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NEWS
Bright future for electric Commodore, but not in production
Better Place has gone to a better place, and EV Engineering is a technology company, not a manufacturerThere was never any real hope of an electric Commodore parked in your driveway – either now or in the future – but recent events serve to illustrate just how tough it would be to put a locally manufactured EV into production.
Firstly came Holden's reveal of the VF model Commodore, which will shortly replace the VE that provided the donor platform for EV Engineering's ground-breaking proof-of-concept trial. There are probably enough changes to the new Commodore under the skin (weight reduction measures among them) to add extra development cost to commercialisation of an electric VF.
Holden is also yet to commit to a rear-drive Commodore platform beyond VF, and the EV Engineering cars are very definitely rear-driven. The electric drivetrain system developed for them is contingent on a mid/rear mounting that would be clearly unsuitable in a front-driven car. In fact, it was the Commodore's low-cost, rear-drive packaging that made the EV Engineering project uniquely appealing.
Another fact working against commercialisation of the project – in vehicle-building terms – is GM's corporate electrification policy. From Detroit down, the corporation considers battery swapping is just not a viable marketing strategy. And as was the case with Renault and its Fluence ZE, the EV Engineering Commodore is configured for battery swapping – yet it's hard to imagine GM brass giving the go-ahead to a unique design in a country far away, employing a battery recharging system that the corporation considers to be roundly discredited.
Since Better Place pulled out of its mission to roll out battery-swap infrastructure throughout Australia, GM's corporate policy is academic anyway. It's unlikely there will be any battery-swap stations in this country for EVs such as the electric Commodores in the foreseeable future, but the cars can still be recharged by conventional means.
EV Engineering itself shows no willingness to go into the business of modifying Commodores and then on-sell them to electric vehicle buyers. At this week's Cars of the Future conference, Tim Olding, Chief Engineer for the consortium, offered his view as to why EV Engineering won't be single-handedly reviving the sort of low-volume coachbuilding industry so prevalent during the early years of the 20th Century.
"Low volume is always a challenge," he said, "because you still have to design and build to the same standards as a high-volume product, but you're recovering that investment over a much smaller number of sales. It's very hard... to be a successful, niche, vehicle builder – and spread that investment over volumes that you could sell."
That is why EV Engineering will never go into business wholesaling (electric) cars, although most of the development work for the car has already been done by Holden, and the electric drivetrain components are supplied by third-party companies for fitment by EV Engineering. In other words, it's not in the same league as building a new Rolls-Royce from scratch.
Furthermore, HSV has shown that a similar business model can be quite profitable. That company has been removing standard V8 engines from Elizabeth-built Commodores and replacing them with entirely new powerplants, including the Calloway C4B and the LS3. That begs the question however, would buyers pay a premium for the same car, but one that needs to be recharged every night and offers little extra performance – if any at all – over its petrol-engined counterparts?
There is at least some sign that battery/electric vehicles might be more affordable in the future. Olding told guests at the conference that the price of battery power is gradually coming down. Anecdotally, Chinese suppliers are wholesaling batteries at around $150 per kW/Hr. For a 16kW/Hr battery pack such as that fitted to the Mitsubishi i-MiEV the cost would be $2400. It's still too expensive though.
More realistically, mainstream prices are hovering around $200 to $250, according to Dr Anup Bandivadekar of the US-based International Council on Clean Transportation. Dr Bandivadekar was pessimistic about the viability of electric passenger cars with current battery technology. For the 400km range – or more – he told the conference, we really need a new battery technology that offers significantly higher energy density at a more affordable cost.
Whatever the case, however, it's clear that EV Engineering sees its role being in R&D, not manufacturing. Olding told the conference that the seven cars had been on the road since July last year and had notched up 65,000km. That Better Place has had to wind back its infrastructure development program in Australia has been a setback for the company, but only in so far as Better Place was a major backer of the EV Engineering project, which has also received significant support from the federal government, under the umbrella of the Green Car Innovation Fund.
"Early this year, one of [the] key benefactors of EV Engineering was Better Place; they decided to ramp back their involvement in the Australian market for the time being," Olding said.
On the bright side, however, a new partner has joined the consortium the EV Engineering exec explained – and while that doesn't address the gap left by Better Place's departure, it does advance the performance of the electric Commodore.
"We've been working with a new company, which is now joining us to work with new technology..." said Olding. "That new technology is owned by a company called Axiflux, and they have joined EV Engineering as a member, as of this month. They'll be working with us together with Air International, Futuris – and Better Place in a small way – on developing... [the] Adaptive Magnetic Flux Array Motor.
"It's an axial-flux configuration, which means that the poles of the magnet are in the same axis as the rotation of the motor. It is an interesting motor in that it has... 23 separate phases. You can selectively turn each phase on and off. The big advantage of that is essentially you get very good part-load efficiency. You can actually shut down whole sections of the motor if you only need half the torque."
According to Olding the motor will operate at an efficiency level of 95 per cent over a much wider set of operating parameters and while its power output is 150kW, the target for torque from the 23-phase unit is a staggering 2800Nm, which explains Olding's follow-up remarks.
"We actually don't need a transmission. This motor will directly drive the wheels..."
There's a further advantage in doing away with the transmission too. The new motor occupies much less space underneath the car and, indeed, is integrated with the differential in a transaxle. This is one of the contributing factors in EV Engineering setting a new target weight of 60kg for the drivetrain – down from 97kg of the current vehicles.
EV Engineering and Axiflux will convert one of the existing seven cars to accept the new drivetrain system over the next 12 months and continue testing. That particular car will be a "testing, development and demonstration platform," as Olding refers to it.
"This project is an excellent example of what we can do with these cars, now that they're built. The cars are proving to be an excellent platform for research and product development. Because it's a whole car, if people have new technologies that they want to test, develop or demonstrate, rather than having to build a new platform to do that they can bring the new technology to us for integration in the vehicle – and at high speed for low cost, help develop new products for the Australian industry."
Plainly from those comments, however, the Commodores remain rolling test beds, rather than a viable production prospect.
Mitsubishi is only bringing in the i-MiEV on special order and Nissan sold fewer than a hundred of the LEAF EV in 2012. With even importers finding the local market for EVs very tight, how tough would it be for a local manufacturer?
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Written byKen Gratton
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