The number of electric cars, buses, vans and heavy trucks on roads is expected to hit 145 million by 2030, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.
According to the IEA’s Global Electric Vehicle Outlook, if governments ramp up their efforts to meet international energy and climate goals, the global electric vehicle fleet could increase further still, hitting 230 million by the end of the decade. Both of these projections exclude two- and three-wheeled electric vehicles.
The Paris-based organization said roughly three million new electric cars were registered last year, a record amount and a 41% rise compared to 2019.
This jump pushed the total number of electric cars on the road to over 10 million, a figure supplemented by approximately 1 million electric buses, vans and heavy trucks.
The rise in electric car sales in 2020 came even as the worldwide automobile market contracted by 16% due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. In the first quarter of 2021, electric car sales were almost two and a half times higher than during the same period in 2020.
“While they can’t do the job alone, electric vehicles have an indispensable role to play in reaching net-zero emissions worldwide,” Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said in a statement.
“Current sales trends are very encouraging, but our shared climate and energy goals call for even faster market uptake,” he added.
Birol urged governments to use Covid economic recovery packages to “invest in battery…
