victorian electric vehicle trial mid-term report - Department of Transport

Under a ‘mid-range’ scenario asenvisaged in 2010 for oil and vehiclepurchase prices, the take-off point forVictorian electric vehicle market is2020 (AECOM 2011). Based upon thismodelling, electric vehicles will makeup around 25 per cent of new vehiclesales from 2020 if they are availableand supported with a basic publiccharging network – refer toFigure 50. Under this scenario, uptakewill increase to become around twothirds of new car sales by 2030.To better understand both this andalternate scenarios, the influenceof key variables on the marketdevelopment should be noted.Extensive modelling commissionedby the United States Department ofEnergy (US DOE), who are responsiblefor President Obama’s ‘one millionEVs by 2015’ target, highlights theuncertainty in forecasts for electricvehicle market development – referto Figure 51.This uncertainty is due to the highlyuncertain nature of key variables thatinfluence the purchase price versusoperating cost balance that economicmodels use to determine electricvehicle market development:• Technology costs – EV purchaseprices relative to conventionalvehicles are influenced by EVtechnology costs, particularlybatteries, and by the decisionson ‘price-point’ by the sellers,which reflect their positioning ineach market and the businesscase that underpins each vehicledevelopment program• Oil prices – potential savings invehicle operating costs are a keyinfluence on EV uptake, howeverthe extent of these savings ishighly dependent upon oil priceswhich themselves are highlyuncertain; oil prices reflect thebalance of global supply anddemand, the former in particularbeing strongly influenced by nonmarketforces such as politicalinstability or interference(Sperling and Gordan 2009),or the emergence of new sourcesof supply such as shale oil(Reuters 2012)PEV annual U.S. market penetration projections10075% of total annual sales5025020102020 2030 2040 2050Figure 51. Predictions for PEV market uptake in the United States according to modelling commissioned by the US Department ofEnergy (DOE) drawing on predictions from the Argonne National Laboratory, AT Kearney, Bloomberg, Deutsche Bank, EIA, ElectricCoalition, EPRI, MIT, National Academies, Deloitte, JD Power, JP Morgan, Lux Research, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, RolandBerger, Shell and the US DOE amongst others (US DOE 2012b).CREATING A MARKET 101