market changes opportunity?
PROFESSIONALS DISCUSS
Electric Vehicles - Threat or Opportunity?
In 2017, just over 4% of global car and US light truck sales were electrified. Today governments are issuing long-term targets such as: ‘all new car sales will be electric by 2040’. By ‘electric’ they include hybrid cars, or vehicles with and electric motor alongside a conventional gasoline or diesel internal combustion (IC) engines, which provide enhanced fuel economy and/or lower emissions. The shift to electrification can be seen as a threat to conventional technologies, but the IC engine will be around for a long time to come, albeit in an increasingly different form.
When people hear the phrase ‘electric car’, most refer to a battery electric vehicle (BEV), the zero-emission, silent running, low fuel-cost answer to personal mobility and air-quality problems. However only 1% of global car sales fall into this category. That’s about 850,000 of the 86mn cars and US light trucks sold globally in 2017. If BEVs have been around for a decade, why aren’t sales higher?
Al Bedwell, Director, Global Powertrain, LMC Automotive
so after one hour of charging, the car can drive for an additional 168 miles under the WLTP test cycle. While that may be adequate for many journeys, it cannot compete with a mid-range diesel car offering 700 miles driving range for a 10 minute recharge or refuel.
Another key problem for BEVs is cost. Without significant financial incentives, the market for BEVs would struggle. Low production volumes and stubbornly high (but falling) battery costs mean BEVs can’t yet compete with IC production costs where volumes are measured in millions of units. Importantly, the charging infrastructure, with some exceptions, is not well-enough developed. Add to this the lack of model choice, and that we are in an era of relatively low fuel costs for conventional cars, it’s easy to see why the BEV market is moving slowly so far.
In the end though, regulation will force change. The IC engine can only go so far to meeting long-term CO2 targets. Alongside hybridisation, zero-emission cars, mostly BEVs, will be needed in significant quantities before too long and will be mandated in some places. It won’t be until the middle of the next decade when the limiting factors of cost and charging infrastructure cease to be serious headwinds, and growth of BEVs will become more rapid.
Put simply BEVs don’t (yet) make sense for everyone. They have a number of drawbacks including range and charge time which are diminishing but haven’t yet gone away. The latest BEV car on the market in Europe, Jaguar’s I-PACE, achieves a range/charge-time figure of 168 miles per hour when using a 50kW public charger,
Peak-IC engine is in sight, but at LMC Automotive our central Western Europe 2040 passenger car technology and fuel type scenario indicates that more than 40% of new car sales will still have an IC engine, albeit in hybrid form. Most of the remainder will be BEVs, but fuel cell vehicles will finally be emerging by that time and in the very long-term, are likely to be the winners.
LINK
www.lmc-auto.com
LUBE MAGAZINE NO.145 JUNE 2018
47
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