2035 for most manufacturers, it is estimated that another ten to fifteen years of combustion engine repairs, servicing and the need for petrol or diesel will exist for another ten to fifteen years. This is used off the average age of the motor vehicles on the road currently. It is forecast that the ninety percent electric vehicle won’t be reached on Australian roads until 2050.
This may even be pushed out further if the costs of electric vehicles remain as extravagant as they currently are. Naturally one would expect the prices to come down over time but as they stand the average family house hold can not afford an electric vehicle. if this does not change it could be even longer before the internal combustion engine is phased out.
