Europe to go electric by 2035

ING Bank has predicted that all new vehicle sales in Europe will be electric as soon as 2035. The Dutch bank said that pure electric cars would “become the rational choice for motorists in Europe” between 2017 and 2024, due to falling prices, an increase in vehicles on offer, and growing charging infrastructure. The report follows a pledge made earlier this month from France’s ecology minister, Nicolas Hulot, that the sale of petrol and diesel cars would be banned in France by 2040. It also follows Volvo’s announcement that all cars manufactured from 2019 onwards would contain an electric motor. Analysts forecasted that in Germany, the cost of owning an EV would be on par with a conventional petrol vehicle by 2024, and ‘range anxiety’ will dissipate as more EVs are able to travel beyond 500km on a single charge. However, ING warned that European car makers could lose their market share to manufacturers in the US and Asia who are aggressively developing and releasing EVs and plug-in hybrid vehicles. “Europe’s competitive advantage in internal combustion engine powertrains disappears with the shift to battery electric vehicles,” the report said. The report matches research undertaken by Tony Seba at Stanford University and reported by The Guardia. Seba claimed that, worldwide, “essentially all vehicle miles travelled will be electric by 2040.”   “The car industry faces an imminent technology disruption by AEVs in the early 2020s. Even without autonomous technology, the internal combustion engine car industry will have been long decimated by 2040,” Seba added.