Briefing: Electric cars: Plug in, drive off

The Sunday Times
April 12, 2009
The government is promoting the use of electric cars through a subsidy for new purchases. Is this really the way to save the environment?
Helen Brooks

DRIVE ELECTRIC
Prime minister and London mayor launch initiatives Gordon Brown revealed last week that the government plans to subsidise electric-car use, offering purchasers £2,000 towards the cost of an electric car because “it’s good for the environment”. Boris Johnson, the London mayor, followed up the announcement by unveiling his scheme to turn the capital’s roads electric. His programme would include 25,000 “juice points”, charging stations for electric cars, across the city. Britain has agreed to cut its CO2 emissions by 80% before 2050. For that target to be met, 40% of all vehicles in Britain would have to be either electric or hybrid (powered by a combination of electricity and petrol), according to Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, chairman of the government’s climate change committee.
HIGH COSTS
Electric cars are expensive and difficult to charge Even with the government’s planned subsidy, the cost of electric cars is still high: the two-seater G-Wiz Lion model, for example, starts at £15,795. The high-performance Tesla Roadster has a starting price of £87,100. There is also little infrastructure in place to support the recharging that such cars need. Even state-of-the-art batteries need to be charged roughly every 100 miles, and this has to be done at the car owner’s home. It is estimated that a normal household electrical circuit takes 10 hours to charge one car fully. Other difficulties could result from overuse of the national grid, which could short-circuit household fuses and cause blackouts nationally.
HIDDEN CARBON
Electricity would be derived from coal power A bigger problem is the source of the electricity needed to run the cars. They would inevitably be partly powered by coal-fired power stations, which produce about a third of UK energy; renewables account for only 4%. Richard George of the Campaign for Better Transport said: “You’re not solving the CO2 problem at all. You’re just shifting it somewhere else.” Other critics queried the government’s focus on cars as bad carbon emitters. According to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, agriculture accounts for 14% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined global emissions of cars, trains, ships and planes. Recent research also suggests that one giant container ship emits the same amount of pollution as 50m cars.
FUTURE IS HYDROGEN
Ecofriendly cars with no emissions already exist Many believe the future belongs to hydrogen-powered cars. They work by combining hydrogen with oxygen within the car’s own fuel cell and emit nothing but water. Britain’s first hydrogen fuel station opened in April last year at Birmingham University but Japan is ahead of the game: it finished building a hydrogen highway in 2005, which included the installation of 12 hydrogen-fuelling stations in 11 cities. Last summer Honda launched the FCX Clarity in the US, the first commercially produced hydrogen car, while Mercedes-Benz and BMW also have hydrogen-powered cars in the testing stages. The FCX Clarity costs $600 (£410) a month to rent and is not available to buy.