Electric Vehicles – Seeing the Big Picture

By Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman, IDTechEx

The burgeoning electric vehicle EV industry cannot be understood by simply looking at cars. The complete market value is, and will remain, about double the market for cars. The leaders such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan make electric vehicles for many applicational sectors. Indeed, many of them also control the manufacture of the component that most affects price and performance – the battery. For example, Nissan has a major program to put next generation lithium batteries from its battery joint venture into its forklifts as well as its cars. Toyota makes heavy and light industrial EVs from forklifts to buses and mobility for the disabled, not just electric cars, and the knowledge in these different divisions is shared between them all. Much is written about hybrid cars but there are substantial sales of hybrid military trucks, buses and even motorcycles now.

New report

IDTechEx has therefore launched a new report on the whole subject called “Electric Vehicles 2010-2020”. It is based on ten years of researching the subject, intensive desk research, visits and interviews. There are chapters on Heavy Industrial, Light Industrial and Commercial, Mobility for the Disabled, Two Wheelers, Golf Cars, Cars, Military, Marine and Other Vehicles. That even extends to electric mobile robots, surveillance jellyfish and other Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), bats and electric aircraft. Detailed forecasts for these vehicle categories by numbers and value and the key components are provided for 2010-2020. The trends, technology and planned vehicles are clarified in 185 figures and 58 tables including the historical context. Winning and losing strategies are evaluated. Timelines are given of events to come.

At last the full picture of China

IDTechEx does not make the common mistake of reporting primarily on vehicles from the well known Western and Japanese manufacturers. 66% of the manufacturers of electric vehicles in the world are in China. Over 90% of the world’s electric vehicles were made in China, mainly for use in China. It has the largest potential market for electric vehicles. It mines and controls 95% of the world’s rare earth reserves used in the hybrid car batteries, motors and other key components of today’s electric vehicles. Of the 420 EV manufacturers covered in this new report, an appropriately high proportion are Chinese. This is particularly true of the chapters on Heavy Industrial, Light Industrial and Commercial, Mobility for the Disabled, Two Wheelers, Golf Cars and Cars, where the Chinese heavily participate – with, as yet, little publicity – because so much of it is for the domestic market.

Unique forecasts

New ten year forecasts for the whole EV market are only available from IDTechEx. The company finds that the electric vehicle industry will continue to exhibit strong growth for the next decade, though some sectors were impacted by the global financial meltdown and have yet to fully recover. Those participating in only one sector need to keep a wary eye on those with a broader vision: they must frequently review their strategy and avoid dangerous tunnel vision.

Good volume growth but greater value growth

The 29 million EVs sold in 2010 will rise 69% to 49 million in 2020 but the value of the market will grow by far more because larger and more expensive vehicles are now rapidly adopting the technology. Motorcycles, military vehicles, buses and earthmovers are among them. Hybrids will rise from about 50% to about 60% of the value market through the decade. In ten years from now, a far higher percentage of the global output of light industrial vehicles, commercial vehicles and cars will be EVs.

The new report gives the detail, forecasting numbers, unit value and total market value for each applicational sector with many original tables giving subsets of the data and a large number of profiles of current and planned activities of the participants. Some EV sectors were hit by the global financial meltdown but are recovering. Many sectors now benefit from the tsunami wave of government benefits, technical innovations and new models becoming available. We evaluate these aspects and the market drivers, including what users really need. Battery, motor and other technology is explained and forecasted as well.

This report “Electric Vehicles 2010-2020” is a sister report to IDTechEx reports about the two most important subsectors of the EV business - “Hybrid and Pure Electric Cars 2010-2020” and “Car Traction Batteries – The New Gold Rush 2010-2020”. The report comes with one hour of free telephone or email consultancy to fill in any information you still require after having read it. [PR]