Gasoline demand has peaked, says Forecaster Global

The forecast comes as carmakers have recently pivoted to boost their EV fleets after years of skepticism in the industry over whether car buyers will ever embrace fully electric models. General Motors Co. has said it will stop selling motor vehicles by 2035. Volvo Cars of Sweden has said it will be fully electric by 2030.

The world will have 60 million electric vehicles on its roads by 2026, the IEA said, up from 7.2 million in 2019. The agency is closely following EV trends as an important signal for demand for gasoline and crude oil.

The shift to electric vehicles has been driven by government regulations, strong incentives in developed countries and wider consumer acceptance of the technology, in part due to popular models such as those sold by Tesla. Inc.

Electric vehicles are still a small part of the world’s global fleet, and automakers say they expect to see a growing demand for internal combustion engines with gas combustion, especially in the developing world, for years to come. .

The forecast comes at a time when the pandemic has increased global fuel consumption, raising questions about whether it will change the world’s energy mix more generally in the coming years. Energy observers have been debating for years the so-called peak oil moment, when crude oil demand will begin to decline. Amid the crushing pandemic of demand that began last year, some forecasters, including those from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said the day may have already appeared in the developed world.

The AIE said on Wednesday that it will return to global crude oil demand, reaching 104 million barrels per day by 2026, up about 4% from 2019 levels due to the developing world. Economic power plants such as China, India and other Asian countries will account for 90 percent of net oil demand growth over the next five years, the agency said.

But for the first time, the agency said it no longer predicts a full recovery in gasoline demand – the product that has sustained the world’s thirst for crude for years.

“We do not believe that petrol consumption will return to 2019 levels,” said AIE chief executive Fatih Birol. Meanwhile, global demand for aircraft fuel will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024, the agency said.

Against the backdrop imposed by the government on coronavirus distribution, the IEA said daily gasoline demand fell by a record 2.9 million barrels in 2020, down more than 10% from 26.6 million barrels per year. day burned in 2019.

The use of electric vehicles is not the only thing that leads to a decrease in demand. The AIE and the US Department of Energy, in a report last month, cited improved fuel consumption of gas-fired cars. The US agency said it expects US gasoline consumption in the transportation sector to peak in 2022.

The IEA said global gasoline demand will begin to return as economies open up. But the transition to electric vehicles in richer countries is now accelerating at such a rate that demand for deficiencies will exceed the expected increase in developing countries such as Indonesia, India and China.

Global plug-in electric vehicles accounted for about 4.2% of new car sales last year, with sales up 43% to 3.24 million vehicles, according to ev-volumes.com, a research group sales of electric vehicles. In Europe, where electric vehicle sales are booming, plug-in electric vehicles accounted for 10.5% of new cars sold in the fourth quarter of 2020.

“E-mobility has won the race,” Volkswagen chief executive Herbert Diess told reporters this week as he unveiled new investments in car battery factories and charging stations.

Mr Diess said battery electric vehicles will account for 50% of new Volkswagen car sales worldwide by 2030. However, he said that in some markets conventional internal combustion vehicles will continue to dominate.

“We will continue to sell ICE in some regions more than in others,” he said. “E-mobility will come at different levels of speed globally, depending on local policies and CO2-free energy supply.”

Write to David Hodari at [email protected] and William Boston at [email protected]