Submitted by: Danny Cobbs
Posted: 16/07/2012Oil addiction, global warming, increased fuel
consumption… There's little
doubt that some time in the
future oil will be a thing of the past. Should
we be worried? Maybe not for ourselves, but
for our children and grandchildren. We know
we should become more responsible for the
remaining stocks of oil still buried beneath
our feet, though it's easier said than done.
Even though prices at the pump are at
a record high and are expected to rise even
further, it still isn't deterring us from using our
cars much as we always have done. It can be
argued that cars are a lot more efficient with
60mpg becoming the norm. Even so, all they're
doing is delaying the inevitable rather than
solving the problem. If we want to continue
to enjoy the luxury of personal transport, we
need to find an alternative to the combustion
engine and our dependency on fossil fuels.
Plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) seem the
logical way forward, but they also come with
their own set of problems. The first electric
vehicle was invented as long ago as 1828 by
the Hungarian, Anyos Jedlik, some 57 years
before Karl Benz patented the first motor car.
Admittedly, Jedlik only managed to make a
small-scale model, yet it proved that electricity
could be successfully used in this way. Since
then, there have been a wide variety of electric
cars that have tried to succeed where others
have failed. But why have they not taken off?
For starters, the biggest hurdle all these
cars have had to overcome is ‘range anxiety'
– how far they can travel before it is necessary
to recharge the batteries – and the time they
then take to recharge. The other inherent
problems EVs have always had are that
they've looked not much different than
a glorified fibreglass golf cart – the G-wiz
being a good case in point – and have tended
to be more expensive than their non-EV
counterparts, too.
That said, the prices for plug-in cars are
dropping as more people adopt them and they
actually start to look like cars, with the 125mph
Tesla Roadster and the Nissan Leaf expunging
the theory that EVs are neither fun nor
practical. I've just finished testing one of the
new generation of production electric cars,
the Renault Fluence ZE, and it's actually
rather good and drives much like any other
car. Even Rolls Royce has hopped aboard the
EV bandwagon by introducing an all-electric
version of their £250,000 Phantom.
And a solution to range anxiety may also be
on the horizon. Not only are batteries becoming
lighter, cheaper and slightly faster to recharge
– thanks in no small part to the mobile phone
industry – but Israeli company Better Place has
pioneered a radical method using technology
developed to change missiles on its fighter jets.
The country now boasts an extensive network
of stations that keep racks of fully charged
batteries – cars simply pull in and swap them in
less time than it takes to fill a tank with petrol.
This is the sort of ‘disruptive' technology that
could make EVs a real, viable option.
Turning the electric problem on its head,
Toyota came up with the hybrid Prius. Fitted with both a 1.8-litre petrol engine and an
electric motor, the principle is thus: at lower
speeds (normally below 14mph) it runs solely
on electricity, and then, through its clever
engine management system, switches to
the petrol engine when its needed, which
also recharges the batteries at the same time.
Nevertheless, for all its cleverness, the petrol
engine emits 89g/km of CO2 gases, which sort
of defeats the object of its eco-friendliness.
Irrespective of their lack of 100 per cent
green credentials, however, hybrids are growing
in popularity and it's now as easy to order a
Porsche Cayenne with this type of technology
buried under the bonnet as it is to buy a hybrid
Renault or Smart Fortwo – which goes to show
just how far the industry has come.
The US car maker Fiska and the mighty GM
are approaching hybrids in a slightly different
way. They still use a dual-engine combination,
but instead of using the combustion engine
to drive the wheels it acts as a small onboard
generator to produce power for the electric
motor, sipping only a thimbleful of fuel to
do so. US broadcaster and self-proclaimed
petrolhead Jay Leno has famously driven more
than 11,000 miles in his Chevrolet Volt and has
yet to refill it. Jaguar and Audi have declared
their intentions to use similar methods, too.
Biofuel is another area the automobile
industry is exploring. Between 2000 and 2005,
ethanol production doubled and biodiesel
production quadrupled. The aim of all biofuels
is to be carbon neutral. They have the potential
to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions when
compared to conventional transport fuels,
but whether they live up to this depends on the way they are produced and managed.
In reality, biofuel isn't carbon neutral simply
because it requires energy to grow the crops
and convert them into fuel.
Way of the future?
Many experts agree the real future lies with
hydrogen-cell cars. Right now Honda is the
only mainstream car maker with a hydrogencell
programme, and last year launched
the production-ready FCX Clarity. On first
appearance, it doesn't seem too different from
any other mass-produced medium-sized car,
and drives like one too, except it runs near
silently, much like a pure plug-in EV.
The theory behind it makes sense: hydrogen
is completely sustainable and 100 per cent
eco friendly. It returns 67mpg and has a
range of 270 miles, which should alleviate
any anxiety, and refuelling takes a matter of
minutes.The problem lies with the availability
of the hydrogen itself. At the moment,
there's just one hydrogen station in the UK,
although Honda does have plans to build an
infrastructure of stations using natural gas to
produce hydrogen, with the hope that one day
renewable energy will replace natural gas.
Somewhere between all these variants, one
will ultimately set the standard that others will
follow, and that day is fast approaching. Only
!ve years ago you could count on one hand the
manufacturers taking alternative fuels seriously.
Perhaps the legacy we will leave our children
will be that we saw the error of our ways and
made the change before it was too late.
Eco-motoring on the rise
Last year in the UK, of
the 1,941,253 new vehicles
sold, 23,370 were hybrids
and 1,082 were EVs. Compare
that figure to 2010 – 22,127
hybrids and 138 EVs –
and it is easy to see that
alternatively fuelled cars
are increasing in popularity
– albeit slowly.
A recent study, entitled
‘California's Energy Future:
Transport Energy Use in
California', focuses on two
main scenarios involving
plug-in electric vehicles and
fuel-cell vehicles. It suggests
that plug-in EV adoption
will be hampered by factors
such as cost, but as battery
costs fall the market will
move beyond early adopters.
Hybrid vehicles are expected
to become the dominant
type of new car sold –
exceeding 50 per cent in
2030 – while plug-in hybrid
EVs and battery EVs will
grow to become one quarter
of the new car market by the
same year.
Meanwhile, fuel-cell
vehicles are expected to
be commercially introduced
in California in 2015 at
low volume and in limited
markets. However, it is
anticipated that there will be
rapid sales growth for fuel-cell
vehicles between 2020 and
2030 as new manufacturers
begin building them. Indeed,
under its realistic scenario,
by 2030, 20 per cent of new
vehicles in the state will be
fuel-cell, 12 per cent plug-in
EVs and 67 per cent hybrids,
with petrol vehicles no
longer sold.
Quite how this translates
from one state to the whole
globe is, of course, a different
matter altogether and remains
to be seen.