Global electric car sales in 2015 were recorded at a little over 450,000 units.
It seems too ambitious a figure but it is likely that the firm is including in the count the hybrid, the plug-in hybrids, and the all-electric vehicles, which is why its count is too huge.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance, made a more or less tempered prediction when it said that electric car sales would hit only 41 million units by 2020, which is more realistic. The firm also included in its count the electric cars and plug-in hybrids, which shall be representing 35% of new light-duty vehicle sales by 2040 or 23 years from now
Syrah made the rather gargantuan sales projection because the company apparently plans to market minerals it mines to manufacturers of lithium-ion battery cells.
A weighted average of multiple forecasts also puts US market share for electric cars and plug-in hybrids at 8.2% by 2020.
The growth in electric car sales would be driven primarily by steady decreases in the cost of lithium-ion battery cells, analysts said.
The analysts also assumed that affordable 200-mile electric cars would become widely available, which means that the now-extraordinary Chevrolet Bolt EV and Tesla Model 3 would have to essentially become the norm by 2020.