Stockhead – Next year will be huge for electric car launches as Europeans race to catch up – Cadence Minerals (KDNC)

Next year will mark the start of a huge EV ramp-up for the world’s biggest carmakers — and that’s expected to have a serious impact on  demand for key battery metals such as lithium, cobalt, manganese, HPA and nickel.

Euro car-makers have a lot of ground to make up on EV leaders Tesla, Nissan and Chinese manufacturers – who continue to break production and sales records every month.

Tesla sold an estimated 22,250 Model 3s in September in the US alone according to this report — the highest ever for sales of a single plug-in electric car in a month, and the first time an EV has beaten 20,000 sales a month in the US market.

French-owned PSA Group — which sells the Peugeot, Citreon, DS, Opel and Vauxhall brands —   is undergoing an self-described “electrification blitz” from next year, as it aims for 100 per cent EV core models by 2025.

This is a company that made net profit of about $2.4 billion on car sale revenues of $50 billion in the first half of 2018.

Its Peugeot and Citreon brands showed off fully EV and hybrid versions of its popular models — due for rollout next year — at the Paris Motor Show last week.

It also unveiled its beautiful, fully electric concept Peugeot e-Legend car.

In response to a change.org petition to get the e-Legend into production, Peugeot boss Jean-Phillipe Imparato says:

Germany’s Volkswagen Group estimates it will sell 3 million EVs in 2025.

Of that, its I.D. models – which starts production next year – are expected to contribute 1 million of those sales.

Audi, also part of the Volkswagen Group has started production of its e-tron EV ahead of full production in 2019; it’s expected to produce about 20,000 a year.

And the first Mercedes-Benz vehicle under the fully electric EQ brand will be launched by mid-2019 – part of a range that is expected to expand to include 10 new models by 2022.