Low Carbo Transport - an uphill ride?

Political decision-makers and car industry leaders in some of the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) present the future for road

transport as dominated by hybrid cars, and within a few decades, by all-electric car fleets.

Consumers and the media follow this trend, but the credibility of these new and untried alternatives to conventional oil and gas-fuelled cars will be critical to their growth.

The basic rationale for hybrid and electric cars is fuel saving, although the reduction of CO2

emissions is also heavily promoted. Since the 1970s oil shocks, but more strongly since 2000, all-electric and part-electric hybrid cars are in favor with political decision-makers, mainly because they offer large potential oil savings. The attractiveness of all-electric and hybrid cars rises for them in the big industrial and urban societies of the OECD, such as China, India and other oil-importing countries. Cutting oil demand and import dependence has been, and still is a major political and security goal, not to forget the fact that it remains an economic goal in most countries.

Other arguments suggest that electric and hybrid cars cause less pollution, are quieter,

use less energy to run the same distance, may be easier to maintain and upkeep, and their

production could generate new jobs and business opportunities for car industry entrepreneurs. If the electricity required to charge their batteries comes from renewable sources like wind or solar, hydro, biomass or geothermal power, then car transport could become sustainable.

Back in the early days of the car industry, before 1900, electric cars dominated the world's

existing and small car fleets, and held all car speed records at that time. Around 1890, at least 25% of all the tiny number of cars in the fleets of countries like USA, Germany, UK or France were electric. Due to basic advantages of electric drive that still exist today, like simple transmission with few or no gears, and electric motors able to convert more than 90% of battery energy to mechanical power, electric vehicles always won out, for speed, but were soon unable to compete for range or total distance run.

In September 1900, for example, Andrew Riker in an electric car beat all rivals in the US speed trials at Newport, Rhode Island, but his car could not run as far as oil fuelled rivals. From the 1920s, with the massive increase in Henry Ford's car production, electric cars were swept away by oil and gas-fuelled cars.

This problem still exists today; all-electric cars can run very fast, but their range is always limited by the size, weight and cost of their batteries. The Tesla Roadster, albeit far from an average saloon-type family car with its high power rating up to 250 KW and related speed capability, needs the equivalent of 6830 computer-size lithium-based batteries. Charging the Tesla Roadster in fast charge mode needs about 15 kiloWatts of power.

Finding the lithium for a world car fleet with a large proportion of electric cars, each much smaller than Tesla sport cars, will itself be difficult due to mine supply and resource limits, but producing the electricity to recharge a growing proportion of electric cars in the world fleet could set even bigger challenges. Taking the EU countries with a total car fleet of about 220 million in 2009, replacing 10% of this present fleet with electric cars, and charging them at an average of only 4kW each during daily recharge would raise European power capacity needs by around 85 000 MW.

This is more than the current national electric power capacity of either France, UK, Italy or Spain!

The first step towards an all-electric car fleet is today's part-electric hybrids using oil or gas-fuelled engines to drive the car and help charge its on board batteries. Market growth of hybrids is quite strong in some OECD countries, but credibility of present-day hybrids is critical to winning public approval for moving forward to the next step, of massive all-electric car fleets.

Toyota, despite being the world's number one auto company, faces multiple problems with its Prius hybrids. This has caused a US $2 billion recall, official investigations in several major countries and a serious loss of face, taken very seriously by image-conscious Japan. Following Toyota's first annual financial loss in 50 years and as for Renault-Nissan, Ford, VW and other car companies outside China and India, Toyota's return to profitability in late 2009 was mainly obtained through layoffs and cost-cutting. Maintaining credibility for hybrids is therefore very important to Toyota, since Prius hybrids occupy a growing market segment.

Making this problem worse, new reports tell of both Chevrolet and Ford facing doubts on the reliability of complex, energy saving brake systems used in hybrid models, or more generalised concern on the growing role of electronics, much of it for saving fuel, both in hybrid and conventional oil-driven cars.

Toyota's torment comes at a bad time for low carbon transport. Electric and hybrid cars are

exposed to the risk of political and public support slipping away if energy prices do not rise, and if the media attention to "global warming crisis" and "ecology" continues to weaken.

More important, raising the role of non-oil transport in the car fleet is a massive industrial

investment challenge, needing careful attention to the credibility and image of these untried transport alternatives. Even the most fervent and outspoken supporter of all-electric cars in the industry, Renault-Nissan's CEO Carlos Ghosn makes it clear that his bet on electric cars is risky. Success will depend on large French and Japanese government aid, and support from countries like Denmark that seek to raise the number of electric cars in their national fleet for special domestic political reasons.

The electric car future is therefore based on government subsidies, aid and legislation. When we add the lithium resource, power supply, cost and driver difficulties for raising the share of electric cars in the world car fleets, we can understand why so few car makers are currently making the same bet as Ghosn.

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