Scooters and three-wheelers are really what’s driving an EV revolution

From the article:

Electric passenger cars made impressive gains between 2019 and 2021, more than doubling the global fleet from 7 million to 16.7 million. They now constitute 9% of the overall car market, according to data from the 2022 Electric Vehicle Outlook report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), released in June. But those numbers pale in comparison to the global fleet of electric two- and three-wheelers, which, as of last year, reached 274.7 million vehicles on the road, comprising 42% of all sales of these smaller vehicles. (Analysts say that these figures represent low estimates, because many smaller vehicles are not officially registered).

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Huong Le, a researcher for ICCT, told Rest of World that Vietnamese riders began opting for electric scooters in the mid-2010s, without any government incentives. First adopters tended to be high school students and the elderly, who would purchase slow-speed lead acid battery EVs because they didn’t need a driver’s license to ride them. Today, these riders still characterize much of Vietnam’s unusually high EV market share, Le said.

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In India, as in Vietnam, many of the initial strides in EV adoption came in the form of unregistered vehicles: slow-speed three-wheelers used for delivery services, which are now very much electric. In recent years, falling battery prices and government incentives at the national and state levels have also drastically lowered the upfront cost of two-wheeled EVs.

Sunitha Anup, an ICCT researcher, told Rest of World that a zero emissions standard or fuel efficiency standard would be even more effective in EV two- and three-wheeler conversion. “It's still not clear why there is no mass adoption,” she said. “But this segment is considered to be the fastest to electrify provided the standards are all in place.”

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The Gojek-Gogoro pilot is an example of how Indonesia, which sold less than 10,000 electric two-wheelers last year, according to BNEF, will achieve its national goal of 13 million electric motorcycles on the road by 2030. Though well-positioned to develop a domestic EV supply chain with large critical mineral deposits, Indonesia has not yet developed the policy environment that proved critical in India and China’s expansion.