The world is about to pass another important milestone in electric vehicle adoption: 20 million plug-in vehicles on the road globally, come June, according to BNEF estimates. That’s remarkable growth from only 1 million EVs on roads in 2016.
In the second half of 2022, almost a million EVs a month will be added to the global fleet, according to BNEF estimates. That’s about one every 3 seconds. Vehicles eventually get retired from the fleet due to age, wear-and-tear, crashes and battery degradation. But that’s not a big part of the EV story so far, mostly because the majority of EVs in the global fleet were sold in the past 18 months. By the end of 2022, BNEF is expecting over 26 million plug-in vehicles on the road.
The speed of growth is much faster than many incumbents in the automotive and oil industries were expecting just a few years ago. In BP’s 2016 outlook for example, the company expected a fleet of 71 million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2035. Based on the latest sales data, BNEF now expects that to be achieved by 2025, a full 10 years ahead of schedule.
Taking a look at the geographic breakdown of the vehicles underscores how just a few regions are driving most of the adoption. China accounts for 46% of the total sales to date, followed by Europe at 34%. North America is a distant third at 15%, but fresh policy support should get that EV market moving this year and next. All the remaining countries combined account for just 5% of the global EV fleet.
