Will Electric Cars Ever Become Viable?
Car makers everywhere are debating how best to channel electricity into a fuel for vehicles, but some in the industry warn that the technology faces too many hurdles ever to become a viable alternative to gasoline. Toyota Motor Corp’s US sales chief Jim Lentz called it the “electrification of the auto industry,” and the trend was obvious at this year’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit, a trend setter for the wider industry.
Detroit’s auto show featured an “Electric Avenue” with electric cars in the pipeline from Japan’s Nissan Motor Co and China’s BYD Auto Co. Italy’s Fiat SpA, which took over US icon Chrysler LLC this year, touted an electric-only Fiat 500. Young Californian firm Tesla Motors Inc celebrated the production of its 1,000th electric sports car.
Their efforts were backed up by a study from consulting firm McKinsey & Co, timed to be released with the auto show, which found that electric cars could become a viable alternative to petrol vehicles in “mega cities” like New York and Shanghai within the next five years.
For other manufacturers it was hybrid vehicles, which use both electric and gasoline motors, that took center stage. Toyota, which pioneered the hybrid market for the last decade with its popular Prius, unveiled a smaller, cheaper hybrid concept car that could be released in the next three years.
Its Japanese rival Honda Motor Co displayed a production-ready “sporty” compact hybrid, the CR-Z, while a hybrid version of the Ford Fusion was named car of the year by North America’s automotive journalists. US giant General Motors Co displayed its Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid that is due to come out some time towards the end of the year.
A battle is brewing between hybrids plug-ins and electric cars. “The next decade will be the decade of electricity,” said Michael Robinet, vice president of global vehicle forecasts for CSM Worldwide.
Yet others argue that battery technology is not nearly advanced enough to make these alternatives anything more than a niche for the environmentally conscious, or those with money to spare.
Anthony Pratt, an automotive analyst with Pricewaterhouse Coopers, forecast that hybrids are to take up just 4 per cent of the market by 2015, up from about 1 per cent last year. Most people cannot easily afford a hybrid, or are unwilling to settle for the more limited driving range that comes with an electric vehicle.
“There’s a long way to go and they are only part of the solution,” Pratt said.
That was backed up by a December study from the US-based National Research Council, which argued that the battery technology powering plug-in hybrids is far less advanced than carmakers would care to admit. That could put such cars out of the reach of the general public for the foreseeable future.
The study estimated that the lithium-ion batteries GM plans to use for the Volt would add more than 18,000 dollars to the production cost. That price is expected to drop only about one third by 2020. Industry analysts expect the Volt to cost upwards of 30,000 dollars.
Despite the hype in Detroit, many carmakers recognize the problems with electrics and their limited potential. Yet with the threat of global warming pushing governments to raise fuel standards, the industry is faced with little choice.
John Mendel, head of Honda’s US sales, said the technological challenges facing carmakers are “the toughest that the industry has faced ever in its history,” while GM also concedes that the first version of its Volt will not quite be a mass market vehicle.
“What we are all trying to do is to get this technology to be cost effective,” said Denise Gray, who heads battery development for GM. “We are not done yet.”
Toyota, which has so far cornered the hybrid market, is also sceptical that the technology would ever take up more than a small segment of the market. Instead, most carmakers are going to have to work on making smaller cars and cleaner conventional petrol engines to meet fuel-efficiency standards.
“I would say within 10 years, that hybrids might be at 10 per cent market share,” said Bill Reinert, Toyota’s US manager for advanced technology. “Plug-ins are a very small subset of that. Electric vehicles are a smaller subset of the subset.”
One this is certain, gasoline powered vehicles will be replaced sooner than later because the health of our environment depends on it. The use of alternative fuel technologies in the transportation sector will be paramount to replacing gasoline powered vehicles. We are now seeing an increased demand for advances in alternative fuel technologies.
Will electric cars ever become viable? Although some experts are pessimistic, there is no way to predict what technological advances will occur in the near future. Who could have foreseen the rapid technological advancements that have been made in the electronic technologies (e.g. cell phones).
We can expect the same kind of explosion in alternative fuel technologies and the electric car.
source: earthtimes.org
