KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 8): Nearly 15 million electric cars (battery electric and plug-in hybrid) are expected to be shipped worldwide in 2023, according to the latest forecast by Gartner Inc.

In a statement on Thursday, the consulting firm said shipments of electric cars are estimated to increase 19% in 2024, to total 17.9 million units.

Gartner forecasts that shipments of all electric vehicles (EVs) — cars, buses, vans and heavy trucks — will total 18.5 million units in 2024, with electric car shipments representing 97% of total EV shipments next year

The firm said that globally, battery electric vehicle (BEV) shipments are forecast to grow from nine million units in 2022 to 11 million units by the end of 2023.

It said plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are expected to grow at a slightly slower rate, from three million units in 2022 to four million units in 2023.

Gartner senior director analyst Jonathan Davenport said the proportion of PHEVs, as a percentage of total EVs in countries like the US, Canada and Japan will slightly grow as consumers in those countries prefer PHEVs to BEVs. US consumers who are transitioning from pure internal combustion engine (ICE) cars are choosing to adopt PHEVs over their BEV counterparts because PHEVs combine the ability to deliver emission-free urban driving, with the convenience of gasoline powered propulsion for longer journeys.

“The situation is different in Western Europe, China and to a lesser extent India, where consumers favour BEVs' lower overall running costs, quieter driving experience and green credentials,” he said.

Gartner said governments’ decisions to reduce particulate matter emissions from vehicles and some country-level initiatives, such as implementing legislation to only allow the sale of zero-emission vehicles and seeking to enforce PHEV as a minimum, led to changes in automaker behaviours.

It said some automakers are looking to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 2035 and others are aspiring to achieve sales of 40% to 50% of annual US volumes of EVs by 2030.

In addition, the growing importance of EVs has led to new market entrants launching EV platforms, the firm said.

“Ever-tightening emission regulations will lead automakers to pivot more than half of the vehicle models marketed to EVs by 2030,” said Davenport.

Gartner analysts expect that by 2027, the average price of a BEV will reach parity with ICE vehicles of similar size and configuration, which will accelerate the global adoption of EVs.

However, they said by 2030, power generation and network capacity have the potential to act as inhibiting factors to mass EV deployment regardless of price.

Davenport said that unless countries take actions to incentivise EV drivers to charge outside peak electricity consumption periods, the switch to EVs may put an additional strain on both the power generation capacity and the distribution infrastructure.

“Using dual day and night or even half-hourly electricity tariffs can incentivise EV drivers to charge outside peak times, which would require a mass roll-out of smart metering.

“Likewise, the ability of utilities to control EV chargers directly via application programming interfaces (APIs) would enable EV charging to be momentarily curtailed at peak consumption times to ensure grid demands weren’t exceeded,” he said.