Half of China’s truck sales are set to be electric vehicles by 2028, according to the top executive of Chinese battery giant CATL, which holds more than a third of the global EV battery market.
Trucks with CATL batteries could cut cost per ton-kilometer by 35% versus trucks running with internal combustion engine, CATL’s chairman and chief executive officer, Robin Zeng, told the Financial Times in an interview.
More than a dozen truck manufacturers in China are using a CATL standardized battery on about 30 electric truck models, Zeng says.
The battery manufacturer is currently building a network of stations in China to allow drivers to swap out the batteries for recharging.
If Zeng’s forecast of the surge in Chinese electric truck sales pans out, this would lead to a major disruption on the Chinese and global automotive and fuel markets.
Chinese fuel demand is already leveling off due to the surge in electric passenger car sales and the growing number of LNG-powered trucks. If electric trucks become as dominant as CATL expects, demand could begin to drop faster than previously thought.
After decades of growth, Chinese demand for transport fuels is peaking as electric vehicles and LNG-powered trucks are seizing market share from gasoline and diesel.
While stronger economic growth than previously expected and booming demand for petrochemicals will lift China’s oil demand by 1.1% this year, consumption of transportation fuels has peaked, CNPC’s think tank Economics and Technology Research Institute (ETRI) said last month.
Like CNPC, the International Energy Agency (IEA) also believes that oil demand for fuels in China has reached a plateau.
“With the overall Chinese economy pivoting from manufacturing to services-based growth and as the adoption of electric vehicles expands in the transport sector, the data strongly suggest that the combustion uses of petroleum fuel in China have already reached a plateau and that the potential for future growth may be very limited,” IEA market analysts said earlier this year.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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