Electric Vehicles: Land, Sea, and Air 2024-2044

'Electric Vehicles: Land, Sea & Air 2024-2044' is IDTechEx's comprehensive electric vehicle (EV) master report covering nine EV markets broken down with over 126 forecast lines. The scope covers all vehicle volume and drivetrain breakdowns, including battery-electric, fuel cell and hybrid vehicle unit sales, battery demand (GWh) and market revenue generation (US$ billion). The report further details emerging technology trends underpinning the transition, from silicon-anode batteries to axial-flux motors and megawatt DC fast-charging.

 

 

Electric cars represent the largest EV market over the forecast period in terms of battery demand and market value. Sales of BEV & PHEV cars surged again in 2022, reaching 10.5 million, compared to the 6.5 million the year before. Growth is set to continue in 2023 with IDTechEx predicting over 13.5 million in 2023. However, the growth of HEVs slowed significantly and in Europe, PHEV sales may decline slightly in 2023, signaling the transition towards full electrification.

 

Europe briefly overtook China as the largest electric car market in 2020, with China and Europe presenting similar sales in 2021, but 2022 saw China reassert dominance, with sales of BEV and PHEV cars at 2.5 times that of Europe.

 

The next big battleground could well be the electric pickup market in the US. A large portion of the US passenger vehicle market is accounted for by pickup trucks, but electric pickups are far behind electric cars. Now traditional OEMs and start-ups alike are starting to bring their focus here with Rivian currently leading, but soon will likely be caught by Ford with the F150, and Tesla will soon start delivering the Cybertruck.

 

Commercial vehicles are deployed in smaller volumes than automotive, but are also heavily electrifying and an important stage in global emission reduction. These markets are at an earlier stage of electrification, but making significant progress.

 

Electric buses presented an early market in China and IDTechEx predicts that due to the saturation of China's electric bus market, global sales will not surpass their 2016 peak again until 2040, with future growth fueled by replacements in China and greater adoption in Europe. Much of the European market has been underpinned by Chinese OEMs, but local supply is now starting to ramp up.

 

Electrification of light commercial vehicle (LCV) fleets is proving to be an effective way to demonstrate green credentials to customers, but also a strong total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction for fleet operators. Significant adoption has been seen from operators like Amazon and UPS. In Europe, the average van OEM has 8% of its new registrations coming from electric LCVs.

 

Tesla, Daimler, VW, and Volvo are all investing heavily in battery electric trucks. A smaller minority, Toyota & Hyundai, have chosen to focus their efforts on fuel cell trucks as the powertrain of the future. Despite issues with the efficiency and cost of hydrogen as a fuel, FCEV remains in the conversation as a technology for long haul trucking applications, dependent on the production of low-cost green hydrogen.

 

As the increasing numbers of cities and nations around the world phasing out of diesel and petrol fueled vehicles by 2030 and the cost benefit and ability of the technology to deliver the required daily duty cycles are demonstrated, the electrification of truck fleets is likely to happen rapidly; electric truck sales in 2022 were 2.2 times that of 2021, showing the start of the exponential take off.

 

In China and India, as well as several other Asian regions, the two- and three-wheeler is the dominant form of personal mobility. In terms of electrification, these have typically been dominated by lead-acid battery variants. With the small battery size and low motor power required for these vehicles, they can present a relatively low cost form of electrification.

 

Electric microcars are an emerging form of transport that has proven especially popular in China, thanks to the lower range requirement needed and the ability to traverse crowded cities more easily than a full sized car.

 

The microEV segment currently dominates unit volumes, and will remain a large market in the long term, however, its battery demand will be overshadowed in the long run by the rapidly growing electric car market with much larger battery demands.

 

The electric boating market has tripled since covid-19 emerged as more time away from the office has led to increased interest and free time for leisure boating. While low power outboard categories are typically two times more expensive than petrol equivalents, from a TCO standpoint alongside other advantages (quiet, clean etc) the business case is strong. Despite this, in higher power outboard or inboard categories, high battery prices remain a barrier, and unlike the automotive market the industry lacks governmental policy drivers, which have remained largely unchanged for a decade.

 

For larger commercial electric and hybrid vessels, since 2016 the market has started to follow an exponential trajectory as the industry is less price sensitive and maritime battery prices halved. A strong economic driver emerged in downsizing oversized engines using batteries to power peak loads in short-sea vessels such as OSVs. Ferries are the most common electric vessel as the low hanging fruit which can opportunity charge and travel shorter and consistent routes. The report provides forecasts for electric leisure boats, short sea commercial vessels and deep-sea commercial vessels.

 

Broader commitments to climate change are spurring some countries, like Norway and Holland, or companies, like Volvo, to set their own targets for electrification of construction equipment. Health and safety concerns like the impact of diesel particulate exhaust emissions on construction worker health and noise could be equally important drivers. Much of the early vehicle development has been through retrofitting, a necessary development phase but not a sustainable strategy in the long term. OEMs need to design large EVs from scratch and manufacture at volume to realize economy of scale savings. The report forecasts that electric construction vehicles will be a market worth approximately US$154 billion by 2044, made up of a low volume of high individual value vehicles. The report explains that the largest construction machine market sectors in twenty years are Mini-Excavators, Excavators and Loaders, but electrification development is initially focused on smaller compact machines (mini-excavators/compact loaders), that have comparatively short operating hours and low energy consumption.

 

The timeline for eVTOLs to become commercial is highly dependent on the final certification process in each geographical market. As developmental projects, these timelines should be treated somewhat skeptically; a number of companies have said they are a couple of years into what they think will be a five-year certification process, however the certification standards are not yet fully in place and for many companies there are still significant technological and funding issues that will need to be addressed before a production eVTOL can be launched. This report covers when the different players are expecting to become commercial along with market forecasts through to 2044.

 

The EV market has seen large shifts in battery chemistry, with LFP nearly exiting the market, before returning in a big way, especially within China. As they start to reach their performance limits and as environmental and supply risks are highlighted, improvements and alternatives to Li-ion batteries will become increasingly important. This report summarizes trends and developments in advanced battery technologies, including to Li-ion cell designs, silicon anodes, solid-state, and cell-to-pack/cell-to-chassis.

 

Electric motor technology has rapidly improved with the adoption of EVs and now sustainability and material sourcing is becoming an increasing focus. Several OEMs and tier 1s have adopted permanent magnet free designs in order to reduce costs and reliance on rare earths. The report covers motor technology, power and torque density, and materials utilization. Forecasts for motor type market share are included, addressing permanent magnets, induction, wound rotor, and other rare earth free designs. Axial flux and in-wheel motors are also summarized along with their market progress.

 

Developments in automotive power electronics including inverters, onboard chargers, and DC-DC converters, can improve powertrain efficiency, allowing for either battery pack capacity reduction or improved range. One key transition is to silicon carbide MOSFETs and high voltage vehicle platforms at or above 800V. Tesla were the first to market in 2018, but many have now also deployed SiC, or plan to in future. The transition is presenting fresh challenges for power module package materials, with this report considering the outlook for 800V platform voltages and adoption of SiC and GaN inverters. It further discusses the impact on packaging materials like wirebonds, die-attach, and substrates.

 

Adequate charging infrastructure is key to EV adoption across the vehicle segments and deployment will be driven by tens of millions of BEV & PHEVs being deployed each year. This report covers the technology behind charging infrastructure with breakdowns for AC and DC charging by power, along with chapters on alternative technologies like battery swapping and wireless charging.

This report provides an extensive overview of electric vehicle markets across land, sea, and air.

Each chapter includes:

 

The vehicle categories covered are:

Electric Cars

Electric Trucks

Electric Light Commercial Vehicles (eLCVs)

Electric Buses

Micro EVs (two-wheelers, three-wheelers, microcars)

Electric Boats & Ships

Electric Construction Vehicles

Electric Trains

Electric Air Taxis (eVTOL)

 

Key technologies are also covered, looking at the major technology trends in:

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