Electric car sales to hit 5.5 million by 2025

The Nissan Leaf Nissan LEAF Acenta+. The Leaf is currently the world's most popular electric car. (Nissan)

JATO, one of the world's leading authorities on vehicle sales and data has published a new white paper on current trends and the future health of electric cars to coincide with the L.A. Auto Show.

The new report "From Fiction to Reality: The Evolution of Electric Vehicles 2013-2015" highlights that the segment is still very much in what JATO calls "The introduction phase of the commercial lifecycle". Choice is limited, as is range and there are still huge issues surrounding charging infrastructure, for example.

However, even with all of these problems, over the past 24 months, the timeframe studied for its report, the signs are positive and suggest that the future is bright for electric vehicles.

Between 2013 and 2014, there was just four per cent average growth in the global car market, yet demand for electric vehicles, which JATO defines as both pure electric and plug-in hybrids, jumped a huge 43 per cent.

Unfortunately, even with this swell in demand, total sales hit just 280,000 units worldwide, equivalent to just 0.38 per cent of a market made up of 72 million car sales a year.

But even as the market for traditional cars appears to be slowing, the market for EVs is continuing to expand. JATO forecasts that by the end of 2015, electric vehicles could account for almost one per cent of total European car sales and represent 0.54 per cent of total North American sales.

As for the top marques, Nissan is still the world's leading electric vehicle maker, thanks to its Leaf. However, its lead has been cut back considerably through competition from European and U.S. brands. As recently as 2013, Nissan accounted for 24 per cent of all electric vehicle sales globally. Today, it's just 14 per cent.

Mitsubishi is the second most popular marque, followed by Tesla in third, Volkswagen in fourth and BMW's premium i3 taking fifth place.

European brands are expected to overtake Japanese brands in the coming years and more competition is also going to come from domestically built Chinese electric cars. The BAIC E-Series, which is currently only available in China, clocked up over 8000 unit sales in the year to date, making it the eighth most popular electric car in the world, above the Audi A3 and Ford Fusion.

JATO expects growth to hit 700,000 cars sold globally by the end of 2016 and by 2025, 5.5 million electric cars will be hitting the road every year with the biggest demand coming from China. Europe is expected to be the second most popular market (1.7 million cars) with the U.S.A. in third place (800,000).