Elon Musk: It Will Take 30-40 Years To Replace All Cars With BEVs

20 years would be the bare minimum just to replace the fleet, assuming 100% market share for BEVs.

Tesla cars: from left Model 3, Model S and Model Y

Mark Kane

By: Mark Kane

Oct 8, 2021 at 8:45am ET

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During the recent 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders Tesla's CEO Elon Musk noted that it will take a few decades until the world will switch entirely to battery-electric vehicles.

The main point is that the global vehicle fleet stands at about 2 billion units, and not even 1% is all-electric yet.

That's a gigantic fleet, which will require time to be replaced with battery-electric counterparts. Assuming that 100% of new vehicles would be electric, at 100 million per year, it would still take 20 years from now to replace 2 billion vehicles. This 20-year period might be considered as the age of a vehicle until it finally goes to a junk yard.

However, currently the global BEV sales share is not even close to 10% (it might be soon on a monthly basis for BEVs+PHEVs), but annually, it appears to be above 5%.

So we need add the time to reach 100% first - globally (all the brands and all the markets). Elon Musk says that the full electrification might take 30-40 years.

While Tesla produces only 100% electric cars, the established manufacturers are at a two-digit share at best and those on the forefront set targets of 100% BEV by 2030. Others assume 2040 or so.

We must also take into account that to achieve 100%, the world needs to make BEVs affordable enough for the countries below average wealth.

What do you think?

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On the other hand, the electrification might accelerate through automation of driving. If new autonomous electric cars will be used in favor of owning a car, the global fleet of cars will decrease (the old ICEs will be removed in the first place) and share will increase faster.

Anyway, more than 10 years of lithium-ion-powered revolution is behind us (counting since around 2008, or at least 2010), and a few more decades ahead of us. Meanwhile, the electrification will have to spread to other areas like ships, aircrafts and energy sector (solar + battery energy storage) on a mass scale.