Crusades are dangerous things because people are swept along in them, without necessarily questioning what they are doing. At the moment, government everywhere are pushing for more electric cars, as they think this will help to solve the problems of CO. emissions, which need to be addressed. Car companies, wishing to be seen to be following the right trends, are rushing into Formula E so that they can display their "green" credentials. But even if Peugeot boss Carlos Tavares has launched the DS brand into the electric championship, he is vocal in his opposition to the industry being forced to adopt electric cars.
"The world is crazy," he says. "The fact that the authorities order us to go in a technological direction, that of the electric vehicle, is a big turning point. I don't want the world to discover in 30 years that this is not as good as it looks, in terms of recycling batteries, the use of rare materials, the electromagnetic emissions of the battery in recharging situations. And how are we going to produce more clean electrical energy?"
Tavares adds that no-one wants to listen to him because he is a car manufacturer.
Developing better equipment is obviously key, but the electric motors of the modern era are already small, efficient and free of all emissions when they are operating.
The problem is that they require batteries to store the electricity that runs them and progress in battery development is very slow, and there is a huge mountain to climb for battery-powered vehicles to be on a par with conventional machinery. Gasoline has around 30 times the energy density of the best battery.
Cost is also an issue and while the price of lithium ion batteries has fallen considerably in recent years, but they are still very expensive, with a replacement battery for a Chevrolet Bolt, for example, being priced at $15,700, which is around 40 percent of the cost of the entire vehicle. And industry analysts say that it will be at least another 10 years before electric cars reach the same price as regular gasoline-powered cars.
The current generation of electric vehicles need to be recharged after a couple of hundred miles (at best) and even the biggest fans of electric technology accept that it will take at least 10 years to double the range of electric cars, and to reduce the charging times required. Having said that, current EVs meet the needs of the majority of people using them because they are only ever used over short distances, travelling to and from work. They cannot drive for long distances.
The French government's Agence De l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Energie (ADEME) concluded this in a study five years ago, but it has been ignored by the government. Thus, it is argued, the government is crazy to be paying $70 billion in order to install seven million charging stations in the next few years and providing subsidies on electric vehicles. Some even argue that this is being done to aid the country's electricity companies which have faced falling or stagnant demand in recent years. With the government also committed to moving away from nuclear power stations, which produce around 80 percent of all French electricity, it is a real problem.
According to the IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, manufacturing every kilowatt-hour of lithium-ion battery storage for a Tesla releases 150 to 200 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In other words, each Model S is responsible for about 17.5 tons of CO. even before it has turned a wheel and to return the vehicle to carbon neutral status requires around eight years of driving. Other studies suggest that battery manufacturing creates so much CO. that one needs to travel more than 50,000 miles in an electric car before it becomes less polluting than a conventional internal combustion engined automobile, which amounts to an electric car being driven for 20 miles every working day (allowing for weekends and holidays) for 10 years before the car clears its "carbon debt". And that is without taking into account the electricity being used to power the car.
The University of Michigan recently calculated the “well-to-wheels” production of automotive greenhouse gases involved in electric cars, with power generated by coal is equivalent to 29 miles per gallon of petrol. Solar power rates 350 mpg, nuclear power boosts this to 2,300 mpg and hydro-electricity tops the bill with a spectacular 5,100 mpg, allowing for the CO. produced when building dams.
The development of more efficient hybrid cars may be a compromise but many in the industry think that this is still the best model for the foreseeable future, which is why F1 is continuing down its path, trying to improve thermal efficiency - and creating some extraordinary gains in the last few years.
Source: JSNL
