Lifestyle
Charging forward A new report shows sales of electric vehicles across the world are growing significantly. Jess Unwin finds out why this has happened, who the big players are and what the future holds
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ales of electric vehicles (EVs) are moving into the fast lane and many analysts believe they will overtake those of conventional cars – powered by petrol or diesel – by the end of this decade. According to the International Energy Agency’s Global EV Outlook 2020 report, just 17,000 EVs were on the world’s roads in 2010, but by 2019 that number had swelled to 7.2 million, nearly half of which were in China. The report shows an industry in rapid growth mode: electric car sales topped 2.1 million globally in 2019, surpassing 2018, which was already a record year. Covid-19 may bring a slowdown but only temporarily. Ram Chandrasekaran, of global research consultancy Wood MacKenzie, echoes other analysts when he says the pandemic “has left a dent in the EV sector, but it’s a scratch on the paintwork, not a big repair job”. This year really does seem like the year of the EV – we’ve seen the launch of flagship electric models with
familiar names, such as the Mini, the Vauxhall Corsa and the Fiat all-electric 500. And for the next five years, the automotive industry has announced plans to release another 200 new electric car models. Electric car renaissance Yet EVs aren’t new – they outsold internal combustion (IC) cars at the end of the 19th century. And the fastest early cars were also electric: the Belgian-built La Jamais Contente set the world land speed record at 66mph in 1899. A century of dominance for IC cars began in the early 1900s with advances in their engines – in particular, the use of electric starters – and mass production of cheaper petrol and diesel vehicles. Only in the late 20th century did concern about their environmental impact and fears about diminishing oil supplies lead to renewed interest in EVs. There were false starts in the race to produce viable
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