How many more years will it take for new energy vehicles to replace fuel vehicles?

I recently received a message from a fan, asking a very interesting question. He said, "In which year will new energy vehicles completely replace fuel vehicles? Is there a definite time?"

Based on my experience, behind this question lies a very natural expectation to get a clear answer, just like waiting for a pre - written ending. In the news, we've seen information like "the EU has postponed the ban on the sale of fuel vehicles until 2035" and "Uber has promised to fully electrify its ride - hailing vehicles by 2040". These dates are so clear that it seems as if the pointer of history has already set the moment to stop.

However, if we put aside these slogan - like news and focus on the real needs of ordinary people, we'll find that what really determines the progress has never been a year written in a document, but a dynamic economic network woven by countless individual choices, business decisions, and the progress of infrastructure.

You can imagine this process as replacing the water supply system of a huge city.

It's easy to announce that "it will be completed in a certain year", but the real difficulty lies in how to replace the old pipes with new ones one by one without affecting the daily water use of thousands of households. Where will the new water source come from and what's the cost? When can the water reach those most remote and hard - to - reach households?

Every day during this period, the old and new systems coexist and compete in a complex way.

The popularization of new energy vehicles is exactly such a systematic change.

It's not just about replacing gasoline cars in the garage with electric cars.

It means that the energy source driving our lives is slowly but firmly shifting from the global network of oil fields, refineries, and gas stations to power stations, power transmission networks, and charging piles everywhere.

This is an astonishing - scale capital migration and industrial restructuring.

Tens of trillions of funds, technologies, and talents are moving from the century - old traditional track to a new one.

Our individual travel cost structure - buying a car, charging/refueling, maintenance, and selling a car - will also be disintegrated and reconstructed in this process.

In my opinion, the moment of "complete replacement" won't happen suddenly in a certain year or within a certain period.

It's an "equilibrium point" in an economic sense.

When most people, in most daily scenarios, naturally choose electric vehicles based on pure economic rationality (lower total ownership cost, equal or even higher convenience) and experience preference, the replacement will be actually completed.

This point will first be reached in first - tier cities and core economic circles, then in areas covered by the highway network, and finally, it will be difficult to reach remote and harsh environments.

It's a gradually brightening area, not an instant - switching circuit breaker.

So, when we ask "how many more years", perhaps what we really should care about is - when will the charging network near my home be as reliable as gas stations? Can the power grid upgrade keep up so that late - night charging is still cheap? When will the progress of battery technology make long - distance travel no longer require meticulous planning?

The answers to these specific questions are distributed on the timeline from today to several decades in the future. Their collective answers finally form that vague "day of replacement".

Two Neglected Paths and Non - linear Progress

When we enthusiastically discuss in which year new energy vehicles will "defeat" fuel vehicles, we often subconsciously imagine this replacement as a clear - cut and one - time handover. Seeing the rising share of electric vehicles in the monthly new car sales data, it's easy to draw the conclusion that the replacement is irresistible and the end is clearly in sight.

But who among us has ever faced up to this data? A huge global stock world composed of over 1.3 billion fuel vehicles. The operating rules of this stock world are the key physical constraints determining the final replacement timeline.

The electrification of the new car market is just the prologue of the story.

True full - scale replacement must wait for this huge stock of fuel vehicles to be naturally retired according to their inherent and long life cycles.

An ordinary fuel vehicle has an average service life of 15 to 20 years from sale to scrapping.

This means that even if we achieve the exciting goal of 100% electrification of global new car sales in 2035 (this is already an extremely radical assumption), there will still be hundreds of millions of fuel vehicles on the road for another ten years or even longer. They will continue to consume fuel, produce emissions, and form one of the main parts of the traffic ecosystem.

Therefore, there is a time difference of more than a decade or even longer between "full electrification of new car sales" and "the basic disappearance of fuel vehicles from the road".

It's obviously not okay to only talk about the former and ignore the latter.

Furthermore, the process of this technological penetration is not a straight line with a constant upward speed, but a classic "S - shaped curve".

In the early stage, the technology is adopted by early adopters, and the growth is slow. Once it crosses a certain critical point (usually around 10% - 15% of the market share), the growth will suddenly accelerate, showing an almost exponential soaring trend.

This is exactly what we are seeing in leading markets such as China and Europe. The penetration rate has quickly exceeded 20% and 30%, giving an irresistible and magnificent momentum. However, after this curve reaches a high level (for example, around 80%), its upward slope will inevitably become gentle again, entering a difficult and critical period.

The reason is that the last part of the market is the most resistant part.

It will touch the consumer group that is extremely sensitive to price and regards vehicles as pure tools. They may not be able to afford any technological premium. It will face rural and remote areas with lagging charging infrastructure construction and weak power grids, where the practicality of electric vehicles is greatly reduced. It will also encounter special application scenarios such as heavy - duty long - distance transportation and operations in high - cold and high - altitude areas, which put forward strict requirements on energy density, energy replenishment speed, and environmental adaptability that current battery technology still can't fully meet.

Conquering this last "twenty percent" may require technological breakthroughs, cost reduction, and infrastructure investment that are far more difficult and complex than conquering the first eighty percent.

This process won't be a quick and decisive one, but more like painstaking cultivation, requiring us to gnaw through the hard bones one by one.

Understanding the essence of replacement means understanding the superposition of two speeds. One is the exciting and accelerating "incremental replacement" speed in the new car market; the other is the silent but firm "stock digestion" speed determined by physical laws and existing assets.

It also means understanding a rhythm change, from the rapid expansion period of irresistible momentum to the in - depth and painstaking critical period.

Ignoring this dual - path and non - linear reality, any simple assertion about the "deadline" is just a digital fantasy divorced from the real economic and physical foundation. The real progress map is formed by the complex interweaving of these two curves. It is destined to be longer and more tortuous than our wishful thinking.

Beyond Policies and Batteries

Why can new energy vehicles replace fuel vehicles, and at what speed will they do so?

The most common answers often point to two obvious driving forces - the strong policies of the government (such as the ban on sales) and the rapid progress of battery technology (such as cost reduction).

This is correct, but they are more like the start and boost of this change, rather than the key forces determining the final victory.

What really dominates the direction of this long - term competition is a more fundamental and rigid economic concept, namely the system cost threshold. It requires us to look beyond the price tag of the vehicle itself and examine the real and complete cost borne by the whole society from energy production to final use.

Only when the total system cost of electric vehicles is stably lower than that of fuel vehicles will the replacement have an irreversible economic internal driving force.

The first key component of this system cost is an omnipresent, fair, and convenient energy replenishment network.

This is a typical "chicken - and - egg" dilemma.

The value of charging piles depends on how many electric vehicles are on the road, and consumers' confidence in buying electric vehicles depends on whether charging is as convenient as refueling. In cities, it's relatively easy to start this cycle.

But in the vast highway network and remote counties and towns, the cost of building a high - power charging station is extremely high, while the initial utilization rate may be very low, and the investment pay - back period is long.

This is not just a question of whether enterprises are willing to invest money. It also involves whether the power grid can extend there, how the land is planned, and how the electricity price is determined.

The convenience boundary of electric vehicles is not first determined by the battery's cruising range, but by the density and balance of this infrastructure network. This is the most stubborn geographical bottleneck in the replacement process, and its solution speed depends on the calculation of the return on capital, rather than simple technological optimism.

The second, more deeply hidden reason is the bearing and digestion capacity of the entire power system.

Electric vehicles essentially transfer millions of "mobile energy demands" from gas stations to the power grid. Imagine that during the evening rush hour when people get home and plug in their vehicles to charge at the same time, it will create an extremely steep peak in electricity consumption.

To meet this huge instant demand, the power grid must undergo large - scale upgrading and transformation - strengthening power transmission lines, building more substations, and equipping a large amount of energy storage facilities to smooth out the fluctuations.

All these astronomical investments will eventually be shared as costs among every electricity user (including electric vehicle owners themselves) through the electricity bill. If this leads to a significant increase in the basic electricity price, the core advantage of electric vehicles - "lower cost per kilometer of travel" - will be greatly weakened.

The economic viability of electrification is thus closely tied to the upgrading cost of the entire power system. This is a macro - financial constraint that is easily overlooked.

The third decisive part is the disappearance or even reversal of the "green premium".

Currently, to encourage the market to start, electric vehicles enjoy preferential policies such as direct subsidies, exemption from purchase tax, and exemption from traffic restrictions in many regions around the world. This is essentially a "hidden subsidy", which artificially reduces the perceived ownership cost for consumers and accelerates the initial market penetration.

However, any subsidy is unsustainable.

When the sales volume of electric vehicles reaches a certain scale and becomes the market mainstream, these subsidies will inevitably be gradually phased out and finally cancelled. At the same time, in order to deal with climate change and environmental pollution, society may instead impose carbon taxes or pollution fees on fuel vehicles that more accurately reflect their environmental costs.

The real market critical point will come after all these policy interventions are basically withdrawn.

By then, electric vehicles must defeat fuel vehicles on a "level playing field" based solely on their total life - cycle cost from production, use to scrapping (including the purchase price, energy cost, insurance, maintenance, and even the second - hand residual value).

When this pure "cost crossover point" will come varies greatly in different countries (due to different electricity prices and oil taxes) and different vehicle models (mini - cars, luxury SUVs, performance cars).

From these aspects, I think the core driving the replacement is not a simple policy countdown or battery technology curve. It's an accounting of the real cost of the whole society, a race between the last - mile construction of the charging network in loss - making areas and consumers' anxiety; a balance between the huge capital expenditure for power grid upgrading and the stability of electricity prices; and also the final test of the real economic viability of products after the subsidy is phased out.

Only when the cost of this entire complex system reaches that critical threshold will the replacement no longer be a choice driven by policies, but an inevitability under economic rationality.

The achievement of this threshold doesn't have a unified global moment. It will come successively in different places and for different people, outlining a situation that is uneven but will eventually converge.

The Great "Long - tail Resilience" of Fuel Vehicles

In the next few visible years, until around 2030, the entire process will still clearly bear the mark of "policy - driven". The announced timelines for banning the sale of fuel vehicles by various countries, continuous purchase subsidies, and differentiated road - right management are the main external forces driving the market forward.

At this stage, the attractiveness of electric vehicles largely stems from these external incentives.

The market penetration rate will increase rapidly, but the growth will show significant imbalance. It mainly occurs in the mid - to - high - end market, which is relatively insensitive to price and willing to try new technologies, and in the urban mini - car market, which is extremely sensitive to usage cost and has convenient charging facilities.

At this time, the replacement mainly occurs in the public opinion field, the capital market, and the choices of pioneer consumers. It is a top - down trend shaped by rules.

Starting around the 2030s, the main driving force will undergo a fundamental switch, entering a ten - year core period of "cost - driven".

As the battery cost continues to decline, it is expected to reach the critical point of "purchase parity" with traditional internal combustion engine powertrains. At the same time, on urban agglomerations and major traffic arteries, the coverage of the charging network will basically meet the daily needs of mainstream users.

The combination of these two means that electric vehicles will shed the color of "policy - specific products" and start a naked economic confrontation with fuel vehicles in the largest mainstream consumer market - the family sedan and mid - size SUV fields.

The weapon for their victory will be lower daily energy and maintenance costs.

This decade will be the decade when electric vehicles truly squeeze the market share of fuel vehicles on a large scale with their own economic competitiveness. The replacement will change from a trend to a common reality.

However, after the electrification ratio of global new car sales climbs to 80% or higher (this may be achieved around 2040 or later), the process will enter a new stage - the period of system equilibrium and long - tail coexistence.

At this time, the wave of rapid replacement will gradually subside because what's left are the hardest nuts to crack.

The core of the challenge will shift from "vehicle replacement" itself to the "system sustainability" that supports the entire electrified society.

How can the power grid digest the massive and randomly fluctuating charging demands at an affordable cost?

Can the supply chains of key raw materials such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel remain stable under environmental and social responsibility constraints?

How can the electricity pricing mechanism fairly reflect the real system cost?

On the other hand, fuel vehicles won't disappear. They will hold their ground in areas where the economic viability or practicality of electrification can't be broken through for the time being, such as vehicles operating in areas without charging facilities for a long time, heavy - duty machinery for specific purposes, and some special scenarios with extreme requirements for energy density and energy replenishment speed.

The replacement process will shift from a steep upward curve to a long - term plateau. The focus will shift from "how much to replace" to "how to operate this new electrified transportation system well".

So, to answer the question "how many more years", clear pre - conditions and scope must be added.

For an ordinary urban family user in China or Europe, the life cycle of fuel vehicles as a convenient and economic mainstream option may indeed end around 2035 - 2040.

But from a global perspective and considering the entire spectrum of transportation tools, the complete withdrawal of fuel power systems from the historical stage will be a gradual process spanning half a century or even longer. This is far from a simple product replacement, but a systematic migration that profoundly reshapes the patterns of energy production, industrial manufacturing, urban infrastructure, and even global resource trade.

Our focus should not be limited to an end - year, but on understanding and mastering the continuous dynamic balance among cost, benefit, safety, and resilience in this migration.

The result of this balance truly defines the final completion of the replacement, not a calendar.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Dongzhen Business Strategy". Author: Dongzhen Business Strategy. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.