Q: After many starts and stops, fully electric vehicles are finally becoming more prevalent in automakers’ lineups. What are the remaining obstacles to electric vehicles replacing most if not all gas-powered vehicles?
By Bruno Lequesne, president, E-Motors Consulting
The reasons that have made electrical vehicles (EVs) now a durable part of the automobile landscape are technical breakthroughs, mainly the discovery of lithium-ion batteries and power electronics advances, combined with a societal need for emissions curtailment and higher efficiencies. Nothing fundamental seems to stand in the way of a large deployment of these vehicles. Instead, time is needed to overcome remaining obstacles, most notably cost, range, and infrastructure, and to a lesser degree changes in ways people use vehicles.
The price issue is primary battery cost, but projections are for a steady down trend. This is happening thanks to improved technology, and more importantly, larger production scale driven by new applications and deeper penetration of existing products as engineers design with, and customers use, more battery-operated products.
Range and charging infrastructure are issues linked to customer perceptions. Range is already satisfactory for most travels with light vehicles, so it is a matter of finding good solutions for the exceptional long distance trip. Fast charging will help, but can only go so far as battery recharging cannot happen at the megawatt-rate at which liquid fuel is pumped into a tank. Ultimately, range and charging infrastructure may determine the degree of EV penetration as much as its rate: If good solutions are found, then the gasoline/diesel part of the market will shrink considerably.
In summary, time is the biggest obstacle to EV deployment: Time for economies of scale to lower battery cost, and time to find solutions for charging, infrastructure, and range. Public policies are already helping in China and elsewhere, and more is to be expected once carbon-free electricity becomes more widespread and the last doubts about global warming evaporate. As a result, EVs may dominate the marketplace even sooner than expected even a short time ago.
By Roberto Saracco, president of EIT ICT Labs Italy Association, chair of the IEEE Symbiotic Autonomous Systems Initiative
When you consider that prices will be going down in response to increased volumes and cheaper battery technology, the main obstacle remains the availability of recharging stations. This is not a minor issue. Today, a country like the Netherlands, which has by far the highest density of recharging station in the world (over 19 charge stations per 100 km—U.S. less than 1 per 100 km), would seem ready to accommodate a switch to electric cars. Yet, it would be facing a huge problem if all cars became electric since it would mean having to double the production of electricity—something that would require a huge investment and several years to complete.
In fact, the charging infrastructure, even with super chargers capable of re-topping the battery in 20 minutes, would need to be denser outside of the cities than today. At best, with new batteries and 100 Kw power, it takes five times as much to fill a battery than to fill a gasoline tank. What’s more, super chargers require an electric infrastructure that is mostly not available today, particularly outside of the city.
From a charging perspective, densely populated countries, where most trips are short, are best suited for electric cars—save for the fact that there is the need to massively increase the production of electricity—because most cars can be “refilled” at night. Countries where journeys are much longer (more than 200 km on average) will need to deploy a solid infrastructure outside of cities and include multiple superchargers that provide an ability to achieve half hour recharging times and that limit queues to one car at most.
By Gary Miller, director of Control Systems, Automotive System Development Business Unit, Renesas Electronics Corporation
The shift to EVs is coming, but it will still take time before the industry fully makes the transition from gas to electric. Powertrain has been in place for a long time; it’s a known and reliable factor in automotive design. For EVs, the battery is the key. Right now, the markets are focusing on advancements for the battery, from decreasing weight and increasing capacity. Recycling the battery is also a key challenge. As the industry addresses these items and makes the shift to EVs, it opens the door to new challenges, such as the charging infrastructure. Effective grid management will be essential to support this new group of “things” plugging into the energy grid along with an increasing number of homes and commercial buildings coming online. Charging time is another focus area—how to enable fast charging for our vehicles. We can look at these challenges—and opportunities—in two main phases with a third still to come.
Phase 1 is now—wired charging, usually at home or a commercial charging station. This infrastructure is in place, but is still limited in scale. Commercially, there are fewer charging stations in rural and non-metro areas, so access is in work to be expanded. For home charging, it is important to coordinate and communicate all the power within and between houses. Super chargers offer fast charging and will help eliminate the range fear.
Phase 2 shifts to static wireless charging—at offices, homes, and bus stations, for example. This approach is becoming more prevalent as EV adoption grows, consumers see the convenience of cutting the charging cord, and businesses and municipalities see the benefits of powering these smart cars. The challenge here is similar to wired charging: Infrastructure management of the power for assets on the grid.
Phase 3 would be dynamic charging or charging while the car is moving. This would be the ultimate wireless charging experience. As technologies and smart city infrastructures advance, dedicated charging lanes on highways would allow drivers to power up while they’re on the move, offloading home and commercial grids. This is much further out but exciting to see on the horizon.
By Steve Hughes, managing director of power quality specialist, REO UK
According to the Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) report, by 2040, 54 percent of new car sales and 33 percent of the global car fleet will be electric. Driven predominantly by regulatory changes, falling prices of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, increased EV commitments from automakers and more competitively priced EVs across all classes of vehicle. However, despite this record growth, there are still a variety of challenges that could hamper innovation and development in the electric vehicle market.
These are predominantly: the design of onboard electrical and electronic components, the availability of charging stations, and the impact they will have on the electricity grid, as well as the battery technology that gives many users range anxiety.
Most modern EVs feature a high component density and so it can often become difficult to manage the heat dissipation from components like transformers and inverters. Instead automotive manufacturers should integrate specialized liquid-cooled parts to reduce the amount of space they need to occupy.
For example, where a normal petrol or diesel vehicle uses friction to convert mechanical braking energy into heat and wear on the brake pads, the electric motor used to drive the wheels in an EV requires a braking resistor. Braking resistors are directly responsible for converting the energy that is created from EVs because of high speed changes. This heat energy can then be made useful by water-cooled braking resistors, which act as a high voltage recuperation heater that uses the waste energy to heat the cabin and provide effective pre-heating to the car’s batteries in cold weather.
To keep pace with consumer demand, it’s important that original equipment manufacturers, design engineers, and automotive companies continue to solve the challenges posed by EV design and development to offer a product that is not only as robust as petrol and diesel vehicles, but also better for the environment.
By Dan Dempsey, senior director of automotive business development, ACEINNA
Over the last 10 years, Tesla has convinced the public that the performance of EVs can be far superior to internal combustion (IC) engine vehicles. With that debate put to bed, cost, range, and access to charging stations remain as the primary obstacles to more wide spread EV adoption.
The range and cost of an EV are intertwined as EV car buyers must essentially prepay for the vehicles range at the time of purchase in the form of the battery size. A typical vehicle (sedan to small SUV) will require about 60 kWh of battery to travel around 250 mi. A larger battery is needed for larger, heavier, less efficient vehicles. The Chevy Bolt as an example has a 60 kWh battery pack and is rated for 258 mi by the EPA. Back around 2010, the cost per kWh of Li-ion batteries was about $1,000. Today, estimates vary, but is likely in the $200 per kWh range with forecasts to fall below $100 per kWh by 2020. That means a 250-mi range battery package, which cost $60,000 in 2010, will be only $6,000 by 2020. That incredible price reduction is the force behind the much wider adoption of EVs. Traditional car makers, though cautious, are well aware of this trend and many are now aggressively developing EVs with the styling, performance, and prices people are used to.
Access to charging stations will slow down the adoption of EVs in dense urban environments. People parking on streets and in large apartment garages simply do not have the ability to install and use a car charger. This limitation will slow down adoption of EVs in markets that might benefit most from the improvement in air quality EVs can provide in large cities.