Yet even on current trends it is not clear
gasoline demand will decline until the 2030s at
the earliest.
To understand the risk from
electric vehicles, our models assume the
International Energy Agency’s scenario which
targets a concentration of greenhouse gases to
around 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide.
That results in a prediction that electric
vehicles will account for one-third of the global
car park by 2040 – about 700m units.
The model sees electric vehicles capturing ten per
cent of new vehicle sales by 2020, with around
20m electric vehicles on the road by that time
–aggressive relative to a current stock of under
two million units.
Under such a scenario, the demand for oil
rises from 19m barrels per day in 2015 to a peak
of 23m barrels by the late 2020s before moving
into a steady annual decline.
Despite assumptions of an aggressive rate of
penetration, it is striking that only post 2025 will
electric vehicles really begin to eat into oil
demand. What matters more, until the 2030s, is
efciency.
Whereas by 2030 every 100m increase in
electric vehicles in the car pool
removes 1.3m barrels per day of demand, every
one per cent improvement in engine efficiency
impacts demand by around 3m barrels per day.
EU Forecast
euf:b18:167/nws-01