A SERIOUSLY SWITCHED ON GUY
TV star and EV evangelist Robert Llewellyn talks to Matt Allan about everything from top secret battery tech to getting paid for charging your car
“This is a disruptive technology. It goes much further than just the car”
For people of a certain age Robert Llewellyn is most famous for playing neurotic, android Kryten in TV’S Red Dwarf. But for a growing number of car and technology fans he’s a leading light in Britain’s move towards an electric future.
Since buying his first electric car nearly a decade ago, Llewellyn has become a vocal supporter of EVS but, more than that, he’s immersed himself in the world. Not only of the cars and their technology but the generation and infrastructurethatwillhelpmotoristsend their love affair with the internal combustion engine.
He’salmostevangelicalonthe subject and during our conversation he covers with enthusiasm everything from the availability of charging points to top secret battery technology and theconceptofnegativeelectricity prices.
Evshaven’thadaneasytimeof it recently, sales are down yearon-year and still only account for a tiny proportion of new vehicle registrations. Seemingly every week there’s another study offering a conflicting view on where the EV market is and where it’s going. It’s a picture not helped says Robert, by the ongoing struggle to dispel some of the myths around electric car ownership.
He believes worries around range anxiety, battery life and charging availability remain and are all too easy for people to latch onto.
“It’s to do with psychology, not technology,” he says. “The accepted rejection of new technology is nothing new. Electric cars are the new one but we’ve had it before with cell phones, television, radios, steam engines.
“If you want to foster that negativity it’s the easiest and laziest thingyoucando.anditworks.”
He’s hopeful, though, that attitudes are starting to change. “General awareness has increased. More and more peoplehaveaneighbourorrelativewithanelectriccar.they’re maybe negative to begin with but then they see that friend or relative a year later and they realise the batteries don’t run outallthetime,theydon’tbreak down or catch fire, they don’t melt the grid or any of the list of myths.slowlythere’sanacceptance of the technology.”
That acceptance is demonstratedbythesuccessofthefully Charged show. The Youtube channel fronted by Robert and motoring journalist Jonny Smith has more than 300,000 subscribers and earlier this month the team staged the first Fully Charged Live show. More than6,000membersofthepublic attended the two-day event whereevmanufacturersalong with many of the firms behind the technology demonstrated the latest developments.
Amongthekeydevelopments, says Robert, are technologies whichmakeevownershipsimpler and clearer, and it’s about more than just the car.
“Thebiggestchangei’veexperienced recently is getting a smart meter.
“My house is festooned with the latest gadgetry and I had no clue what I was spending. Now, I know exactly what I’ve spent.
“Thekeythingformehasbeen that knowledge. I’ve had the information about how many kilowatt hours I was putting in the car but I had no idea how much that cost. Now I get halfhourly accurate updates.”
It’saboutmorethanjustinformation, though.
“One of the most rapidly emerging concepts is a home with a battery, a smart meter and a really intense variable tariff,” he explains. “There are companies doing multiple tariffs throughout the day and they’re linked to your meter so you know that it you use your tumbledryerbetween,say,4pm and 8pm it’s going to cost you a lot of money but if if you use it after 10pm it’s incredibly cheap.
“It’sthesamewithevs.icome home and plug in my car and nothing happens – the meter doesn’t start charging the car because it’s too expensive, it waits until nighttime. But if I needtochargeit,icanjustpress a button and it’ll start.”
It does, he admits, require behavioural changes but there are other benefits to embracing the connection between cars and the grid, not least the potential to make money.
“I used to just think electricity cost 18p per kwh all the time. I had no idea. There are times where it’s costing us pounds per kwh, but there are other huge amounts of time when it’s so close to free you can’t really count it or it’s actually negative. We’re producing so much electricityandwecan’tjustturn stuffonoroffsowholesaleprices are negative.”
This,hesays,createstheprospect of cars, homes and offices fitted with batteries acting as storage facilities during times of low demand.
“Thisisthecounterargument tothe‘we’vegottobuildsixnew Hinkley Cs if we’re all going to drive electric cars’ attitude. What’s far more likely is we’ll need far less generating capacity because that cars will act as a storage buffer. If you’ve got 10 millionevsontheroadandyou took a kilowatt hour from each of the that’s 10gwh and that’s enough to run the country for four hours.
“The other possibility when electricity prices go negative is that if you’re charging your car you’d be paid to charge it, which is bonkers. But you’re effectively supplying a service to the grid – it helps get a balance, you don’t need to turn stuff off and you’re storing that electricity for later.”
Of course, that’s fine when you’re at home but worries remain about charging out on the open road. Some reports estimate the UK will need a sixfoldincreaseinchargingpoints by 2020 to meet demand.
Still, argues Robert, the picture is improving all the time. There are currently around 17,000 connectors at nearly 6,000 locations and more are being added on an almost daily basis. There’s also the continued development of the technology, which he believes will make a huge difference.
For him, the big revolution will come from batteries.
“It will be battery technology that will see the big change and affect everything. Increasing capacity and density hand-inhand with decreasing cost.
“There’s a lot of talk about solid state batteries. There’s speculation that Dyson [which has announced plans to build an EV] backs the solid state technology and that’s why they’re being so incredibly quiet about it.”
If the speculation is true, solid state batteries could offer ten times the energy density with half the weight and size of current batteries.
“It’s not impossible that in five years’ time there’s a car with a a 100kwh battery that weighs half what a Tesla 100kwh batteryweighsandchargesfaster,” speculates Robert.
And that does away with the last big hang-up - range.
“Ithinkthatwhatreallychangesitis170mile-plusrange.you’ll find yourself charging once or twice a week. Even if you don’t have off-street parking and all those things it becomes a lot more usable. Once you get above200milesit’skindofirrelevant.”
We’restillsomedistanceaway from that now. With the exception of the biggest Teslas and Jaguar’s I-pace no EV offers close to 200 miles’ range in the real world but as with so many things Robert sees the trickle down of the technology eventually making it accessible to mainstream buyers.
“I don’t think there’ll be mass adoption for quite a few years but there’ll be continual rise untiltherecomesapointwhere anelectriccarcoststhesameas a petrol car to buy new. That’s not far away – in the next couple of years. And then you’ll just choose which one you want.”
Until then Robert is committed to championing the technology and getting across that there’s much more to than simply battery-powered cars.
“The understanding of all these concepts is spreading. People are becoming knowledgeable and want to learn more. With the show we really pushed for companies that do vehicle to grid, batteries, smart charging as well as the cars because it’s a disruptive technology. It goes much further than just the car.”