Bloomberg New Energy Finance Forecasts Plug-ins To Account for 9% of US Auto Sales in 2020

In brief: Bloomberg New Energy Finance has published a white paper detailing how plug-in electric vehicles could make up to 9% of U.S. auto sales in 2020 and 22% in 2030.

The word

Those percentages, 9% and 22%, account for 1.6 and 4 million vehicles respectively. Bloomberg cautions that two keys are required for that growth to happen: aggressive reductions in battery costs and rising gasoline prices.

Both are probable, of course. In the short term, Bloomberg continues, price will be the biggest limitation to plug-in adoption. The median base price of cars sold between July 2009 and June 2010 was $21,800 compared to the MSRPs of the Leaf ($26,280) and Volt ($41,000), which are in the top 2/3 of auto pricing.

BNEF also modeled potential customer bases for plug-ins from 2011 to 2030. The market will be at about 9% of total potential consumers in 2011 and will grow as gasoline prices rise and battery costs drop.

And so ...

Last week's JD Power forecast was similar, showing combined battery electric vehicle sales in 2020 at 7.3% of the market.

Photo credits: Bloomberg New Energy Finance