New Delhi: Contrary to the projected apprehension about buying electric cars, their global sales jumped 41% to 3 million in 2020, IEA's Global Electric Vehicle Outlook 2021 has revealed.
The report suggests that the cascading economic recessions, triggered by the pandemic, did not have much impact on the electric car buyers even though the global automobile market contracted 16% in 2020.
China, the long-standing number one electric car market, was pushed to number two position by Europe with 137% year on year increase in electric car sales to 1.4 million in 2020. Sales in China grew only moderately by 12% to 1.34 million. Interestingly, India’s total parked electric cars stand at 12,700 units.
The spike in the demand for electric cars in Europe was mainly attributed to supportive regulatory framework. Many countries strengthened key policies like CO2 emissions standards and zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandates. Last year, at least 20 countries announced ban on the sales of IC engine cars or mandated all new sales to be ZEVs.
Contrary to this China has been lowering its subsidies for electric vehicles (EVs) since 2019. The Chinese government announced the new EV subsidy policy for 2021 on December 31, 2020, which included 20% year on year reduction in subsidies as planned.
This reduction in the EV subsidy follows the government's plan announced in late March 2020 to extend the EV purchase subsidy by a further two years to 2022 beyond the original expiry date of December 31, 2020, and to slow the rate of reduction to 10% in 2020, 20% in 2021 and 30% in 2022.
Growth Momentum to Continue
In the near-term in the first quarter of the calendar year 2021, global electric car sales rose by around 140% compared to the same period in 2020, driven by sales in China of around 500 000 vehicles and in Europe of around 450 000. US sales more than doubled relative to the first quarter of 2020, albeit from a much lower base.