There has been a sharp growth in the sales of electric cars over the last few years, mainly because of the increasing pollution levels, the enactment of strict emission regulations and norms, reducing prices of electric car batteries, and the rising customer preference for electric cars over the conventional internal combustion engine (ICE)-powered vehicles in many countries around the world. Because of these reasons, the global electric car market is predicted to grow substantially in the coming years.
The deteriorating air quality levels in many countries, on account of the large-scale usage of fossil fuel-powered vehicles, are making the governments and regulatory authorities enact stringent regulations for controlling the emission levels. Moreover, the governments of several countries have implemented strict laws for reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). For example, in order to clean the environment, the Dutch government has set a target of achieving 100% sales of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) by 2030.
When technology is taken into consideration, the electric car market is categorized into battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). Between the two, the BEVs category is predicted to exhibit faster growth in the market, in terms of sales of units, in the future years. This is because of the presence of higher and more lucrative financial incentives on the purchase of these vehicles in comparison to hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).
Depending on vehicle segment, the market is divided into premium, medium, low, and economy. Out of these, the medium electric cars category is predicted to demonstrate the highest growth rate in the market in the forthcoming years. The economy category is also predicted to record huge expansion in the market in the coming years, on account of the mushrooming sales of the economy electric cars, especially in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, due to their lower prices than the other variants.
Geographically, the electric car market registered the highest growth in APAC in the past years. This trend will continue in the upcoming years, as per the forecast of P&S Intelligence, a market research firm based in India. The boom of the market in this region will be because of the implementation of favorable government policies regarding electric cars and the enactment of stringent emission policies in the regional countries such as Japan and China.