How Long Will the Automotive Piston Market Survive?

The automotive piston market is a segment of the automotive industry focused on mining and using the materials necessary to build pistons engines.

It might seem strange to discuss parts for these engines when EVs are on the rise, but gas and diesel-powered vehicles will continue to be a major part of the global car world for several more years. In fact, GreyViews anticipates the value of this market will reach 31.11 billion by 2030. Incidentally, this is also the same year many markets are turning to at least 50 percent electric vehicle sales.

What is an automotive piston?

The pistons in an internal combustion engine are an essential part of the engine. The piston resides inside a cylinder where it moves up and down by force put on it through the small explosions that take place within an engine. The piston turns the crankshaft which turns the wheels. This happens thousands of times per minute, which means pistons need to be made of materials that allow them to withstand years of explosions inside the cylinders to make vehicles move along at speeds that are acceptable on the road.

Vehicle efficiency expands the piston market

You might think of the automotive piston market as a simple place, but it’s extremely complicated. This market continues to expand with manufacturers developing various engine components and systems, including better and more durable pistons. The need for more pistons continues to grow as more drivers step behind the wheel and sales increase globally of both two and four-wheeled vehicles. Most machines with a gas-powered engine have at least one piston, including the lawnmower you push around, although not all pistons are automotive in nature.

Increased demand means more pistons are necessary

Some automotive markets are expanding rapidly, creating a greater need for automotive pistons. The growth experience is mostly in areas that aren’t moving toward electric vehicles and will continue to rely on gas-powered cars and trucks for transportation. India is a large and expanding economic area, and the demand for pistons in this country increases with the increased number of drivers on the road. This positively impacts the global market for automotive pistons. India isn’t the only country with a growing economy, and many of these areas are without emissions regulations and the need for zero-emissions vehicles, such as EVs, which means more pistons are required.

Unfortunately, this market also experiences a slowdown

While more engines will be made in countries with expanding transportation needs, the opposite is true in countries where zero-emission vehicles are selling at a higher rate than before. Automakers continue to improve electric vehicles to offer better driving ranges, more power, shorter charging times, and more efficient batteries. This continued development spells a bit of doom for the automotive piston market. Electric vehicles don’t require these pistons because they utilize electric motors powered by batteries. Could companies heavily invested in pistons eventually go out of business or need to shift focus to another area of the automotive market?

Automotive pistons should remain for several years

Some of the most highly developed countries have already embraced a move toward electric vehicles. In China, the world’s largest automotive market, this movement began a few years ago, and gas-powered cars are disappearing from this Asian nation quickly. Most automotive markets don’t fall under a communist government like China. Because of this, it’s much more difficult for other governments to force drives to move away from internal combustion engines. Even with set dates for specified sales figures, the automotive piston market still has many years to go.

What does the future of gas-powered vehicles look like in the United States?

When the current president took office, one of his first orders of business was to push the automotive industry forward into adopting more electric vehicles. Not only did he sign a plan to ensure 50 percent of all vehicles sold in the United States would be either fully electric or PHEV models by the end of the decade, but he created a plan to change the government fleet of vehicles to an all-electric fleet. This shows a bit of leading by example, and automakers have taken notice.

Currently, we see several new electric vehicles heading to the market over the next few years. Some of these models are EV versions of their gas-powered counterparts. We might see a market where two versions of nearly every vehicle are sold for a few years, with some new EVs being offered by every automaker before the decade is over. Ford gives us two examples of this with the Ford Mustang Mach-E and Ford F-150 Lightning which are the electric versions of their gas-powered counterparts. The move toward EVs in the United States does mean fewer vehicles with piston-driven engines.

Some areas are moving toward EVs faster than federal governments require

The federal government’s plan to move toward electric vehicles is to have 50 percent of all models sold be EVs, but that means the other 50 percent will still be gas and diesel-powered vehicles. Although this can certainly be a huge hit to the automotive piston market, it won’t kill off the market entirely. For some companies to survive, they might need to merge with others and cut costs to continue to produce pistons for the internal combustion engines that will be produced as the other half of the market in the United States.

Although half of the vehicles can still be gas-powered models, some states have taken steps to move completely away from these vehicles in the near future. California will sell 100 percent EVs by 2035, Oregon will move to all EVs and PHEVs by the same time, and Washington plans to be an all-electric state by 2030. Other states are following the same path, but not all of them. The same could be true in other countries, with the exception of those that have already adopted an entirely electric future.

The automotive piston market is currently strong, and shows good value through the end of the decade, but it could be in serious trouble as more automakers and governments move toward an all-electric future.