The world’s top automakers are planning to spend nearly $1.2 trillion through 2030 to develop and produce millions of electric vehicles, along with the batteries and raw materials to support that production, according to a Reuters analysis of public data and projections released by those companies.
The EV investment figure, which has not previously been published, dwarfs previous investment estimates by Reuters and is more than twice the most recent calculation published just a year ago.
To put the figure in context, Alphabet, the parent company of Google and Waymo, has a market cap of $1.3 trillion.
Automakers have forecast plans to build 54 million battery electric vehicles in 2030, representing more than 50% of total vehicle production, according to the analysis.
To support that unprecedented level of EVs, carmakers and their battery partners are planning to install 5.8 terawatt-hours of battery production capacity by 2030, according to data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and the manufacturers.
Leading the charge is Tesla, where Chief Executive Elon Musk has outlined an audacious plan to build 20 million EVs in 2030, requiring an estimated 3 terawatt-hours of batteries. Musk in late October said Tesla already is working on a smaller vehicle platform targeted to cost half as much as the Model 3 and Model Y.
While Tesla has not fully disclosed its spending plans, such exponential growth – a 13-fold increase over the estimated 1.5 million vehicles it hopes to sell this year – will come at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, according to a Reuters analysis of Tesla’s financial disclosures and forecasts for
global EV demand, and battery and battery mineral production.