The past year ended with a striking fact in the world of sustainable mobility.

The automotive world is definitely changing a lot, and with news every day. Now, with the exponential increase of technology within the everyday economy, we are seeing something new in every single moment.

In fact, the world has always been characterized by novelties and world premieres. Over the last few years, and precisely for about a decade, the world of cars has been characterized by an epochal transition.

It has been 100 years since the car was invented, with the classic internal combustion engine. In this endless parenthesis, dozens and dozens of successful cars were born, which have characterized the lives of all of us.

If we try to close our eyes, splendid cars come to mind like the Fiat 500 or the Panda, but still dozens of other cars, Italian and foreign, that have traveled the length and breadth of the world.

In the last decade, however, sustainable mobility is taking over. When we talk about sustainable mobility, we mean all hybrid or electric cars, which are therefore characterized by an electric component under the hood.

At first, they were seen as elitist and in some respects even useless. The detractors of sustainable mobility claimed that electric cars would be overtaken by the advancement of technology in the field of thermal engines, gasoline or diesel.

In truth, electric cars are progress and have been slowly increasing over the past few years. Clearly, characterizing an industrial revolution of this magnitude is certainly not easy, and therefore requires important and fundamental innovations.

These innovations must be gutted by Research and Development, and therefore various activities are required within companies.

2021 was a year that will surely be remembered for years to come. The reasons are many, starting with the covid-19 pandemic, which has significantly changed the automotive world.

After the “almost stop” of 2020, the Automotive industry has resumed fueling, but with heavy repercussions in various areas. In consideration of the fact that states are pushing for sustainable mobility, the various European realities have linked their successes on the basis of the development of economic incentives.

However, electric cars are the driving force behind this transition. In fact, global sales of electric cars doubled in 2021, although they were held back by the uneven development of chip production.

If in 2020 the electric cars produced around the world were about 3 million, the year just ended saw the figure of 6.6 million cars touched.

These are the preliminary data elaborated by the International Energy Agency, which develops very interesting and authoritative reports.

The numbers just highlighted, tell the global market, therefore considering the important saying of China.

The Chinese industrial and economic giant is an actor absolutely to be considered among the most important of all. Its sales have doubled, from 1.2 to 3.4 million cars. This exponential increase is also clearly observed by European automotive manufacturers, but we must not forget how Chinese automotive manufacturers are very attentive and very active.

The Chinese market, in fact, is potentially immense, considering the Chinese population, but it is also very diversified. In China there are many rich people, but also very many poor: the social gap is really pronounced.

Currently, many European automotive manufacturers have collaborations with Chinese automotive manufacturers, for the development of batteries, but also of the cars of their own production.

The second major geographic group driving this growth in electric cars is clearly Europe. It holds about 70% of the electric cars produced with 2.3 million cars produced in a year.

Going into the details of the report from the International Energy Agency, we note that about half of the cars sold in Europe are plug-in hybrids. This choice, by Europeans, is fundamentally linked to the need for greater safety in terms of recharging locations.

In fact, Europeans are still strongly linked to the internal combustion engine.

Finally, the United States, which concludes this mini ranking, placing itself in third place with a data, however, it was very interesting. For the first time, one million cars have been sold, with an overall market share much lower than China and the European markets.

These three maxi areas complete around 90% of global sales, as Africa, Oceania and Central and South America are decidedly minority in percentage terms.

All this is also due to government policies, which may or may not push the electric car market.

An eloquent fact is certainly the case of Norway, where there are hardly any more thermal cars for sale. Almost all the cars currently on the road are electric, and there is a great deal of attention from the Norwegian to the interesting advances in sustainable mobility.

Just to analyze the progress of the world of sustainable mobility in 2021, we can say that in China, last year, as many electric cars were purchased as all over the world, in 2020.

The real boom will certainly be from 2025 onwards, when there will be the definition of the new solid state batteries, which will allow industries to revolutionize electric cars.

Currently, those who buy an electric car are strictly dependent in the phases of electric recharging in some places. From 2025, with the definition of solid-state batteries, cars will be much more autonomous in terms of autonomy and faster in the charging phase.

In fact, now electric batteries need to be recharged for tens of minutes, while with the new technology all this will be very quick and very easy to achieve. Thermal cars will gradually lose power, and the technical terms will be replaced by new technical terms from the world of sustainable mobility.

Probably 50 years from now, no one will remember what a carburetor was or the fascination of driving a car like the 500 first edition. Probably in 50 years, cars will drive themselves and we will simply be passengers in vehicles that move in total autonomy.

Clearly, we don't have the crystal ball, and therefore we don't really know what the future holds.

Just 10 years ago, there were no driving aid systems and now we can almost take our hands off the wheel. Systems such as lane keeping and automatic emergency braking are commonplace even in small city cars.

The world, in 50 years, will be decidedly different from what it currently is, and the automotive world will also be decidedly different, obviously linked to sustainable mobility.

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