The Herald - The Herald Magazine
PLUS THE BEST ELECTRIC VEHICLES
AT the Frankfurt motor show recently the electric vehicle (EV) was king. An abundance of cars already in production and prototypes about to go into manufacture were rotating on their turntables under swirling glitter balls. The automotive future is electric, although on the journey there will be alternatives that feed on hydrogen, water, compressed air and even wood pellets. Their combined forces will serve to eliminate the poisons that are the by-product of diesel and petrol combustion engines.
Governments around the world have announced their commitment to the development of electric technology with France and the UK Westminster government stopping sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2040. Norway and The Netherlands are more ambitious with new sales being banned by 2025, while the Scottish government has declared a ban on sales from 2032. China has set goals for electric and plug-in hybrid cars to account for one-fifth of sales by 2025, which would have a big impact on oil demand as China is the world’s second largest consumer.
The Scottish government’s plans should not be ridiculed. They are ambitious and to achieve such a swift turnaround will present challenges and serious investment. Countries such as Norway, with the largest market for electric cars in the world at 24%, has already made progress towards the elimination of diesel and petrol. Currently, it is a major producer of renewable energy with most of its electricity generated by hydropower. Four years ago it laid out plans to triple its capacity of wind power with a £2.5 billion investment.
In Scotland we have some catching up to do but with the current blaze of publicity sending petrol and diesel cars to the scrapheap the focus will now be on electric cars. New registrations recorded last month by the Scottish Motor Traders Association showed a significant drop off in registrations of petrol and diesel vehicles and an increase in sales of electric vehicles.
Figures for the UK reveal electric car sales have risen dramatically over the past few years. In 2014 the average number of electric cars registered each month was 500 but in the past year more than 3400 have been registered each month. For the first seven months of this year, electric car sales account for 1.6% of sales. This figure, although significantly greater than in previous years, is likely to rocket with the Scottish Government’s determination to enforce its clean air bill.
I dare say it was a wake-up call in 2012 when a report named Glasgow as the most polluted city in the UK and fifth worst in Europe for traffic-related emissions. Out of nearly 400 cities tested, the European Environment Agency report ranked the “dear, green place” in the top five failing European standards on nitrogen dioxide – a toxic gas caused by exhaust fumes and industrial pollution.
The figures showed levels in Glasgow were 46.3 milligrammes per cubic metre, above the legal European limit of 40mg/m3.
This poor air-quality level was said to be cutting two years off people’s life expectancy in the most polluted cities. The potentially fatal dioxide exacerbates lung disease and related respiratory problems and also produces ground-level ozone, a major component of smog.
The effect of thousands more electric car owners on Scottish roads that are pingponging their way up and down or across the country will place a hopeless burden on existing charging points.
Anyone who has an electric car in Scotland just now will tell you of the frustrations they have. Charging points are often broken and remain so for months – they are installed but there appears to be no obvious maintenance scheme. Cars, petrol and diesel, are regularly found parked in these charging bays, suggesting they are rarely used. Regularly, there is only one charging point at locations when at least 20 will be required.
Perhaps an immediate plan should have
been put in place to install a significant number of charging points in convenient locations across Scotland. Motorists will be salivating over the pages of glossy car magazines that publish pictures of shiny new electric cars from companies such as Volkswagen, which has announced a €20billion investment pledge to produce 80 new electric cars across its multi-brand group by 2025. But am I going to buy one if my journey time from Glasgow to Aberdeen is trebled because I must wait in line at the charging station?
On my journeys throughout Scotland I have seen lots of Tesla charging stations at motorway services. The chargers don’t look unlike parking meters but they are only suitable for Tesla cars as the type of plug used is peculiar to these models. Tesla cars carry around half-a-ton of batteries but they have a range of around 280 miles and owners have the use of them without extra payment as the cost of charging is included in the buying price. This vehicle is in the premium class and starts from £63,000 or £10,000 down and £516 per month.
Electric cars are in vogue but there could be problems ahead if the Scottish government does not act quickly with plans to install wind turbines or hydro schemes or energy that is produced without using fossil fuels.
Research done by Transport for London also signals a warning about going green. It says that electric cars in the city would require between seven and eight gigawatthours per year, which is roughly equivalent to the amount of electricity produced by two nuclear power stations.
We are certainly in a transition period that will take years before it settles. Battery technology is in its infancy but I don’t want to be tangled in a web of wires and plugs and to be constantly on the lookout for a place to plug-in. What we must do is to look ahead and plan for wireless charging.
It is called induction charger technology and many people with iPhones will be familiar with this – the phone can be laid on a charging pad. Many top-end cars have such a pad where an iPad will be charged without being plugged in to any socket.
And so, under the road (the new A9 would be a good starting point), at traffic lights, in lay-bys, where traffic queues, multi-storey and all car parks and anywhere cars are in a dead slow or stop mode base plates installed in the tarmac will by way of a magnetic field transmit power to a similar plate in the base of the car.
The development of these technologies is ahead of us and we are living in exciting times. As technology goes, the current crop of electric cars is no different from the likes of the Model T Ford that appeared more than 100 years ago. It is now the age where we must look forward and try to imagine a future that is electric.
There are 33 million cars in the UK just now and this number is rising: I doubt if we will cope, even if we go all-electric.
Of course, green public transport is another option . . .