electric
vehicles
20%
the future’s here
of global CO2
emissions today derive
from fossil-fuel-based
vehicles, prompting
ever greater demand
for electric vehicles
ELECTRIC
DREAMS
The electric car market is entering a new phase of global mass
production as popular attention focuses on the use of carbonefficient modes of transport. A significant shift to electric vehicles
could compromise energy supplies, so what solutions will pave
the way for the next generation of transport?
The car may always rank below riding
a bicycle or walking as an environmentally
friendly transport choice but this gap is
closing. It’s a forced evolution as regional
bodies everywhere legislate to bring vehicle
emissions down in line with their climate
change ambitions. Still, there are barriers
to ultimate success as the cleanest vehicles
can work only if there is the infrastructure
to support them.
Considering that road vehicles account for
about one-fifth of CO2 emissions globally, this
issue is pressing. The big challenge for
transport planners, especially those working
in cities, is how to embed an electric power
network into the existing transport system
and make the solution economical and
sustainable. It will require a major engineering
effort, with transport planning experts
working alongside vehicle manufacturers,
urban realm designers and utility companies
to plan the changes in a seamless way.
Keith McCabe, chair of the carbon
working group at Intelligence Transport
Systems (ITS) UK and principal consultant on
electric vehicles at Atkins, says that in
seeking solutions, planners are discovering
new efficiencies by integrating vehicles,
distribution and energy supply. There is no
“one size fits all” approach, however.
“Take Denmark, where they have an excess
of wind energy. They’ve chosen to prioritise
‘battery swap’ technology. Rather than having
the bulk of vehicles charging over night, ‘swapout batteries’ are charged by utilities over night
in large numbers using wind power and then
swapped over during the day,” McCabe says.
In Japan, meanwhile, renewable energy
company Better Place has been testing
a refuelling system that allows a robotic
mechanism to swap the empty battery in
an electric car for a fully charged one. This
means electric cars can be “refilled” in
minutes, rather than several hours.
In Europe, Project Merge has drawn
together leading thinkers and engineers to
begin building a power network for electric
vehicles. The focus there is on analysing the
impact of introducing electric cars on current
and future electricity distribution networks.
“There are pilot programmes around the
world looking at the practicalities. In the UK,
the CABLED project’s interim results, for
example, found that a large percentage of
electric car drivers are using them as they
would use a normal car, which is encouraging,”
says Paul J Taylor, head of technology for air
quality and greenhouse gas management at
Atkins. “The statistics show that most of the
journeys were below five miles, while the
average daily mileage is about 20 to 25 miles,
which is well within the operating range of the
electric vehicles used in the pilots. They have a
range of about 80 miles a day.”
The new breed
These findings strengthen the argument that
electric vehicles can become commonplace. It
is expected that all of the big vehicle
companies will have some mainstream
production models of electric vehicles in
circulation in the next two years.
While the cars themselves are improving,
the real challenge is to equip urban and
suburban areas with a fully functional electric
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transport network. The UK is taking a firm
grasp of this. In London, for example, plans to
realise the mayor’s ambition to make the city
the electric vehicle capital of Europe are well
under way. At least 1,300 charging points will
be installed in public locations by the end of
2013 and local government body Transport
for London (TfL) has finalised a contract that
will see Siemens manage the operation of the
network and registration of drivers.
The UK is also supporting the Plugged in
Places programme, with Manchester
becoming one of the successful bidding
cities. The programme provides a glimpse
of how cities will need to adopt an
integrated approach in order to construct a
viable electric transport network.
The principal benefit that greater electric
car use will bring to communities is clearly a
significant reduction in carbon emissions.
David Hytch of Greater Manchester
Passenger Transport Executive believes the
second big benefit is the ability to at last
“develop a really comprehensive smarter
transport offering that is going to appeal to
a much wider range of people and start to
get into the bulk of people who’ve either
been very resistant or haven’t really
bothered to think about it too much”.
Hytch believes “park and ride” will become
the more attractive option as electric cars begin
to appear. Instead of driving all the way into
the centre of Manchester, people will be more
inclined to use the mixed network provided,
including the city’s extended Metrolink tram
system and an improved bus service.
Planners following Manchester’s lead will
need to address a number of issues the pilot
has identified. Top of the list is “range anxiety”:
the fear among drivers that electric car batteries
will unexpectedly run out of charge, leaving
them stranded. It’s something that Hytch’s
team has factored into its plans: “We’re
learning that range anxiety can go away as
people begin to trust that there is a network
they can rely on. On the issue of charge time,
people don’t like to go much below half of full
charge before they plug in and get going
again. It’s those sorts of things that matter, as
well as quite a few lessons about the back
office and how people like to pay.”
Julian Weber, head of innovation projects
for e-mobility at BMW Project i, says that
quick-charging stations, such as those already
established in Japan, are not necessarily
needed for routine daily use, but still provide
an important function.
“The Tokyo Electric Power Company
introduced quick charging stations during fleet
tests. After installation, the average trip length
until recharge almost doubled, but people still
didn’t use the stations. So they only had these
things for their peace of mind,” he explains.
Atkins’ McCabe observes that the
network will work only if it has an intuitive
capability to track usage trends and the like.
“Building these networks creates both
tension and opportunity in the local area, in
so much that traditionally the information
management on things like parking, travel
movements and traffic flow has been within
the sphere of the local or national
authorities,” he says. “Naturally they have
been quite protective of that and tried to
have all of their own data collection, and all
of their own information provision through
their own controlled website, for example.”
In McCabe’s view, building a viable
transport network based on electric vehicles
will require the public and private sectors to
work together to ensure the sources of
information can be merged.
“There will be questions about how you
get what is currently public information into
private vehicles,” he says. “This will present a
serious challenge for local authorities and the
people who operate electric vehicle fleets.”
And it’s not only data that will need to
be shared. Manchester’s scheme relies on
private-sector backing and has been
designed as a commercial network run for
profit. At the same time, Plugged in Places
has benefited from an initial £30m direct
government subsidy, signalling an acceptance
that the public sector clearly must play a
leading role in driving the adoption of electric
cars. And, given the challenges facing the
global economy, the rate of investment may
be problematic at best.
Crucially, part of the appeal of electric
transport rests in its relatively low running
cost per mile. In the future, drivers may find
80 miles
is the Typical operating range of
electric vehicles – The average mileage
travelled in a day is about 20 to 25 miles
the drive towards e-mobility
Many manufacturers are already committed to developing electric
vehicles. The Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, has been
on sale in the US since December 2010. Ford signalled its intentions
in January 2011 with the launch of an all-electric Focus, again for the
US market, with a UK version due to hit the streets in 2012. Nissan
unveiled its Leaf model a month later and there is a plug-in Prius in
the works. Mazda has said it will target the Japanese market from
next year. Mitsubishi and Peugeot worked together to produce an
electric vehicle known initially as the “i-MiEV” but which will be
marketed as the Peugeot i0n and the Citroen C-ZERO. And BMW will
be bringing its first series-production electric drive model to market in
2013 with the launch of its Megacity vehicle.
BMW’s Julian Weber is convinced that electric vehicles are the right
way to go for urban environments, but emphasises that e-mobility is
still in its infancy. “What we should not forget is even if the forecasts
are correct – the German government, for example, says we will have
two million electric cars by 2020 – it still means that we will have 90
per cent of combustion-engine-propelled cars. It would be an illusion
to say combustion engines will be the minority by 2020 or even 2025.”
themselves being offered incentives to shop
at certain supermarkets in order to “fill up”
at a discount in their refuelling bays. Again,
it’s a question of connecting the dots in
order to make the network successful.
And there’s no doubt that any new
electric networks will have to be run on
a much more data-intensive basis. If half a
country’s car fleet were to go electric,
electricity demand would rise significantly –
some estimates place it at upwards of 25
per cent. Managing the distribution of that
power takes on greater importance. And
central to that effort will be the
development of a suitable technology
framework to manage demand and pricing.
Live data
In a world populated by electric vehicles,
reliable, real-time information becomes
crucial. That’s especially important when
it comes to energy costs – specifically the
cost of electricity, which in future will vary
at different times of the day. It is also
important so that vehicle users know when
and where they can recharge their cars to
be sure of reaching their destinations.
“Think of a simple scenario where
you’ve got five cars all in the same street
that all come home from work at 6pm,”
explains Giles Bridger, industrial products
and electric vehicle lead at IBM Global
Business Services. His work centres on
designing an intelligent infrastructure that
mitigates excessive demands on power
distribution networks, improves usability
and helps to avoid bottlenecks.
“If two of those users aren’t going to
use their car for another 24 hours, whereas
another one will be going out again three
hours later, then with intelligence and twoway communication of information you can
balance the user demand and satisfy them
all. But if there’s no information and if the
users just come home and plug in, then the
result is an increase in full demand at peak
time, which stretches the generating
and distribution networks.”
In order to mitigate the problem, IBM
is working with a consortium of electricity
industry organisations to grapple with two
issues: first, the user experience and, second,
power distribution and consumption around
the working day.
“That’s where intelligent infrastructure
systems (IIS) come into play,” says Bridger.
“They allow some control over demand for
power through things such as variable
pricing, building on things that the
electricity industry is working on already
with smart metering and smart grids.”
Under the circumstances, smart meters,
which monitor the demand for power to
give real insight into where, how much and
why power is being used, become an
important element in future networks.
According to Bridger, IIS will be
instrumental in solving these everyday
problems. “In particular, we’ve been looking
at the electrical impacts of such a scenario
and examining the potential impact of
upgrading distribution networks,” he says.
“Obviously there’s a potential cost on a unit
basis for setting up public or private
recharging posts – but what’s the potential
cost of upgrading the connections to people’s
homes and to what extent can you mitigate
or avoid those physical costs by using smart
intelligent networks?” At a national level the
benefits are likely to be huge.
McCabe believes a culture change will be
necessary to achieve this vision of an efficient
future, as drivers will need to accept the need
to be plugged into the network in terms of
data as well as power.
“It is the power of the data management
that can help you to achieve these
breakthroughs, but it’s got to be in the
interests of the individual to share that data
because it makes their life easier. There also
needs to be a conversation about the data
protection and privacy issues involved.”
Ultimately, the emissions performance
of electric vehicles will depend increasingly
on the sources of electricity being used if
the “sustainability argument” is going to be
won. As such, it’s not only a question of
convincing drivers that the future is electric.
Utilities, governments, manufacturers and
consumers will all need to come together
in order to achieve a low-emission future
for vehicles.
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