By 2025 electric cars will be cheaper than petrol cars

By 2025 an electric car will be cheaper than a petrol car, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, because battery prices will drop dramatically. The Flemish government even hopes to suspend the sales of diesel and petrol cars by 2035. But this does not mean cars will become more expensive.

As from 2025 electric cars will be cheaper than cars with a combustion engine. Today half of the price of an electric car goes to the battery, by 2030 this will only be 20 %. The past few years the price of batteries has dropped significantly. In 2010 1 kilowatt-hour of battery capacity costed 1.000 dollar (900 euro), last year this price lowered to 270 dollar and it will keep on falling in the years to come, Bloomberg predicts.

Race

The battery industry is becoming very competitive. Tesla has built the Gigafactory in Nevada and last week Daimler (Mercedes) announced the construction of a second battery plant in Germany. The manufacturer believes 15 to 25 % of its car volume in 2025 will be equipped with an electric drive.

While Tesla and Daimler are receiving a lot of media coverage,  the biggest investments take place silently in China. According to Benchmark Minerals 9 of the biggest battery factories are being built in China. They will double the production volume on the market by 2021, Bloomberg adds.

Renault believes we do not have to wait for 2025 until electric cars are cheaper than petrol cars. Because the total cost of ownership (maintenance, energy) electric cars already will be cheaper than a combustion car by 2020.

Too soon

1st of August 2016 the Belgian car park counted 5,7 million cars, only 4.368 had an electric drive. By 2020 the Flemish government hopes to have 60.000 electric cars on the road. That’s why it’s giving an incentive of 4.000 euro.

Whether electric cars will boom in the near future it is too soon to say. As a matter of fact, the economic forecasts of the past few years were often (way) too optimistic. American president Barak Obame predicted in 2011 that by 2015 one million electric cars would be on the streets in the US. On January 1th 2015 the total was 280.000.

Elektrische auto in 2025 goedkoper dan benzinewagen