Electric vehicle...turns an oil business challenge into opportunities

Author: Sivalai Khantachavana, Ph.d.

• Global EV growth may result in oil requirement deceleration in the next 10 years, and it’s a real challenge for oil business.
  
  
• Giant oil companies’ strategy has changed to invest more in electric energy businesses and value chains.
  
  
• You can see investment opportunities for Thai entrepreneurs in oil and other businesses when EV dominates the market; for example, investment in EV charging stations, battery recycling business, battery reusing business and investment in foreign EV battery startups, etc.

Global number of EVs tends to increase rapidly. Now there are approximately 5 million EVs¹  all around the world. Though EV represents only 0.4% of all cars, and EV sales represents around 2.5% of total car sales, EV market grow rapidly by 61% per year (between 2012-1018). From 100,000 units in 2012, EV sales reached 2 million units in 2018. Today China and the US gain the most two highest EV sales in the world, accounting for 55% and 18% respectively. The major factors to encourage using EV are cheaper battery price, its performance and price which are competitive with Internal Combusion Engine Vehicles (ICEVs), supportive government policies, eco trend encouraging less carbon emission, and infrastructure development to support EVs such as charging stations and charging time, etc. Many organizations, such as Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), BP, OPEC, ExxonMobil and International Energy Agency (IEA), estimate that global number of EVs is likely to grow greatly by 17% - 26% per year in the next two decades. There could be 150 - 550 million EVs on the road all around the world by 2040; accounting for 31% - 55% of total car sales.

¹EVs in this article include Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV) and Battery (BEV) passenger cars which represent 90% of total EVs market share.

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