How is Covid-19 impacting the demand for EV?
Electric vehicles may once have been the preserve of the environmentally-conscious and affluent consumer but times have changed. As battery lives extend and prices fall, particularly in the second-hand market, EV is becoming the vehicle of choice across business, municipal and consumer settings. Growing consumer appetite in this area, of course, creates new opportunities for cable makers.
Whilst car sales overall saw a slump in 2019, EV recorded its best-ever year with a 40% increase on 2018. This success has been aided by technological advancement in electrification of two- and three-wheelers, buses, and truck fleets. According to the IEA (International Energy Agency) and its annual Global EV Outlook, published in June 2020, this positive trajectory can be attributed to a shift from direct subsidies to regulation – such as zero-emission mandates – and infrastructure – such as an increase in charging points in a variety of business and consumer settings. This gives markets and society as a whole the confidence that Governments are recognising EV as a viable commercial alternative to its fossil-fuelled counterparts.
EV is becoming ever more mainstream. Municipal authorities are switching their city centre buses and refuse collection lorries to electric. Vehicle manufacturers are launching light commercial vans, making green mobility possible for even the smallest of independent traders.
But what of the coming year and the impact of Covid-19? Like almost every other sector, the EV market has been impacted by national lockdowns across the globe and reduced factory output resulting from new biosecurity measures. For so many months, our world and our travel have, literally, ground to a halt – electrified or otherwise.
Businesses are adapting to the new Covid-19 world in so many different ways, effecting operational changes that were perhaps always planned but have certainly been accelerated. Supermarkets looking to boost their online capacity that have invested in new fleets of electric vehicles to move goods from stores to Click & Collect points. Consumer sentiment to ‘stay local, shop local’ too is perhaps a perfect fit for more modestly priced or older consumer EVs whose shorter battery lives are a good fit for local journeys.
For wider society too – fatigued by little year-on-year decrease on fossil fuel reliance – lockdown presented a window on dramatically reduced emission levels.
What place for cable manufacturers?
As the EV industry grows, so too does its requirements for bespoke cabling. Creating bespoke wire and cable of course requires even greater levels of design, prototyping, production cost analysis and refinement.
No better opportunity then for cable manufacturers to put cable design and manufacturing software CableBuilder and CableMES to the test. Producing cutting-edge, fit-for-purpose EV cable in the most cost-effective and timely manner. To arrange a discussion with a Cimteq expert on how CableBuilder cable design software can help your electric vehicle cable manufacture, please email Katy Harrison, Marketing Manager, Cimteq at katy.harrison@cimteq.com
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