Could the EV boom run out of juice before it really gets going?

Electric vehicles (evs) appear unstoppable. Carmakers are outpledging themselves in terms of production goals. Industry analysts are struggling to keep up. Battery-powered cars may zoom from 10% of global vehicle sales in 2021 to 40% by 2030, according to Bloombergnef. Depending on whom you ask, that could translate to between 25m and 40m evs a year. They, and the tens of millions manufactured between now and then, will need plenty of batteries. Bernstein reckons that demand from evs will grow six-fold by 2030 (see chart 1), to 2,700 gigawatt-hours (gwh). Rystad puts it at 4,000gwh.