Want People to Buy More Electric Cars? – Fix Three Things

November 4, 2019 – The automobile manufacturers of the world, with the exception of those wholly dedicated to electric vehicles (EVs), have been hedging their bets on the technology because of three issues.

1. Range limitations because battery technology can power an EV only so far before it needs to be recharged.
2. Infrastructure to support EVs akin to that found today for fossil-fuel-powered vehicles.
3. Making EVs more affordable for mass adoption.

With climate change mitigation policies focused on the transportation sector as an area where governments can realize reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, resolving all three of these issues would help to mitigate climate change.

Let’s look at where we are in the effort to fix them.

Solving Range Limitation in EVs

The storage battery is a critical piece of the EV puzzle. Battery technology has made leaps in the last thirty years from lead-acid to nickel, to lithium-ion.

Today, the world is awash in lithium-ion-powered technology from smartphones, tablets, and laptops to EVs. Lithium-ion global power capacity continues to grow by nearly 90 Gigawatt-hours (GWh) annually. That works out to almost capacity doubling every year. By 2023 forecasters believe there will be enough lithium-ion battery capacity to supply 21 million EVs annually, or approximately one-quarter of the global new-vehicle market.

But current lithium-ion battery packs for EVs still suffer from limitations. A big battery pack gives an EV extended range but its extra weight offsets some of those gains. A smaller battery pack confines EVs to city day trips.

There is no EV at present that would be a good choice as a vehicle for continuous long-distance driving on any road, anywhere. That’s because the recharging infrastructure needed to meet this need doesn’t exist. And neither do batteries capable of making long-distance driving in an EV an easy task. Today, EV drivers traveling on U.S. highways have to map their route by locations where EV recharge stations exist. And then they have to allow for downtime when recharging which can be as little as 30 minutes, but not the 5 to 10 minutes at most it takes to refuel an ICE vehicle.

There may be answers soon to the downtime issue if a recent Penn State invention, a fast-charging lithium-ion technology using high-temperature extreme fast charging pans out. Its inventors say it reduces the time to reach better than 80% recharge in 10 minutes. They call the technology asymmetric temperature modulation (ATM, not to be confused with banking machines). What they discovered is, when you add heat during the recharge cycle it increases recharge speed and battery driving range. The researchers in their published paper state that with ATM EVs become “truly competitive” because “they can be charged as fast as refilling a gas tank.”

What role can our governments play in solving the range limitation problem? Governments can provide money for research and development in battery storage.

What about industry players? The transportation sector can help by funding prizes to entrepreneurs and inventors to inspire them to spend the time to develop new battery technologies or further perfect lithium-ion.

And speaking of our lithium reliance for battery storage, we shouldn’t be limiting ourselves to this material alone. There are many other rivals to lithium, and to the technology design of current lithium-ion batteries. For example there are working prototypes of lithium-air batteries that don’t need a liquid or solid oxidizer which increases battery weight. If you to find out more about alternatives check out a previous posting at this blog site.

Building an EV Support Infrastructure

Two-and-a-half years ago when I was looking for a new car for my wife and me, we ended up leasing a vehicle with a hybrid power-train, part EV and part ICE. Why? Because where we live, and in places nearby (service stations, parking lots, and streetside) there is no recharge infrastructure for me to plugin. Our underground garage and the building property has no place for a universal recharger. We don’t even have access to regular power outlets in the parking area if I wanted to run a cord and slow-charge overnight.

Let’s hope that this is not the same for new construction which in Toronto is now required to include charging stations for new apartments, condominiums, and other housing.

The automobile industry is also getting into the act. In recent months manufacturers have announced investments in recharging networks in Europe, Japan, and North America. The latest in North America comes from Ford and is called the FordPass network which will offer 12,000 charging locations and 35,000 plugins across the U.S. and Canada.

Recent history saw Tesla as the first to launch its recharging network for Tesla vehicles. Today that network has grown to 4,375 stations with 15,000 plugins.

And General Motors in combination with the construction company, Bechtel, has plans to build thousands of recharge stations across America and is asking for site partners to begin development.

Even fossil fuel companies are investing in recharge infrastructure. Why not since they already have fueling infrastructure capacity to meet current ICE vehicle requirements. Adding a recharge station on one of these existing sites could easily be accommodated.

One of the companies, Royal Dutch Shell, through its subsidiary, Shell New Energies, is investing in recharging stations and recently announced a deal with Electrify America to bankroll a $2-billion nationwide infrastructure.

The numbers and activities sound promising. But compared to the 168,000 service stations and outlets that pump gas and diesel in the United States and almost 12,000 in Canada today, the EV charing infrastructure will remain a big impediment to vehicle adoption.

Can governments help to encourage an EV recharge infrastructure? Municipalities have expressed a great deal of interest in EV infrastructure from electric buses to light-rail and subway systems. But that only covers mass transit. The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group is advocating to turn parking areas and curbsides into EV recharging locales. Chargers can become part of every streetscape with placement optimized to put minimal stress on power generation infrastructure to ensure transformer and distribution capacity can handle the peek demand loads.

Making EVs Cheaper

Finally, we come to the last EV disinhibitor. EVs today are too expensive for the average buyer. The first mass production of EVs has only happened in the last two years with Tesla building its Model 3 along with the support and assembly infrastructure that approximates other automobile manufacturers. Even then the Model 3, with government incentives or without, is priced beyond being affordable for the average working-class and lower-middle-class family. Only economies of scale can change the current price points.

And then there is the issue of a very small aftermarket for replacement part manufacturers, and for pre-owned resale of EVs. Particularly this latter point makes the EV more a status symbol for the more wealthy, than a car for the masses.

If we can solve range anxiety and EV infrastructure, the first two issues talked about above, making EVs cheaper may soon come as economies of scale drive down EV costs to consumers. After all, an EV is a simpler technology, with fewer parts than an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. Fewer parts mean fewer things can go wrong which should translate into low maintenance costs.

The profile of those buying EVs today? Largely urban early adopters of technology, the same people buying the latest smartphone, tablet, game console, and 4K smart television. In marketing, success is marked by “crossing the chasm” from sales to early adopters who try anything new, to mass consumption. That crossing can only happen with two important initiatives, one from governments, and the other from vehicle manufacturers.

1. Governments can offer carrots and sticks. The carrots would be inducements in the form of subsidies or tax breaks to lower the cost to get people into EVs. The sticks would be rules of enforcement related to combating climate change, where governments would institute policies to end ICE vehicle dominance through the establishment of a sunset date for them to be allowed on the road.
2. Manufacturers can commit to accelerating their timelines in converting existing ICE model vehicle production into EVs while using their mass production capacity to provide a range of EV choices from economy-priced to luxury-priced vehicles. Governments could offer a carrot to the manufacturers in the form of tax rebates or other financial inducements to place a heavier production emphasis on building the former over the latter.

What are the magic numbers?

In terms of EV growth that will create mass adoption and at the same time drive down GHGs to help mitigate climate change we are looking at reaching the 21 million EVs annually mark by 2030.

Why?

Take the United States where today’s transportation industry contributes 29% of the country’s GHGs with almost 60% of that total coming from passenger cars and light trucks. Americans today keep their vehicles longer than in the past which means almost 263 million of these (only 2% of 5.3 million new vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2017 were EVs) unless mandated by the government to be removed, will remain on roads into the 2030s. To replace 263 million vehicles with EVs and other zero-emission technologies would be a monumental task. But if government and industry work on policy and capacity in lockstep, a big chunk of ICE inventory can be removed in the next ten years and just maybe we can see EVs begin to outnumber ICE vehicles before 2030.

Will growth in the numbers make EVs cheaper? Undoubtedly as mass production and the associated supply chain grow in capacity and choice to allow market competition to drive down prices.

Will EV adoption en masse be enough to drive down GHGs? The jury on this is still out. Only if the energy sector supplying the electricity to recharge EVs becomes largely zero-emission will we see the benefit of less carbon and other polluting gases being emitted into our increasingly compromised atmosphere.