Electric Vehicles Expected To Surge To 85M By 2025 Despite Battery Recycling Challenges
According to the Stamford, Connecticut-based analyst firm Gartner, global EV presence is projected to expand to 85 million, including passenger cars and commercial vehicles like vans, heavy trucks, and buses. Gartner further breaks the total down to 62 million for BEVs and 23 million for PHEVs. At its current pace, total operational electric vehicles in 2024 is expected to hit 64 million units. For context, there are 3.6 billion ICE vehicles in similar categories globally, meaning that electric vehicles currently make up about 2.4 percent.
The last few years have seen China become the biggest adopter of EV/PHEV in all sectors, and its massive lead over the rest of the world is not expected to let up in 2025 and beyond. By 2025, Gartner believes China will have 49 millions EVs on its roads, Europe will have 20.6 million, followed by North America with 10.4 million.
Heavier EV adoption in China has been possible thanks to generous government subsidies issued to both consumers and manufacturers. China's EV production (including the development of safer/cheaper lithium iron phosphate batteries), and charging infrastructure is also years ahead of other countries due to early (albeit risky) investment in the tech circa 2001. By 2009, the country was already providing financial subsidies to EV companies for cars, buses, and taxis. Between 2009 to 2022, China poured in an additional $29 billion of tax breaks and subsidies to get more consumers on board.
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One long-going issue with EVs is the environmental impact of their batteries. A growing EV population could potentially lead to material shortage and/or damaging over-mining. However, according to Jonathan Davenport, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner, a solution could come by 2030 when automakers enable recycling of 95 percent of EV batteries.
He points out that, "a robust recycling effort to take advantage of materials in spent batteries and scrap from the manufacturing production process, which, together with EU efforts to mandate battery recycling, could reduce the need for more mineral excavation."
By recovering on a large scale, Davenport believes that "spent batteries could support the overall commercial viability of EVs by bringing battery prices down. There would be the additional benefit of batteries not ending up being disposed of in unethical manners or put into landfill sites.”
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