Vehicle emissions from Delhi’s auto rickshaws and other petrol vehicles count for an average of 23% of pollutants in the air. Photograph: DB Pictures/Alamy
The unruly chaos of Delhi’s roads would be unrecognisable without the rickshaws and scooters that zip through India’s capital in their millions, emitting toxic fumes in their wake. But now, ambitious policies aim to give the city’s most recognisable vehicles an environmental makeover.
On Monday, Delhi’s government announced plans to eventually ban petrol scooters, motorbikes and autorickshaws in favour of those running on electricity, in an attempt to bring down dangerously high pollution levels in the city by the end of the decade.
The policies, which will phase out new petrol and gas scooters, trucks and buses in the capital over the next two years, have beIn recent years, transport has been one of the highest contributors to Delhi’s air pollution, which is consistently at levels dangerously high to human health and has become an emergency in the capital, linked totens of thousands of deaths each year.
Scooters and rickshaws – which largely run on petrol and compressed fossil gas – account for more than two-thirds of the tens of millions of vehicles on Delhi’s roads. Under the new policy, India’s capital will now issue new licence plates only to electric small trucks and three-wheelers, known as e-rickshaws, from 2027, and to e-scooters and electric motorbikes from 2028.
The Delhi government said it hoped the move would lead to an electrification of at least 30% of the capital’s vehicle fleet by 2030. “The policy focuses on pure EVs, which offer superior environmental benefits as zero-emission vehicles,” Delhi’s government said in a statement on Monday.
Amit Bhatt, the managing director or the International Council on Clean Transportation, said: “The proposed phaseout of two- and three-wheelers could be a gamechanger in Delhi’s fight against air pollution.”
Emphasising that scooters, rickshaws and trucks accounted for most of the vehicles on Delhi’s roads, Bhatt added that “accelerating their transition to zero-emission vehicles can significantly reduce vehicular emissions, improve public health, and pave the way for a broader transition to zero-emission transport across all vehicle segments”.
The Delhi state government, run by the Bharatiya Janata party, which also governs at national level, had faced significant criticism and numerous protests during the winter after it was accused of doing nothing to tackle the dangerously high pollution levels that lasted for months.
According to the government’s own figures, vehicle emissions count for an average of 23% of pollutants in the air, making it the highest single source of emissions, particularly during the toxic winter months when a thick smog routinely cloaks the city.
E-rickshaws have become an increasingly familiar sight on Delhi’s roads over the past two years, but the lack of charging points has made drivers reluctant to switch over. Under the new policy, the government has pledged to establish more than 30,000 public charging points across the capital.
Vikas Nimesh, an assistant professor at the School of Public Policy at IIT Delhi, also used the phrase “gamechanger”.
He emphasised that the availability of affordable Indian electric vehicles was rapidly expanding, with Delhi already India’s largest market. Nimesh expressed optimism that the new policy would provide impetus for manufacturers to invest in new green technology and “come up with more EV models” to provide greater consumer choice and competition.
News of the policy had yet to reach most of the city’s millions of auto-rickshaw drivers. Sitting in the shade of his rickshaw cab, parked in Delhi’s busy Connaught Place, Rajesh Gopi, 37, said he was sceptical that any real transition could take place in only two years and worried the electric vehicles would not provide the same earnings.
“I have heard that the e-rickshaws need charging a lot and can’t travel as far as we can on gas,” he said. “If I have to wait one or two hours every day for charging, that’s lost income for me that I can’t afford. I also don’t know how to maintain an e-rickshaw or stop the batteries getting stolen.”
However, he conceded that the city’s pollution was unbearable for rickshaw drivers forced to breathe in deadly fumes. “I am not against change and making the air clean, but I hope we are not the ones to pay the price,” said Gopi.
The policy also introduced significant road and vehicle tax exemptions for people buying new electric cars, in an attempt to incentivise drivers to switch over by choice. However, some critics expressed concern that two years was too short a window to phase out new petrol scooters and rickshaws and ensure there was enough consumer choice.
Tesla is getting shellacked. Toasted. Wrecked. Destroyed. Choose whatever synonym suits you, the result is the same: The company's European business is collapsing.
That is not an exaggeration. Sales fell a whopping 49% last month in Europe, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA). Don't blame an EV slowdown, either, as purely electric cars are on a bit of a tear in Europe. Sales increased 27.8% in April, to 184,685 units across the European Union (EU), European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA) countries and the United Kingdom.
EVs accounted for 15.3% of the new vehicles registered in those markets, a new high-water mark for an April report. It's a good reminder that, as the U.S. waffles back and forth on EV policy, many other markets are charging ahead.
Now, they're doing so with less reliance on Tesla. Elon Musk's company used to be the biggest name in EV sales, but increased competition and the boss's political meddling have proven to be a toxic combination. Tesla is still the EV sales leader in the U.S., but it's also struggling here. Buyers in Europe have been quick to abandon the brand, too, while Chinese buyers are ditching Teslas for home-grown brands.
It's not clear if Tesla has a solution to this problem. While the company pinned its hopes on the refreshed Model Y, that strategy clearly didn't work. First, Musk tried to blame the sales slump on factory downtime during the transition from building old Model Ys to new ones. Now that inventory levels are up and the factories have been running normally for some time, that excuse isn't holding water, so it looks like the new Model Y hasn't moved the needle.
That means any growth we see from Tesla is going to have to come from either price cuts or new models. The company has already cut its prices repeatedly in recent years, leaving it less room to move down. Plus, with U.S. tax credits on the chopping block, Tesla's products are already about to get $7,500 more expensive in its home market. Just mitigating that change will chew into Tesla's margins, and that's before you account for the increased production costs thanks to new tariffs on auto parts.
New products seem like a better way out, but I'm skeptical they can fundamentally reset the trend here. Elon Musk has repeatedly said that Tesla's value is in AI, not in car-making, and his relentless focus on full self-driving has taken up most of the company's resources. Its products are old—the Model S debuted in 2012 and the Model 3 in 2017, and while both have received refreshes, they are no longer world-beating EVs. Its lone truly new product, the Cybertruck, is a flop. And its next three products seem to be a moderately updated Model Y, a Cybercab with only two seats and, eventually, large-scale production of the Semi.
The gamble, it seems, is that true self-driving technology will reset the value proposition of these vehicles. An even less luxurious, more drab Model Y strikes me as an unappealing offering. But if you can deliver a self-driving car that fits plenty of passengers and cargo and can go 300 miles on a charge for like, $35,000, I can see it working.
The problem is that being a self-driving car company requires one thing above all: Trust. Consumers need to trust that companies offering autonomous driving products have fully validated the safety of the technology. After years of using the public as beta testers, then a year of live-tweeting the destruction of all regulatory bodies, I just don't know if Elon Musk can still inspire that trust among buyers.
Still, it may be the only option he has left. As the European sales collapse shows, this is not the time to keep calm and carry on. Tesla has become a toxic brand in many corners of the world, and its products are less exciting than they used to be.
China is reaching new heights in diversifying the battery chemistries used in electric vehicles. The country is already leading in subcategories of lithium-based chemistries, like nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC), nickel-aluminum-cobalt (NCA) and lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP). Earlier this year, state-run utility company China Southern Power Grid even deployed sodium-ion batteries for stationary energy storage. Now CATL, the world's largest battery maker, claims to have unlocked new levels of extreme weather performance with sodium-ion batteries.
The role of sodium ions is similar to lithium ions, where charge-carrying ions travel between the positive and negative electrodes during the charge and discharge cycles. Studies suggest that sodium-ion batteries could eliminate the pesky traits of lithium-ions: There’s less risk of thermal runaway, they can operate at varied temperatures and crucially, the cost of sodium hydroxide, a key raw material, is far lower than lithium-hydroxide. (Although battery companies have reached better economies of scale with lithium-ions.)
Sodium-ion batteries have already entered production in China. Cars that use them include the Yiwei EV produced by Volkswagen-backed JAC and the JMEV EV3. Speaking at the World Young Scientists Summit, CATL chief scientist Wu Kai said that its second-generation sodium-ion cells can discharge normally even at -40 degrees Celsius, as per several local Chinese media reports. That means EVs with such batteries won't lose range under frigid temperatures, which could help address some of the lingering concerns regarding the extreme weather performance of batteries.
They will launch in 2025 in China, with mass production expected to begin in 2027.
Tesla's 4680 NCM cells present in some newer Model Ys have an estimated energy density of up to 296 watt-hours per kilogram, as per some early teardowns. Sodium-ion batteries are less energy dense. While CATL has not disclosed the energy density of the new cells, it reportedly aims to reach a figure of 200 Wh/kg—a tough goal given that even LFP batteries have only recently hit that mark. That would only be appropriate for low-range EVs or entry-level trims. Some reports also claim that sodium-ion batteries are expected to replace 20-30% of LFP batteries in select applications.
A study published in the U.S. government’s National Library of Medicine calls sodium-ion batteries a “rising star.” Battery giants like CATL, BYD, and Sweden’s Northvolt are already investing in and developing these next-generation cells. So either way, one thing is clear: the future of battery chemistry isn’t headed in a single direction but will likely embrace a mix of chemistries tailored to specific use cases.
In principle, sodium-ion batteries should be cheaper than lithium-ion, because sodium is far more common and far cheaper than lithium (salt is sodium chloride, and the sea is full of it). But production is still limited, so they are not cheaper yet. As volumes expand, though, they will fall in cost just as fast as lithium-ion batteries have fallen, cutting battery cell costs to below $35/kWh, and battery pack costs to ~$65/kWh. At that price, the average EV battery pack will cost between $2600 and $4000, making EVs cheaper to buy as well as to run than petrol cars. For reference, in 2010, lithium-ion batteries cost $1392/kWh. Expect EVs to rapidly move to 100% of all sales, as costs continue to plunge--except of course in the US, where tariffs will stop this happening. They already make up more than 50% of sales in China, the world's largest car market.
Because of lower energy density, initially battery-packs will combine sodium-ion and lithium-ion cells. But cheaper cars, with shorter ranges, will be the first to get 100% sodium-ion batteries.
During the past decade, lithium-ion batteries improved significantly in terms of volumetric energy density, which describes the amount of energy that can be contained within a given volume.
The higher the volumetric energy density is, the smaller the battery pack can be (assuming the same energy content).
It's not the only metric, as there is also the gravimetric energy density, which tells how much energy can be stored per weight unit. The higher it is, the lighter the battery pack can be.
In the new weekly presentation, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Office highlights how the volumetric energy density of lithium-ion batteries (industry average for battery packs) changed between 2008 and 2020.
The progress is tremendous, as in 2008 the number was only 55 Wh/Liter, while in 2020 it was 450 Wh/l, according to the study. That's an 8-fold increase in 12 years.
Progress (on the pack level):2008: 55 Wh/l 2010: 90 Wh/l 2013: 140 Wh/l 2017: 250 Wh/l 2020: 450 Wh/l
We strongly believe that those industry average numbers have improved since then and in 2022 are even higher.
A lot depends on lithium-ion battery chemistry, as there is a very wide difference between particular solutions - up to an order of magnitude.
We often focus on the gravimetric energy density to make electric vehicles lighter and thus improve efficiency and range. However, the volumetric energy density is also very important for EVs, to make the battery smaller and fit inside the vehicle, increasing space for other elements and the passenger/cargo compartment.
Global plugin vehicle registrations were up 72% in November 2021 compared to November 2020. There were 721,000 registrations (or 11.5% share of the overall auto market), establishing a new global record for PEV sales. Add the 632,000 units of plugless hybrids registered in November, and we have some 22% of the overall global market having some form of electrification last month. With the final month of the year also set to be a record month (one million units?), we should see over 25% share of electrified registrations in December!
Fully electric vehicles (BEVs) represented 72% of plugin registrations in November, above the year-to-date tally (69%). In total, there were some 518,000 registrations of BEVs, a new record, or 8.3% share of the overall auto market.
With the YTD tally now above 5.5 million units (and at a record 8.1% share), and knowing that the last months of the year are traditionally strong for sales, we should be seeing the plugin vehicle (PEV) market reach some 6.5 million units this year.
For comparison, 2020 ended with 3.1 million units registered. Not bad, considering the current chip shortage, eh?
While disruption is already happening in Europe and China, we should only see consistent disruptive levels on a global scale next year, when the US market comes closer to disruptive numbers.
Weird things start to happen to the overall automotive markets once EV disruption hits them, not only regarding fuel share, like diesel sales falling off a cliff in Europe, but also in OEM standings, like the rise of Chinese OEMs in their home market, Volkswagen Group losing its grip in Europe, or the future inclusion of Tesla as one of the current US Big 4 (the others being Toyota, GM, Stellantis, and Ford).
With the global PEV market starting to approach disruptive times, as the record 11.5% share of November demonstrates, the first signs of paranormal activity in the overall global market are also starting to appear. Plugless hybrid growth rates are slowing down — after a 10% [growth] rate in September and October, November had a 14% growth rate, but these three months stayed far below the 2021 YTD average of 53%.
This could mean that after already witnessing a peak ICE moment in the global market, the peak HEV moment might come sometime next year!
(Toyota, take notice…)
Here's my chart of the available data, with a 7 month centred moving average. (I had to estimate one or two months, because I couldn't find values for them). I haven't been able to publish this chart for a while, since InsideEVs stopped publishing the data. Note that this is plotted on a logarithmic scale, because that gives a better idea of exponential growth trends, and does not include simple hybrids (HEVs). Since these data are not seasonally adjusted, the December surge and January plunge in sales is clear. Two points:
In January 2014, global EV/PHEV sales totalled 14,500. In January this year, allowing for the seasonal decline, they're likely to reach 470,000.
At current growth rates, EVs/PHEVs will reach 14% of global car sales this year, 24% in 2023, 40% in 2024, 60% in 2025. And that excludes HEVs.
No wonder cobalt and lithium prices are surging.
Does anybody still think the long-term (5 years?!) future of oil is secure?
Electric vehicle sales are soaring, mushrooming, blasting off like a top-fuel dragster. Choose whatever colorful verb you like, but the trend is clear, at least in the short term.
According to a report from Automotive News, in the first four months of 2021, new EV registrations in the US rose by 95 percent (compared to the same four-month period in 2020). Naturally, all new vehicle sales rose as pandemic-related restrictions eased, but the growth in EV sales far outstripped the growth of the overall auto market, which was 36 percent.
The reasons for the sudden sales spurt aren’t clear. The growing number of available EV models doubtless played a role, as did the steady stream of announcements of future ICE bans from countries and cities around the world. Students of human nature have often observed that a crisis tends to accelerate changes that were already in the wind, and the crisis we all went through has definitely done that. It may be that it occurred to a lot of people that the human race needs to do a better job of dealing with climate change than we did addressing the pandemic, and that buying an EV is one of the biggest ways that an individual can make a difference.
California continues to be the country’s EV trendsetter—in the first quarter of 2021, plug-in vehicles represented 10.8% of the total auto market. However, its lead is shrinking—the Golden State represented 38% of new EV registrations in Q1, compared to 45% for the same period last year. Florida took second place with 7.2%, and Texas came in third at 5.9%.
It’s not just the US that’s seeing a sales surge—on the contrary, Europe has pulled far ahead to become the world’s EV hotspot. In Norway, plug-in vehicles took 85% of the overall auto market in June, and Switzerland, long considered something of an EV laggard in Europe, surprised with a report that plug-ins reached over 18% of the market in the first half of 2021 (and hybrids took another 21%).
Tesla continues to dominate the EV market, but its lead is eroding. For the entire year of 2020, Tesla had a 79% share of new EVs registered in the US. For the first four months of 2021, that market share fell to 71%. Part of that drop is doubtless due to the new generation of EVs that legacy automakers are gradually introducing, but Electrek’s Fred Lambert points out that delays in bringing the new versions of Models S and X to market may also be a factor.
Tesla still rules the top 10 list of EVs sold in the US. For the January-April period, Model Y took the gold with 53,102 sales, Model 3 silvered with 35,468, and the Chevy Bolt got on the podium with 13,611. Moving down the list, we find the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Nissan Leaf, Audi e-tron, Porsche Taycan, and Hyundai Kona, and Tesla’s Model X and Model S rounded out the top 10.
EV sales doubling post Covid, but the underlying growth rate still a 5-fold increase every 4 years. Oil demand has peaked, and although its decline will be slow over the next couple of years (EVs are still a small proportion of car fleets) by 2025, it could be declining by 8% per annum, assuming an average car life of 12 years.
Above: Tesla is leading the way as electric vehicle ownership is on the rise in the US market (Source: EVANNEX; Photo by Casey Murphy)
About 235,000 plug-ins were sold, which translated to 15% market share.
Plug-in electric car sales surge in China to new record levels as multiple models are selling better than ever.
In June, some 235,000 passenger plug-in cars were registered (new all-time record), which is probably close to 160% more than a year ago. Moreover, the market share increased to 15% and 12% are BEVs. Plug-in hybrids are not that popular in China.
So far this year, about 1.1 million passenger plug-in cars were sold, which is 11% of the total market. BEV share stands at 9%.
It's obvious that this year sales will exceed 2 million - possibly even 2.5 million.
OK, all those forecasters who think it'll take until 2040 for EV sales to make up 100% of car sales: China makes and sells roughly 1/3rd of the world's cars, will likely reach 20% EVs by the end of this year, and is only just beginning to turn its attention to EV exports. Seriously? At the growth rates of the last 5 years, China & Europe will achieve 100% by 2025. Peak oil has come.
