Germany's stunning new EV targets

 From The Driven

The newly formed governing coalition in Germany – dubbed the “traffic light” coalition has unveiled a stunning new target for electric vehicles that will require around two-thirds of all new vehicle sales to be fully electric over the next eight years.

After more than 10 weeks of negotiations, the left-leaning SDP (Social Democrats), the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) announced a deal to share government, with the focus on ambitious climate and energy policies, including transport.

As we report on our sister site RenewEconomy, the headline decisions include fast-tracking the exit of coal from the grid to 2030 from 2038, and boosting the renewable energy share by 2030 to 80 per cent from 65 per cent.

In transport, the new government to be led by the SDP’s Olaf Sholz, will aim to make Germany a leader in the market for e-mobility, and aim for a minimum 15 million fully electric passenger cars on German roads in 2030.

Germany currently has around one million electric vehicles on the road, and total vehicle sales of around three million a year. So to reach that target of 15 million, another 14 million EVs need to be sold in the next eight years, or nearly two million a year.

That compares with sales to date in 2021 of just over 300,000. One in every three cars sold in October was electric, partly due to supply shortages and production delays elsewhere, but this share will have to double in quick time.

It will not be as difficult a task as The Driven is making out.  Just taking sales from 2008 to 2021, the compound growth rate is ~50% per annum.  Yet sales have done even better over the last year, more than doubling so far this year, and we don't even have data for November or December when EV sales are usually strong.  At 50% compound growth, EV sales will reach  464K in 2022, 695K in 2023, 1043K in 2024, 1565K in 2025, and 2347K in 2026, or 80% of the total market.  But if sales double again in 2022 and 2023, they'll reach 618K in 2022 and 1236K in 2023, just under half the market.  In October this year, EVs were already 1/3rd of total sales.

This is how an S-curve adoption curve works.  Look at the chart.  It starts off very, very slowly, and all the sceptics say it will never work.  'EVs will never be a thing,' they said.  Even 5 years ago, EV sales were still just 1% of the market.   They're now 30%.  They will reach 100% of the market long before 2035 or 2040, the dates that cautious forecasters, who extend lines linearly instead of exponentially, have been forecasting.  Germany will reach 100% EV sales by 2025.   And where Germany goes, Europe will follow.