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To celebrate the end of the decade and the 7 years of this blog, i have decided to signal the five most popular posts so far, by chronological order:
- In May 2016, i wondered if Fuel Cells were going to have a future, on an article called "FCEV's: Fools Cells?", and now looking back, it looks quite prescient, as i was already ruling out FCEV's on regular cars and saying SUVs, Buses and Trucks were a chance where Fuel Cells were losing to BEVs, as these were evolving faster;
- In March 2017, i made a rare cooperation with another writer, in this case the Inside EVs author Assaf Oron, on the article Top 10 Countries in the Global EV Revolution: 2016 Edition;
- In April 2018, the Norway March 2018 post celebrated the 56%PEV share of that month, the first time plugin registrations surpassed those of unplugged vehicles, leading me to be (too) optimistic and predicting diesel sales to be dead in Norway by 2020. Looking at that month Best Sellers, the Nissan Leaf was red hot, more than doubling the sales of its main competitors...So much has happened since then, hasn't it?
- In January 2019, the Global Top 20 December 2018 post highlighted another record month (286.000 units), with the Star of the Month being the Tesla Model 3, doubling the sales of the runner-up BAIC EU-Series and confirming itself as the undisputed leader of the EV World. Funny enough, 11 months later, these two are also leading the way...A
- Finally, in May 2019, the China April 2019 post said that the Chinese PEV market was cooling, having grown just 34%...Oh, how times have changed, right? At the time, i was expecting some 7% PEV share by December and over 10% in 2020...Oh, how times have changed, right? With the current PEV share struggling to end 2019 at 5,4% (4,2% in 2018), 2020 seems to be much less promising than before, but still, i would imagine the second half of the year to see the return to two-digit growth rates, with the final 2020 PEV share ending north of 6%.
Fuelcell vehicles will sell only when a new company sells fuelcell vehicles alone like Tesla sells BEVs alone.
ReplyDeleteAll this Toyota/Hyundai are selling some 10 and 7 million vehicles running on petrol/diesel dont care much about selling those few 1000 FCEVs.
So until a new company sells FCEVs and builds hydrogen stations on their own, the fuelcell will remain only foolcell.
2019 will end up with 2.1 million PEVs being sold.
2020 will end up with 2.5 million PEVs being sold on a conservative note and 2.8 million PEVs on optimistic estimate.
Lets see.
Nah, the situation is very different. Tesla was possible because the battery-electric power train, when done right, allowed for a bunch of major advantages over combustion cars. Hydrogen fuel cells do not have that. They are cleaner than combustion cars (given the right circumstances), and that's it -- while being significantly more expensive. What's more, they have to compete not only with combustion cars, but also with BEVs, which are just as clean, already well-established, and offer many unique advantages. The only thing hydrogen cars (arguably) have going for them is that fuelling is more similar to combustion cars -- but everyone who experienced a good BEV knows that in practice, charging is actually way more convenient in most situations. The niche of people who are really serious about ecology (to the point of being willing to pay substantially more for a vehicle not offering any other advantages), but unwilling to change their fuelling habits, is extremely narrow...
DeleteOn top of that, electric infrastructure is ubiquitous -- making BEVs fairly usable even without dedicated stations; and the cost of installing dedicated stations way more feasible. A hydrogen car startup would have to invest huge amounts of money in the fuelling infrastructure before even hoping to sell their vehicles in any particular market...
Happy New Year!Thanks José Pontes for the work done.
ReplyDeleteHello Jose,
ReplyDeleteI would be glad to see an article from you 2019 vs 2018 - comparing the main markets:
- USA 2019 vs 2018
- China 2019 vs 2018
- Europe (as a whole) 2019 vs 2018
- main European EV markets by countries 2019 vs 2018
Thanks for the tip, will remember it on the full year posts.
DeleteI, too, will definitely look at that as part of the 2019 Top 10.
DeleteThe Top 10 is published sometimes in February, after Jose's annual numbers are available, since Jose is my main source :)