With increasing battery size and improvements in battery technology and vehicle design, the sales-weighted average range of battery electric cars grew by nearly 75% between 2015 and 2023, although trends vary by segment.
The resale value of battery electric cars sold after 36 months stood below 40% in 2017, but has since been closing the gap with other powertrains, reaching around 55% in mid-2022.
In 2022, about 60% of lithium, 30% of cobalt and 10% of nickel demand was for EV batteries. Just five years earlier, in 2017, these shares were around 15%, 10% and 2%, respectively.
As manufacturing capacity expands in the major electric car markets, we expect battery production to remain close to EV demand centres through to 2030, based on the announced pipeline of battery manufacturing capacity expansion as of early 2024.
It is critical for OEMs to start planning for the emergence of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) as this trend has the potential to have the biggest impact on aftersales in the short term. Global sales of BEVs reached more than one million units for the first time in 2017 increasing 54 per cent over 2016 and surpassed two million units in 2018.
Since 2021, first-quarter electric car sales have typically accounted for 15-20% of the total global annual sales. Based on this observed trend, coupled with policy momentum and the seasonality that EV sales typically experience, we estimate that electric car sales could reach around 17 million in 2024.