How promising will be the Future of Electric Vehicle?

Where would be an electric vehicle positioned in the automotive market in the future? Is the future of electric vehicles promising? These are a few questions that pop up when we think of electric vehicles.

Fossil fuel reserve reduces day by day due to large consumption, which is far greater than the rate at which they are generated. Gasoline is the major power source of a conventional vehicle.

As a result of the depletion of the world’s largest nonrenewable energy source that propels a vehicle, focus changes to the electric vehicle that would use electricity as the source of energy.

A shift of use from conventional vehicles to electric vehicles will happen in a few years as the world faces issues of carbon emission and environmental pollution.

Electric vehicles attract customers with proven advantages such as cleanliness, low running, and maintenance costs.

You may also interested to read: Valid reasons why you should not buy an electric car!

Battery electric vehicles are not that popular as hybrid electric vehicles. Manufacturers haven’t started mass production of battery electric vehicles yet. (Tesla Motors is an exception). Micro-hybrids such as Volkswagen Passat are there in the market for long.

Can we expect a boom in the popularity of electric vehicles?

How has the vehicle market changed?

Let’s have a look at a couple of photographs of Fifth Avenue, New York which will show you how the transportation shifted from horse cart to cars in a short span of time.

Photographs of Fifth Avenue New York which had captured in 1900 and 1913 show the difference of vehicles. It is hard to find a car in the first photograph which was captured in 1900. But it could not find a single horse cart in the second photograph which was captured in 1913. An abrupt change in the pattern of vehicles happened in just 13 years!

The shift from telephones to mobile phones also happened as explained above. Competition among service providers results in the high popularity of mobile phones in the world.

These are the pieces of evidence showing that it is not so hard to get high popularity to the electric vehicle all over the world in a short span of time.

As of now, we don’t have any other options than an electric vehicle for zero tail emission to preserve our environment. Are electric vehicles really green?

Factors affecting the future of electric vehicle

The following factors decide how would be the future of electric vehicles. Importance for Electric Vehicles is much more as the cleaner environment is the main concern.

Electric vehicles are vehicles with zero tailpipe emissions. So we can expect improvements in the following areas for popularizing electric vehicles.

#1 Government regulations and subsidies

Vehicle manufacturers and governments should encourage the use of Electric Vehicles putting effort purposefully. Since the cost of Electric Vehicle is a little bit more than that of similar IC engine vehicle, the thrust from the government with various policies is essential for increasing popularity.

Government regulations would include tax reduction, dedicated lane/priority in the lane for electric vehicles, dedicated parking lots, subsidy, and incentives.

In April 2014, the Indian government announced a new plan to provide subsidies for hybrid and electric vehicles. The plan will provide subsidies up to ₹150,000 for cars and ₹30,000 for two-wheeler.

India aims to have seven million electric vehicles on road by 2020. A highly ambitious goal to manufacture only electric vehicles by 2030 has been set by India.

Chinese government promotes electric vehicles to large extent and it pushed the market share of electric vehicles forward.

Government policies helped China to achieve a quite large percentage of electric vehicle sales in the last two years. Norway, Sweden, France, and the United Kingdom are also the key players in the global electric vehicle market.

#2 Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles

The essential infrastructure development includes public charging stations which might require a large investment. Household charging facilities will not be a concrete solution to meet the energy demand of electric vehicles and to compete with conventional vehicles.

Battery, service stations, etc. have to be set up, which could be expected eventually as EVs become popular.

There are a lot of business opportunities related to electric vehicles. Infrastructure developments, service stations, etc. are a few among them.

Charging time is a factor which might affect the popularity of Electric Vehicle. Read: Does charging time really matter in EV

#3 Marketing of e-mobility benefits

Proper marketing is essential to gain popularity in electric vehicles once the infrastructure is ready. The benefits of electric vehicles are being accepted by people and manufacturers are slowly started focusing on electric vehicle production.

It might be expected a flood of electric vehicles in the near future since the government also promotes the production of electric vehicles.

Eco-friendly, low noise, zero polluting (zero tail emission), low running cost, less maintenance electric vehicles have to be promoted and popularized further.

#4 Cost competitiveness

The question that arises when a customer goes for a vehicle is that why I should buy an electric vehicle if I get a conventional vehicle for a much lower price.

Indeed, it is a factor that must be considered — cost competitiveness really affects the market. The fact is that the cost of components, especially battery is decreasing year by year and it will definitely reduce the overall cost of the electric vehicle as well.

We may expect the initial cost of BEVs and PHEVs will be the same as that of equivalent IC engine based vehicles by 2030.

Do you know interesting facts about electric vehicles? World’s major car manufacturers already set their target of electric vehicle production. Tesla plans to do 0.5 million electric car sales by 2018 and 1 million electric car sales by 2020.

Volkswagen would sell 2–3 million electric cars by 2025. Ford’s plan is to develop 13 new Electric Vehicle models by 2020. Volvo will sell 1 million cars by 2025. Honda’s plan is to shift their 2/3 of total production to electrified vehicles by 2030. It includes BEVs, HEVs, and PHEVs.

Chinese manufacturer's aim is to sell 4.52 million annually by 2020. BMW will be selling 15–25% of their total cars as the electric vehicle by 2025.

The list continues and the future of the electric car is much brighter than what people expect.

Conclusion

Sales of electric vehicles would keep increasing in the near future due to the above-mentioned factors and reduction in the overall cost of production.

We can say that the future of electric vehicles is promising since all manufacturers declared their EV market strategy and started EV production. Are you ready to drive an EV? 🙂

Originally published at https://getelectricvehicle.com on January 14, 2018.