Is the European electric vehicle market on the verge of a breakthrough?

Sales of All Electric Vehicles (AEVs) in the European passenger car market are now experiencing rapid growth, although they still account for less than one in every five hundred cars on European roads today. This insight explores the remaining barriers to going mainstream and some of the wider impacts from growing AEV adoption. A new generation of AEVs competing in the upper medium segment will have a payback of five years or less in many European markets compared to Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) equivalents, although it will be more challenging to produce competitively priced models in the small and lower medium segments, which dominate new car sales. As the production of AEVs increases, economies of scale and technological development will support further falls in battery costs towards the $100/kWh threshold when EVs become competitive with conventional ICE cars. However, supply constraints on the materials used in batteries, could become a growing issue as demand increases.