The ecological transition needed to fight the current severe climate crisis, also (if not above all) implies a revolution in mobility, which must become increasingly sustainable – in a word, electric. The change is already partly taking place as obvious from the data on electric car production and registrations in recent years. According to the Global EV Outlook 2022 of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the sales of electric vehicles doubled between 2020 and 2021 to a record-breaking total of 6.6 million. In other words, 120,000 electric cars were sold worldwide in 2012 alone. Last year, 10 per cent of all cars sold were full-electric, four times the market share of 2019. There are five times as many battery-powered car models available today than there were in 2015 (around 450 in 2021).
In addition to all this, today buying and, all importantly, maintaining an electric car is becoming cheaper than a petrol or diesel engine vehicle. Purchase costs have dropped and running costs have always been lower. While all these factors are encouraging, the electric revolution is still far from complete. After all, the fact that 10 per cent of all cars sold worldwide were electric means that 90 per cent were non-electric (some were hybrids, of course, but in any case all fossil-fuelled). Of the 4.7 million cars registered in Europe in 2021, 40 per cent were hybrid or electric cars, but the remaining 60 per cent were petrol, diesel or LPG vehicles. So what is missing for e-mobility to become dominant?
The report entitled The electric vehicle: More than a new powertrain published by Accenture at the beginning of last year identified the three main factors driving e-mobility: regulations and incentives, infrastructure and technology development and increased customer awareness. The turnaround must take place (and is taking place, in part) firstly on a government level. On the one hand, ever-stricter rules on CO2 emissions and vehicles in service on the roads are needed, and from this perspective, it is good news that the European Parliament recently voted to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2035. On the other hand, incentives and subsidies are needed to encourage motorists to buy electric cars or entrepreneurs to invest in the sector.
In terms of infrastructure, increasing the spread of charging stations, especially fast-charging ones, is crucial to sweep away the fear of not having enough range for long journeys that is still holding back many motorists from buying an electric car. The charging stations will have to be faster, more distributed and powered by renewable sources to make electric transport truly zero-emission. By the end of 2021, there were about 1.8 million public charging stations, one-third of them of the fast-charging type. Of these, some 500,000 will be installed in 2021, a number pointing to significant growth. Eighty-five per cent of the public fast-charging stations and 55 per cent of the slow-charging ones worldwide are located in China.
Batteries are the other big issue in electrification. Not only will they have to continue to be lighter and lighter in weight but they must be capable of greater range at the same time. Above all, they will need technological solutions for a lower environmental impact. To make the entire global car fleet electric, many more raw materials needed for batteries will have to be extracted, lithium first and foremost, but also cobalt and nickel. For this reason, the IEA Global EV Outlook 2022 speaks of the need to find new solutions in chemical formulations and recycling to ease the pressure on raw material extraction and extend the life cycle of batteries, without running the risk of overburdening the Earth's resources.
The last key matter is awareness-raising. Today, hardly anyone denies the evidence of the climate crisis but many still defend the business as usual approach, underestimate the potential and performance of electric vehicles or believe they have no say in the change. A great deal of communication work is needed to emphasise the importance of a radical change in the way institutions, companies and private citizens understand mobility. The road is mapped out, now it must be travelled. With an electric car, of course.
