Almost every major European carmaker will launch one or more electric vehicle (EV) models over the next 18 months.
Next year will mark the start of a huge EV ramp-up for the world’s biggest carmakers — and that’s expected to have a serious impact on demand for key battery metals such as lithium, cobalt, manganese, HPA and nickel.
Euro car-makers have a lot of ground to make up on EV leaders Tesla, Nissan and Chinese manufacturers – who continue to break production and sales records every month.
Tesla sold an estimated 22,250 Model 3s in September in the US alone according to this report — the highest ever for sales of a single plug-in electric car in a month, and the first time an EV has beaten 20,000 sales a month in the US market.
French-owned PSA Group — which sells the Peugeot, Citreon, DS, Opel and Vauxhall brands — is undergoing an self-described “electrification blitz” from next year, as it aims for 100 per cent EV core models by 2025.
This is a company that made net profit of about $2.4 billion on car sale revenues of $50 billion in the first half of 2018.
Its Peugeot and Citreon brands showed off fully EV and hybrid versions of its popular models — due for rollout next year — at the Paris Motor Show last week.
It also unveiled its beautiful, fully electric concept Peugeot e-Legend car.
In response to a change.org petition to get the e-Legend into production, Peugeot boss Jean-Phillipe Imparato says:
Germany’s Volkswagen Group estimates it will sell 3 million EVs in 2025.
Of that, its I.D. models – which starts production next year – are expected to contribute 1 million of those sales.
Audi, also part of the Volkswagen Group has started production of its e-tron EV ahead of full production in 2019; it’s expected to produce about 20,000 a year.
And the first Mercedes-Benz vehicle under the fully electric EQ brand will be launched by mid-2019 – part of a range that is expected to expand to include 10 new models by 2022.