•The 20 US states led by California that intend to legally challenge the federal government proposal to freeze fuel economy improvements from 2020 onwards (Shephardson, U.S. automakers push for deal on fuel efficiency rules efficiency rules, 2019). Ten states have implemented a zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate and together with Canada, are assumed to see faster deployment of electric vehicles (ZEV Task Force, 2019; Hanley, 2019).

•Other than the ten US states with the ZEV target, EV sales in the United States are projected to evolve at a slower rate than in other major vehicle markets. This reflects the different policy environment and a narrower scope for the economic competitiveness of BEVs and PHEVs due to low fuel taxes, despite higher average annual distance driven. (See Chapter 5, Vehicle and battery costs).

In the EV30@30 Scenario, the United States catches up with the global leaders in deployment of electric mobility across all modes, but does not achieve the same EV penetration observed in China, Europe and Japan due to its fuel price regime and vehicle sizes that place higher cost competitiveness barriers to transport electrification. By 2030, 31% of all LDV sales and 17% of all bus sales are electric in the United States. The uptake of electric trucks in the EV30@30 Scenario is slightly higher in the United States than in other regions. This is grounded in the increased consolidation of the logistics sector and more opportunities for uptake in large fleets, where EVs can be tailored to match vehicle usage profiles.

Other countries

While this category includes some countries that have strong initiatives to promote electric mobility (e.g. Chile, Costa Rica, Israel and New Zealand), EV sales shares for most countries in this grouping are lower than those for the major global markets. This reflects the limited size of their car markets and a lower degree of ambition as demonstrated via targets and policy measures in the context of the New Policies Scenario.

While the “other countries” grouping has an overall low level of EV deployment in the New Policies Scenario, some countries are projected to have a flourishing EV market over the period. For instance, EV sales shares in Chile and Israel are projected to grow significantly, mirroring their recently announced electrification ambitions and thus together achieving 32% in 2030 (Table 3.1).

In the EV30@30 Scenario, electric LDVs shares in other countries reach 22% in 2030, thus contributing to achieve the EVI EV30@30 target at the global level.

Implications for automotive batteries

Capacity of automotive batteries

The EV deployment described in the Outlook section of this chapter is facilitated by increases in battery capacity. The extent to which this increase materialises does not only depend on the magnitude of future EV sales, but also on the balance between various electric powertrains, given that they are equipped with different battery capacities and on the future size of the

BEVs, while PHEVs are expected to have battery capacities of about 10-15 kWh in 2030.11 Similar factors may drive battery capacities for LCVs to increase from the current range of 35-90 kWh to around 100 kWh, and for BEVs and from about 10 kWh to around 20 kWh for PHEVs in 2030.12

Based on these considerations and projections of future EV sales and BEV/PHEV shares (Figure 3.1), our central assumption for the New Policies Scenario is that the global EV battery capacity (for all transport modes combined) is estimated to increase from around 100 gigawatt-hours (GWh) per year today to 1.3 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year in 2030 (Figure 3.4). The future global EV battery capacity estimate is especially sensitive to the share of BEVs in the total of all EVs, given that batteries for PHEVs are far smaller than those for BEVs. Assuming that the share of BEVs in LDVs sales is 50% higher than the projections in the New Policies Scenario implies a global battery capacity of about 1.7 TWh/year in 2030 (+26%). On the other hand, assuming a share of BEVs in electric LDVs sales 50% lower than the central estimate implies about 0.9 TWh/year of battery capacity.

The increase of storage capacity is largely driven by LDVs (particularly BEVs), which will account for about 1.1 TWh/year (85% of the total) in 2030 in our central estimate.13 Two/three-wheelers, which have the largest EV stock, only account for 7% of the total battery capacity in 2030.

Figure 3.4 suggests that the expansion of battery manufacturing capacity will largely depend on the evolution of electrification in the car market. This means that the electrification of cars will be a crucial pillar of the reduction of the unit cost of automotive battery packs.

In the EV30@30 Scenario, the surge of global battery capacity is faster and reaches a higher level in 2030, around 2.8 TWh/year. This is attributable both to the higher EV sales projected for this scenario and the higher share of BEVs. As in the New Policies Scenario, LDVs represent almost 90% of the total battery capacity in 2030, with battery electric cars alone accounting for 82% of the total.

the current mix of chemistries is not fully consistent across various data providers, but there is broad consensus that the main chemistries currently in use are LFP, NCA and NMC, with the latter being subject to a transition from NMC 111 to chemistries with lower cobalt content (mainly NMC 433 and NMC 532, and to a much less extent, NMC 622 and NMC 811), to manage the risks associated with cobalt supply and to increase energy density (Heppel, 2018; McKerracher, 2019). According to our estimates, the material demand for the batteries of the EVs sold in 2018 was about 15 kilotonnes (kt) for cobalt, 11 kt for lithium, 11 kt for manganese and 34 kt for nickel (Figure 3.5). The comparison of material demand for automotive batteries with the current levels of supply suggests that in the years ahead that the supply of cobalt and lithium needs to expand to avoid shortages that may hinder the transition to electric mobility envisioned in the scenarios.

It is expected that by 2025, batteries will increasingly use chemistries that are less dependent on cobalt, such as NMC 622 or NMC 532 cathodes in the NMC family or advanced NCA batteries in the NCA family (IEA, 2018a). For NMC, cathodes with even lower nickel to cobalt ratios (NMC 811) are also likely to penetrate the market and contribute to the decrease of battery costs, despite some delays in industrialisation plans (Newspim, 2018). In terms of anode technology, silicon-graphite chemistries, which enable higher power densities, are expected to become available soon (Nationale Plattform Elektromobilität, 2018).

The demand for materials for battery manufacturing is projected to increase in both in the New Policies and EV30@30 scenarios. Considering a battery chemistry mix composed of 10% of NCA, 40% NMC 622 and 50% NMC 811 for 2030 (our central estimate), in the New Policies Scenario, cobalt demand expands to about 170 kt/year in 2030, lithium demand to around 155 kt/year, manganese to 155 kt/year and class I nickel (>99% nickel content) to 850 kt/year (Figure 3.5). In the EV30@30 Scenario, higher EV uptake leads to 2030 material demand values more than twice as high as the New Policies Scenario. For cobalt and lithium, these values mean that demand in the New Policies Scenario exceeds current supply. For class I nickel, this is the case in the EV30@30 Scenario. The choice of the cathode chemistry significantly affects the demand for metals, particularly cobalt. This is because the transition to higher content of nickel has larger implications for the reduction of cobalt than on the change in the amount of nickel in the battery.