Under existing climate policies, electric vehicles could wipe out use of 2m barrels a day of diesel and petrol

An electric car is charged at a mobile station in Prague, Czech Republic. Photograph: David W Černý/Reuters

The number of electric cars, vans, trucks and buses on the world’s roads is on course to increase from 11m vehicles to 145m by the end of the decade, which could wipe out demand for millions of barrels of oil every day.

A report by the International Energy Agency has found that there could be 230m electric vehicles worldwide by 2030 if governments agreed to encourage the production of enough low-carbon vehicles to stay within global climate targets.

The IEA’s first global report on electric vehicles has found that sales in the first quarter of 2021 were more than 2.5 times higher than in the same months last year, when the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a string of recessions across global economies.

Despite the economic slowdown, which caused the global car industry to shrink by 16% last year, a record 3m new electric cars were registered around the world last year, to bring the total to 10m electric cars. There are also approximately 1m electric vans, heavy trucks and buses.

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