What will the future look like? Although no one can predict the future, the speed and impact of disruptive change has often been underestimated in the past. For example, in the early 1990s, German environmental associations dreamed of 5% renewable energy in the German electricity mix. They were laughed at by the rest of the industry for doing so. Today, however, the share is around 50%.
But it is actually irrelevant whether the market share of e-cars will be 30%, 50% or even more in 2025. What is much more important is that by then at the latest it will be clear to all market players that combustion engines will disappear from the market. By the way, this does not only affect the car market, but also commercial vehicles - from vans to buses in public transport and large trucks. In the case of the latter, however, it is still unclear whether batteries or hydrogen will become established as energy storage systems.
This development is being driven by the falling prices for e-cars, which, by the way, have been cheaper than comparable internal combustion vehicles for years, especially for frequent drivers. Other factors are the increasing ranges of up to 1,000 km and the growing number of increasingly powerful charging stations.
Top 25 Automakers worldwide
Even with a market share of 50%, energy consumption will not increase noticeably in 2025. Electricity consumption will "only" increase by around 20 % even if all PWs drive electrically. However, this will not be the case until the 30s.
Peak load
The situation is different for peak load. This will be a challenge in 2025, both locally and in new developments or commercial areas with large fleets. Intelligent charging solutions, local buffer storage, grid reinforcements or a combination of these measures will be needed to meet this load. In the long term, the required charging capacity will grow massively. 4 million vehicles with 11 kW charging capacity each correspond to 44 GW. This is approximately five times the current peak load in Switzerland. Although these vehicles will never all be charged at the same time, intelligent solutions are essential. The good news is that such solutions already exist today.
Second life of batteries
This is a very uncertain, but also very exciting area. It is unclear whether it would make economic sense to convert retired batteries from cars and use them, for example, as storage for regulating power. The potential would be enormous. The nearly 20,000 e-cars sold in 2020 alone (at 60 kWh and 11 kW AC power each) have a capacity/power of 1.2 GWh/220 MW.
Non-public charging stations
This is where utilities have the greatest opportunity for new business models. A market share of 50% corresponds to about 150,000 new vehicles per year, all of which require one or more charging stations (private, employer, public, long-distance). Depending on the specifics, this is a market of several hundred million francs annually, for new installations alone. In addition, there are maintenance, repairs, replacement investments and associated electricity supply contracts (in what will presumably be a liberalized market by then). In addition, good advice to customers is important, especially for larger and complex installations, so that the charging stations work optimally with the photovoltaic system, the heat pump and the battery storage.