Gartner predicts 15m EVs to be shipped this year

Close to 15 million electric vehicles (EVs) both battery electric and plug-in hybrids are expected to be shipped worldwide in 2023, according to a new Gartner forecast.

Analysts predict shipments in 2024 will increase 19 percent to a total of 17.9 million units.

Shipments of all EVs - cars, buses, vans and heavy trucks - will total 18.5 million units in 2024, with electric car shipments representing 97 percent of total EV shipments next year.

While EV shipments are predicted to grow, Carly Irving-Dolan, chief executive at NRMA Energy and Infrastructure noted earlier this year that Australia’s uptake will be slow.

Globally, battery electric vehicle (BEV) shipments are forecast to grow from 9 million units in 2022 to 11 million units by the end of 2023.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are expected to grow at a slightly slower rate, from 3 million units in 2022 to 4 million units in 2023.

Jonathan Davenport, senior director analyst at Gartner said the proportion of PHEVs, as a percentage of total EVs in countries like the US, Canada and Japan will slightly grow as consumers in those countries prefer PHEVs to BEVs.  

Governments' decisions to reduce particulate matter emissions from vehicles and some country-level initiatives, such as implementing legislation to only allow the sale of zero-emission vehicles and seeking to enforce PHEV as a minimum, led to changes in automaker behaviours.

Some automakers are looking to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 2035 and others are aspiring to achieve sales of 40 percent to 50 percent of annual US volumes of electric vehicles by 2030.

In addition, the growing importance of EVs has led to new market entrants launching EV platforms.

Davenport said, “Ever-tightening emission regulations will lead automakers to pivot more than half of the vehicle models marketed to EVs by 2030.”

Gartner analysts expect that by 2027, the average price of a BEV will reach parity with internal combustion engine vehicles of similar size and configuration, which will accelerate the global adoption of EVs.

However, by 2030, power generation and network capacity have the potential to act as inhibiting factors to mass EV deployment regardless of price.

Davenport said unless countries take actions to incentivise EV drivers to charge outside peak electricity consumption periods, the switch to EVs may put an additional strain on both the power generation capacity and the distribution infrastructure.

“Using dual day and night or even half-hourly electricity tariffs can incentivise EV drivers to charge outside peak times, which would require a mass roll-out of smart metering,” he said.

“Likewise, the ability of utilities to control EV chargers directly via application programming interfaces (APIs) would enable EV charging to be momentarily curtailed at peak consumption times to ensure grid demands weren’t exceeded.”