Who will win the battle to juice up electric cars?
In part three of our four-part series, we assess the means of juicing up electric cars and ask which one may prevail. Sanya Burgess writes
The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo will stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021, and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. We take a look at the story of one of the most successful alternatives of the past 100 years, and how it has affected life in the UAE
“Men of big affairs are coming to appreciate more and more the electric’s wide sphere of usefulness in daily business life. Even a child can run it.”
So reads a 1912 advertisement from the Electric Vehicle Association of America highlighting the capability of electric cars to drive in any weather and with no need for the driver to crank the vehicle up before setting off.
At that time, most electric cars reached speeds of about 32kph and could not travel far without running out of power.
But today’s electric cars, powered by lithium-ion batteries, have come a long way. One Tesla Model S recently travelled more than 1,000 kilometres on one charge.
Dr Anna Bonne, of the UK’s Institution of Engineering and Technology, says electric vehicles with a good driving range on one charge, such as the small ones recently introduced by Renault and GM with a range of up to 320 kilometres, are becoming more affordable.
It is unlikely, however, that the new cars will be one size fits all. Some are suited to short journeys in urban areas, while others are better for longer journeys between cities.
“It is likely that cars will be powered by electric batteries, but larger vehicles that need to travel a long distance with a heavy load will be powered by hydrogen as they won’t be able to get the range they need with current battery technology,” Dr Bonne said.
“There is also an option that larger commercial vehicles such as lorries could be powered by overhead power cables, but the infrastructure would be expensive to install.”
Research from Shell shows the number of electric cars will rise significantly from the 1.2 million in 2015 to about 100 million by 2035 – or 6 per cent of the global fleet.
About a quarter of these electric vehicles are plug-in hybrids, which run on a mix of electric power and oil, and three quarters run on batteries.
Hydrogen fuel cells are also an option, with a small number of commercial vehicles on the road using them now, but Prof Paul Ekins of University College London and co-director of the UK Energy Research Centre, believes the electric car will win out.
“Battery electric vehicles have a head start and if the battery continues to develop as it has over the past two or three years in terms of cost and performance, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are going to find it pretty difficult to catch up,” says Prof Ekins.
But he does concede the possibility of a mixture of hydrogen fuel cell and electric vehicles.
“There’s an enormous amount of innovation to come and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we didn’t get hybrids of all kinds, but I think that battery electric vehicles will have a good share of the market.”
This view is shared within the industry. A spokesman for Shell said a patchwork of solutions would be needed for a successful and sustainable transition to a low-carbon future.
“Different types of vehicles and journeys have different requirements,” he said. “We believe different fuels and engines will develop and co-exist to meet the growing demand for mobility with lower emissions.”
Shell is developing fuels, including hydrogen, which it says “has the potential to play an important role in the energy transition” because of its flexibility and versatility.
But it seems there is still a way to go, as the spokesman said that “strong industry co-ordination and government support will be required” for hydrogen to be used more broadly.
The impetus for energy companies to secure their future is clear, as set out in the 2017 edition of BP’s energy outlook, which states that a 100 million increase in electric cars could reduce oil demand growth by 1.4 million barrels per day.
Self-driving cars, car sharing and ride pooling also contribute to fuel efficiencies.
Shell has said it plans to spend as much as US$1 billion (Dh3.67bn) a year on its New Energies division as the transition toward renewable power and electric cars accelerates.
The company has said it also sees opportunities in hydrogen fuel cells and next-generation biofuels for air travel, shipping and heavy freight.
Royal Dutch Shell director John Abbott told an audience at Imperial College in London: “The world will need many solutions, not one. Success is not about picking one winner.
“Shell’s concept for a retail station in the not-too-distant future sees conventional fuels being sold alongside hydrogen and expanded facilities for battery electric vehicle drivers as they wait for a full charge.”
One of the biggest challenges to accommodating this vision is making sure the everyday infrastructure that will allow motorists to recharge and refuel these vehicles is available, with the speed and convenience people have come to expect.
Setting the standard, Beijing has set a target of having 800,000 charging sockets by the end of the year to cater for the world’s biggest market. To put five million energy-efficient vehicles on the roads by 2020, as it intends, China must tackle the shortage of charging facilities.
This is something that countries such as the UK have only recently started to tackle, with Royal Dutch Shell opening its first rapid charging point for electric cars at three sites in the UK in October last year, with the intention of seven more by the end of the year.
Should countries like Britain panic at work that remains to be done to build an environment for large amounts of electric vehicles?
Prof Ekins doesn’t think so. “Charging infrastructure isn’t that expensive and I think we will have regulations that say local authorities have to provide a certain number of on-street charging infrastructures,” he said.
“Quite a lot of car parks will have charging infrastructures in them and people will install them in their homes. They’ll have incentives to do that.”
Innovative energy deals are springing up in anticipation of how our neighbourhoods could manage their energy needs.
Nissan and the OVO energy company plan to launch a vehicle-to-grid offering for customers buying the new Nissan Leaf from this month. It will allow customers to sell energy back to the grid at peak times.
Nissan electric vehicle owners will be able to connect to the grid to charge at low-demand, cheap tariff periods. They can then use the electricity stored in the vehicle’s battery at home and at work when costs are higher, or feed electricity back to the grid.
OVO plans to introduce special tariffs to reward customers for this interaction with the grid.
The companies say vehicle-to-grid technology could generate a virtual power plant of up to 200 gigawatts. This energy capacity is more than double the peak requirement on the UK grid.
Meanwhile, an alliance called CharIN – including Shell, Jaguar Land Rover, BMW and Daimler, Siemens and Bosch, EWE, Continental and Man – is working on a system to help the grid handle the coming influx of electric vehicles.
CharIN, an association dedicated to ensuring charging systems for battery electric vehicles have a global standard, is seeking to prevent local power cuts when several people plug in their cars at once.
CharIN has also invested in the distribution of charging posts, which would need to be smart and connected to enable communication with the grid.
This would allow the posts to know when there is enough electricity in the system and when there is not. This model has been tested for two years in London, Hamburg and San Diego.
Elon Musk’s dream to get an electric car in every household is also shared by James Dyson.
Dyson, the entrepreneur’s engineering company best known for its vacuum cleaners and fans, plans to spend £2bn (Dh9.93bn) developing a “radical” electric car.
The battery-powered vehicle is due to be launched in 2020 and 400 staff have been working on the project for the past two years.
The money needed for the research of this new technology is astronomical, but the money to be made by whoever cracks it first is difficult to even imagine.
The accolade of producing the engine of the century is waiting, ready to be grabbed.
Just as a fortune must be spent on the question of fuelling electric cars, so a fortune can be made in answering it