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Rethinking the electric car

Today’s electric car will very likely end up being nothing more than a link between vehicles with a combustion engine and those vehicles which in a relatively few years should populate the streets and highways of the world. Although the technology for mass consumption electric cars is not yet available, the efforts are increasing to accelerate the process.

MALÉN RUIZ DE ELVIRA | AUGUST 20TH, 2010

The electric car is already in fashion. But this achievement can not overshadow research into other energy solutions, especially fuel cells and other hydrogen technologies. Moreover, European and American experts argue that its development must not lead to a loss of interest in energy savings and limiting emissions that accelerate climate change.

All the possibilities currently being considered to make transport greener share the same problems: there is still a long way to go before both in technology and cost for electric vehicles to become consumer commodities. Therefore, experts have warned that the shift to electric cars signaled by the European Commission in recent months must be accompanied at all steps by an in-depth knowledge of the market. According to Lew Fulton, a specialist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), the major difficulty is to simultaneously develop electric vehicles and the necessary infrastructure for recharging electric batteries.

There is still a long way to go before both in technology and cost for electric vehicles "In the next three to five years we must be very careful not to make serious mistakes," Fulton said in a public appearance in Brussels. He also insisted that better studies of consumer preferences were crucial to ensure that when the electric car is available there are people interesting in owning one. Currently, there are no adequate studies on consumer attitudes towards electric vehicles, according to this expert.

In 2008 the European Commission approved the amount of five billion euros to promote environmentally-friendly transportation, including subsidies for hydrogen-based technologies. These plans are part of the economic recovery package and indicate that research into fuel cells will not come to a halt. However, last May, the EU’s Competition Ministers supported the strategy presented a month earlier by the Commission, which, while not identifying any one technology as superior, called for a specific European action framework for the development of electric vehicles.

The seven-pin plug

In their meeting the Competition Ministers called for the rapid standardization of the infrastructure for recharging electric batteries throughout the entire EU territory as a key factor for the creation of a mass market for electric vehicles and their acceptance by consumers. The deadline set by the ministers to find a harmonized solution for all the battery chargers in the electrical networks in all European countries is by mid-2011.

According to the French Energy Minister Christian Estrosi, users will have two options for recharging. A seven-pin plug will recharge faster and also transmit information on the vehicle. The other, more traditional plug will take longer to recharge the vehicle.

The IEA recommended last year that by 2020 at least five million plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles have reached the market so that by 2050 these constitute half the cars on Europe’s roads.

In the United States

Experts from the U.S.’s National Research Council have reviewed the development of the public-private FreedomCAR and Fuel initiative, which in 2009 shifted its focus from hydrogen-based energies to electric cars and advanced combustion engines. "While it is important to work on short-term technologies, it is equally important that the partnership carries out high-risk research in areas such as hydrogen, something which the private sector would not do on its own, especially at this stage of crisis," said Vernon P. Roan, chairman of the committee who authored the report.

Accordingly, the initiative, which involves the U.S. Department of Energy, automakers, five major energy companies and two power companies in the country, will have sufficient data for the automobile industry to make decisions about the production of hydrogen vehicles by 2015.

Long-term research into materials and systems for high-energy batteries for plug-in electric vehicles and hybrids must also be continued. Lithium ion technology is the most promising, but standards are needed to verify its safety when installed in vehicles and while recharging as well as protocols for recycling.

The problem with fuel cells is that none of the available technologies have met the cost and performance targets set by the FreedomCAR and Fuel initiative, but the key link in the chain is how to store hydrogen. This is why experts of the National Research Council insist on the need for continuing funding into research on hydrogen storage. One goal of the program is to make a vehicle that can travel around 500 kilometers without refueling while satisfying other requirements related to cost, weight and performance. So an important objective is to develop improved fuel tanks.

In the meantime, the Progressive Automotive X Prize, a competition to reward the most efficient automobile prototypes, regardless of their technology, is in its final phase. The prize is 10 million dollars (7.78 million euros). Nine vehicles from seven different teams (four Americans along with a German, a Finnish and a Swiss team) have reached the final.

BREAKTHROUGH TECHNOLOGIES
The automotive sector, less than enthusiastic at first, has for a while now been developing possible solutions for the car of the future. Driven mainly by government initiatives, with the United States in the lead and Germany not far behind in fierce competition for the rampant Chinese industry, car manufacturers have been encouraged to finally join the fray. The challenge is no longer in continuing to submit prototypes of low-cost affordable, but rather in how to begin to develop vehicles suitable for mass consumption. The issues to be addressed are the batteries, the volume and the weight to achieve the maximum performance possible, a goal that is only possible by combining efforts of scientists, engineers and technologists in pursuit of breakthrough technology.

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2 comments

Yowy 24/04/2012
espero que no te importe que lo use para una redacción

Rafael Soler 23/11/2010
Voldria pregutar-vos: Si l'electricitat que consumeix un cotxe fos fabricada per una central que la produiex des del petroli. Quin gasteria més petroli, el cotxe clasic o un igual però de funcionament electric?

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