China EV Forecast: 50% EV Market Share by 2025 — Part 1https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/24/china-ev-forecast-50-ev-market-share-by-2025-part-1/
A rising proportion of Chinese consumers simply prefer electric vehicles to traditional combustion vehicles, viewing them as a new and superior technology, and better value. With EVs continuously improving and getting more affordable, there’s a clear path to EVs taking 50% of market share in China by 2025.
Introduction
We have seen from China’s January 2019 numbers that EVs are on track for 2 million sales in the country this year. This will be an 82% year-on-year growth in volume over 2018 (1.1 million sales), depending on how you tally up the exact numbers. The EV market share of total vehicle sales will very likely increase from 4.1% in 2018 to 7.5% in 2019.
The goal of this article series is to describe some of the dynamics behind China’s fast transition to EVs, and to give my reasoning for making the prediction that China’s EVs will achieve over 50% market share by 2025. Here’s a graph of what I think the coming few years’ sales numbers will probably look like:
Shocking Pink!
Mainstream analysts and industry consultants have been predicting a much longer march to 50% market share, based on all kinds of faulty assumptions, or over conservatism. I recently showed that Deloitte’s general outlook for global EV growth is full of basic factual errors and demonstrates an inadequate understanding of consumer preferences and transition dynamics on the ground. One of the reputedly more progressive analysts, BNEF, predicts China’s EV market share reaching 20% by 2025. However, BNEF has had the honesty to admit that many of its forward projections in the new energy space are consistently and “embarrassingly” behind the curve. (Editor’s note: BNEF analysts have also admitted this to CleanTechnica.)