According to Yonhap News Agency, Othman Al-Ghamdi, the CEO of South Korea oil refinery giant, S-Oil Corp., said in his New Year address in the firm's headquarter on January 9, 2018, that global environmental laws and regulations are getting stricter. The toughened environmental regulations are encouraging the use of electric vehicles (EV), which is posing a threat to the company.
According to Al-Ghamdi, EV’s production growth is already certain, and will happen sooner or later.
Hyundai Motor Senior Vice President, Lee Ki-sang, expressed on December 13, 2017 that the battery electric vehicle (BEV) models of both Hyundai and Kia will expand from the current two models (Ioniq of Hyundai, Soul of Kia) to 14 models in 2025.
In the face of this trend, Al-Ghamdi believes that S-Oil will need to change the way it operates and find new commercial modes via the new technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, such as IoT, big data and artificial intelligence.
S-Oil Corp.'s official website shows that the company's biggest stockholder is currently Saudi Aramco.
Yasser Mufti,the vice president of Strategy Division in Saudi Aramco, was interviewed by Financial Times of the UK in December 2017. He expressed that the recent ride-sharing trend is likely to limit the demand of retail fuel. Ride-sharing will bring more immediate concerns than EV or autonomous vehicles will. He predicts that energy companies in the future might have to negotiate collaboration projects of gasoline or electricity with ride-sharing operators, rather than sell gasoline directly to consumers like the present time. Saudi Aramco is the largest crude oil manufacturer worldwide.
According to the New York Times, the Norwegian Road Traffic Advisory Council (OFV) has announced recently that Norway's EV and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) outsold fossil fuel vehicles in 2017. 52% of the new cars sold in the country does not use fossil fuel, it said. According to AFP and Jiji Press, the country will cease selling new cars that use gasoline or diesel by 2025, despite being the largest exporter of crude oil in Western Europe.
Glencore's presentation slides on December 12 showed that EV sales are predicted to reach 2.1 million units in 2020, only taking 2 % of the industry’s total new car sales in 2020. In 2025, EV sales are predicted to hit 10.1 million units. Its share is projected to rise to 10% during that period. In 2030, an estimated 31.7 million new EV will be sold, and its share will increase to 30%.