Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
LOW SPARK, NO IGNITION.
YOU CAN’T REALLY DRIVE PROVINCE TO PROVINCE WITH AN ELECTRIC VEHICLE IN SOUTH AFRICA. WHY? LANCE BRANQUINHO FINDS OUT.
Silently cruising to that business meeting with a new client, the peace is shattered as your child’s school phones with an emergency notification that you need to reroute and meet them at a local hospital. Panicked by the very real concern only a parent can know, you are confronted with an awful reality that a rerouting will mean there’s no getting home in your own car later, because you’re driving a battery powered electric vehicle ( EV) and the carefully planned range allowance for your out of town journey simply won’t accommodate a detour. If you live outside of Gauteng, it’s not nearly as strange a scenario as one would imagine and illustrates one of the issues limiting EV ownership in South Africa. For rural motorists, even those who live in wealthy coastal retreats, a significant investment by the individual to configure a home charging solution is essential if you want any option of EV motoring. As the world embraces battery powered cars, mostly due to the celebrity and industry disruption of American EV brand Tesla, South African drivers remain mired in a choice between 50 PPM and 95 unleaded, for a multitude of reasons. In principle we should be a textbook EV driving nation. There’s a generosity of sunlight and the wide dispersion of an electrical grid. Many developing countries simply don’t have our electricity distribution coverage. An abundance of UV radiation throughout the year mean South Africans are never at a loss for potential input energy if they wish to embrace true zero emissions battery mobility and convert sunlight to kilowatts. And, finally, we’re a nation of committed car enthusiasts who have always tried to be early adopters of whichever automotive technology is trending. California has been the leading legislative and environmental driver for EV adoption. Purchasing incentives on new EVS are handsome ( a tidy R120 000 tax credit), charging infrastructure is a government priority, mitigating against range anxiety and with a climate not unlike the Western and Eastern Cape, there’s sufficient year-round sunlight to make home solar recharging a reality. Little surprise that Californians are registering thousands of new EVS each month. South Africans? For the entire first quarter of this year, we only bought 20 pure EVS… Why then, is EV ownership so low in South Africa?
PUNITIVE MEASURES INSTEAD OF INCENTIVES
The most affordable way to move from liquid fuels to on-board electric power is Nissan’s Leaf, at R479 100. Input that price into a spreadsheet and there are some awfully convincing petrol-powered rivals, such as a Golf 7 TSI, which are a lot cheaper. The VW retails for R369 900, which puts the discrepancy in price between Leaf and a Golf 7 at a rounded R90 000. Ninety grand buys an awful lot of fuel.
Leaf’s rival, and the only other true EV available locally, is BMW’S i3. The carbon-fibre platform i3 entry-point is R606 800, which also buys you a very nicely specced 320i. BMW is inarguably the brand which has offered a most compelling case for its customers to consider adopting the battery powered vehicle technology, by marketing i3 in parallel with its striking i8 hybrid supercar, but there is cognisance that price is an issue. EV buyers might in principle be less price sensitive than most because they are early adopters making a purchasing decision anchored by environmental conscience, instead of pure cost calculation, but EV demand would be greatly increased if the cars were priced closer to internal combustion rivals of comparable size.
BMW’S manager of group product communication, Edward Makwana, says the company recognised this issue some time ago. “In December 2016, we submitted a formal application to the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (ITAC), for the reduction of the import duty on electric vehicles (pure electric only). The application was led by BMW South Africa & Sub-saharan Africa CEO, Mr Tim Abbott, with a submission for a zero per cent duty on the import of electric vehicles for a period of three years and, thereafter, a 10 per cent import duty to be applied. Currently, EVS attract the highest import duties, 25 per cent. While, for example, normal imported vehicles under one litre engine capacity attract no duties And normal imported vehicles under EU trade agreements attract duties of 18 per cent. The main objective of the application is to stimulate growth and uptake of electric vehicles by making them more affordable to a wider customer audience. A reduction in the import duty will further create a more competitive market, with a wider offering for customers and a secondary benefit, will be the attraction of potential longterm investment in electro mobility in South Africa. There has been a formal engagement with us and ITAC, and we expect the application to be gazetted for public commentary soon.”
A reduction in purchase price for EVS would certainly assist the cause because the ownership cost mathematics are very attractive already. Range aggregates to about 200 km and corresponding recharging costs are below R40. An internal-combustion hatchback of similar dimensions to either Leaf or i3 would be at least four times as expensive to fuel for equal driving endurance. Creating an even greater value proposition is the relative lack of mechanical complexity with EVS, which have far fewer moving parts and cooling requirements. BMW’S i3 only requires its first service at 24 months of ownership.
IS RANGE ANXIETY REAL?
Besides purchase price, marketing authorities want us to believe that that range anxiety is the fear preventing more people with the means from converting to an EV. For those South Africans who have converted, the truth is that range anxiety is a lot less real than anticipated. Janus van Rensburg, product and pricing specialist for Nissan’s performance and electric vehicles, has extensive experience guiding Leaf owners through the adaptation to EV and his conclusions are that convenience is the overriding requirement.
“Our commuting distances are unique to South Africa, as we tend to drive between Jozi and Pretoria which is a longer distance than in other world cities or even Cape Town. City driving is what electric vehicles are made for and where they come to life especially with features such as regenerative braking, etc... Convenient charging
BMW’S i3 only requires its first service at 24 months of ownership
During the electricity supply crisis of 2014, South Africans were forced to consider alternative options to the national grid and those who had invested in the solar rebates offered a decade ago, between 15- and 20 per cent, had smartly future-proofed themselves. In 2018 incentives for private home owners are conspicuous by their absence and if you calculate the potential revenue loss that a rapid expansion of independent home power production would cause to municipalities, driven by EV car purchases, government’s lack of urgency on the matter isn’t completely unfathomable.
If EV adoption was suddenly to become commonplace, there are potential risks to the residential grid too. The average South African house is allocated 60 A of current, whereas most Americans have 100 A standard and the option of upgrading to 200 A, which is a lot of current for a home. That leaves us with a much smaller margin if you are heating or cooling a house, running heavy appliances and charging an energy hungry EV. In mitigation, most recharging does happen overnight, when household demand is lowest, but demand for more powerful charging is only going to increase as battery energy density surges, hoping to eventually match that of an internal combustion engine, providing the magic range number of 500 km per charge.
Consensus is that a 500 km range recharge in two minutes, the equivalent time to refuel an internal combustion car, requires a staggering amount of energy. The 100 kwh batteries capable of 500 km range would draw on 3 000 kw chargers, an immense energy source, equal to about 20 000 homes. It’s not only the sourcing that would be problematic but keeping those charging stations thermally stable too, as the current most powerful 350 kw recharging stations already require liquid cooled cables. Tesla’s rumoured Megawatt superchargers, due to service its prototype truck when that finally matures into production next year, would potentially revolutionise the industry – if they become reality.
For true energy independence home charging conversions are offered for both Leaf and i3 customers, but they are not cheap. BMW’S home charging wall box is R25 000 while Nissan’s installation is R45 000, both radically shortened recharging times for either i3 or Leaf in your garage, but it’s still a matter of hours instead of minutes.
In South Africa our two largest cities feature a great deal of topography, sapping on-board energy which translates into truncated range. Beyond this South Africans live in cities which aren’t dense, but rather sprawl, adding a great deal of commuting mileage to the weekly routine. A dearth of fast
driving an internal combustion car, refuelled at a service station, due to the associated grid drag to charge that energy from source to your outlet.
Eskom finally has a board which appears to be functional and newly appointed minister of energy, Jeff Radebe, in April signed contracts worth R56 billion with 27 independent power producers (IPPS), hoping to generate an additional 2 300 MW of renewable energy to the national grid. After numerous delays the empowering of IPPS is most welcome, with the spread of projects locating new generation facilities in those provinces which coincidently have virtually no public EV recharging facilities.
The Northern Cape will receive 15 renewable projects as a blend of wind, photovoltaic and concentrated solar harvesting, whilst four additional wind farms will be established in the Eastern Cape and a similar number of solar plants are promised for the North West. Projections are that Eskom’s recommitment to renewables will eventually deliver a grid where 30 per cent of the power can be classed as zero emission.
South Africa’s issues with EVS are hauntingly similar to our pending liquid fuel crisis in the automotive industry. Local fuel standards are for the most part stuck in the late 1990s and as internal combustion petrol engines become more advanced, requiring specific grades of fuel, the risk is building that South Africans will soon have alarmingly fewer engine options as new models are launched.
The fuel industry says any investment to improve local fuel standards will necessitate a vast investment which is unjustifiable due to the negligible number of South Africans in the position to purchase a new, technology advanced petrol car requiring Euro 6 fuel. For the bulk of South Africa’s transport, the taxi industry and heavy trucking which ensures the distribution of bulk goods, our current archaic fuel grades are sufficient.
It’s a logic which has transferred to EV infrastructure too: the number of South Africans considering a battery powered car are such a negligible percentage of the population, that any investment would equate to a perverse application of resources, advantaging an already rather privileged segment of the population.
South Africa’s natural irradiation resource is immense, but without a specific policy framework to unlock its potential, the Northern Cape will remain a place where roads are straight and sheep are farmed, instead of zero emissions input energy is generated. The sustainable energy projects which have been completed in South Africa’s most sparsely populated province are impressive, but its promise is vast and remains dramatically under-utilised.
Better incentives will drive EV demand, creating the opportunity for an array of small business intermediaries to operate in the supply chain between capturing solar power, storing it and getting the desired amperage into your car’s battery pack.
Globally the automotive industry has been disrupted into a terrific bout of innovation to supply EVS which are capable of completely supplanting internal combustion cars as the complete family vehicle. The current generation of EVS are excellent to drive, offer an experience that is no less and in some ways, due to their lower centre of gravity, more engaging than liquid fuel powered rivals.
With market dynamics as they currently are, the best option you have for being an environmentally conscience car owner is probably to drive a hybrid, able to crawl in traffic on its battery power – which is the most wasteful CO2 burden in any commuter mobility cycle. It’s the reason why South Africa’s most popular vehicle brand, Toyota, despite starting the battery powered revolution locally with Prius and currently offering the most battery assisted models on sale, still only does hybrid locally, instead of plug-in EVS.
To understand and embrace the future of e-mobility it’s worth remembering where private vehicle ownership started. In 1888 Bertha Benz took the journey that established the automotive industry in secret, by ‘stealing’ her husband Karl’s prototype for a drive.
With no refuelling infrastructure she had to be resourceful and buy the cleaning agent ligroin as a substitute liquid combustible to complete her journey. We don’t need to imagine substitutes in 2018, electricity will be the energy source of our future mobility, we just need a lot more of it in highly concentrated recharging points – all across South Africa. Megawatt park needs to facilitate our rival to Tesla’s promised Megawatt charger.