Electric Cars
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 (Vans, Trucks, Buses)
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.

MicroEVs
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.

Electric & Hybrid Marine
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.