Slow start for charge of the electric cars

The Sunday Times
April 19, 2009
Ray Hutton

Electric cars need a boost. Cheap to run but expensive to buy, they offer the prospect of low or zero carbon emissions, but manufacturers won’t sell them unless motorists want to buy them – and motorists won’t buy unless the price is right and there are enough places to charge the batteries.
Last week the government made a £250m move to square the circle. Some £20m will help establish a network of charging points in cities and other areas of dense traffic. Grants of between £2,000 and £5,000 will be available to ordinary motorists to encourage them to buy electric or other ultra-low-carbon cars.
The move received a guarded welcome from the industry bodies and environmental groups. Car buyers were less enthusiastic.
The grants will not be available until 2011 and the detail of how they will be allocated and which cars will qualify has still to be worked out. What is clear is that the full £5,000 will not be available for a £8,000 G-Wiz or a £15,000 Smart EV. The 2011 start date has been chosen to coincide with the expected introduction of a wider variety of electric and plug-in hybrid cars in Britain.

With or without incentives, these are still likely to be a specialised purchase. Electric cars remain dependent on the development of better, affordable batteries. The hybrid models available today use lead-acid or nickel-metal hydride batteries that are are proven, reliable, and fairly cheap, but their limited storage capacity means that the cars’ driving range using electricity alone is short.
Variations of lithium-ion batteries, as used on a smaller scale in laptops and mobile phones, are seen as the next big step. Virtually all the world’s big motor manufacturers are building prototypes using lithium-ion batteries but so far they have reached production only in a few low-volume models.
The G-Wiz, made in India, now offers a lithium-ion battery option that extends its driving range from 48 to 75 miles – but doubles the price. The small four-seater Mitsubishi iMiEV uses lithium-ion but is likely to cost up to £20,000 when it becomes available here later this year. A replacement battery pack for the American Tesla sports car, which comprises 6,831 lithium-ion laptop cells, is $22,000 (£15,000).
To achieve a long driving range and good performance requires a battery pack that is both expensive and hefty. In the electric Mini that transport secretary Geoff Hoon drove last week, the batteries and associated electronics take up all the space normally occupied by the back seats. It is pleasingly quick but will still only manage 150 miles between charges, much less than a tank of petrol, even if it costs only £1.50 to charge overnight.
The electric Mini is unlikely to go into production in its present form. Its maker, BMW, is conducting a 100-car consumer test in America and Germany to “evaluate technical and social aspects of living with an all-electric vehicle” and with some government support hopes to extend the trials to Britain.
Renault and Nissan are determined to establish an early lead in the new mass market for electric cars. Both companies will offer a range of electric vehicles for public sale from 2012. Their solution to the cost of the new-generation batteries is to separate them from the car itself. Buyers will purchase the car – at about the same price as a conventional model – but lease the batteries from a third-party energy supplier for a monthly fee equivalent to the fuel costs for an economical petrol or diesel car.
The two companies have made a series of deals across the world supplying cars for the electrification programmes of cities and whole countries – Denmark, Israel and Portugal among them. They are placing all their bets on pure electric vehicles that produce zero emissions at the point of use.
The widespread use of quick-charging batteries will require new solutions like charging stations (where batteries can be replenished 80% in 20 minutes) and facilities to swap depleted battery packs for fully charged ones. Renault and Nissan’s rivals have questioned whether this is practicable or viable.
Previous consumer tests with electric cars – in America and in France – have shown that drivers’ main concern is being stranded with flat batteries. With a 60-mile range, most felt the need to recharge after 30 miles or so.
In developing its E-Flex technology for the Chevrolet Volt (which will come to Britain as the Vauxhall Ampera) General Motors addressed this problem by adding a small petrol engine to start automatically and recharge the batteries when they are running low and thereby extend the car’s range so that it can reach a convenient power point.
E-Flex is technically a hybrid with two power units, but unlike the Toyota Prius, Honda Insight and various Lexus models, the engine in the Volt does not drive the wheels, it simply acts as an emergency generator to recharge the batteries.
How far hybrids will be encouraged in the new government initiative remains to be seen.
The existing Prius has a carbon-dioxide figure of 89g/km but it is still unlikely to be classified as an ultra-low-carbon vehicle. Hence the development of a plug-in Prius, which will operate most of the time on electricity and produce less carbon dioxide.
The government is keen to stimulate the electric vehicle business in Britain. There are many engineering companies providing vital services and components for electric cars and a number of start-ups making, or planning to make, electric cars and trucks in small volume.
It is less certain that Britain will become the production hub for electric cars from the big manufacturers. General Motors held out the hope of making the Ampera for Europe at Ellesmere Port but in its current beleaguered state will confine E-Flex production to one plant in America.
Nissan has a memorandum of understanding with One North East, the regional development agency, to potentially use its Sunderland plant to produce electric vehicles, but its first cars will all come from Japan. BMW’s Oxford plant is the sole source of the Mini so if an electric Mini goes into production it will start there.
The bigger picture, and the reason for the Low Carbon Vehicle initiative, is to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from transport to meet targets set by the Climate Change Act – a 26% reduction in UK emissions by 2020, rising to 80% by 2050.
Though as the environmental lobby constantly points out, electric vehicles only provide a significant emissions benefit if their batteries are charged by clean power from renewable resources.
The widespread adoption of electric cars would put a considerable extra strain on the power-genera-tion industry. In a recent report, the International Energy Agency concluded: “If electrification is to become a zero-emissions solution, a decarbonised power supply is a priority. And if electric vehicles are a success, by 2050 they could account for 20% of the total world electricity demand, requiring more than 2,000GW of additional capacity.”