Electric vehicles: Another inconvenient truth

Electric vehicles (EVs) boast a history virtually as long as internal-combustion-powered cars and steam cars. They date back to the early years of the 20th Century, but range has always been a stumbling block -- and that's why internal combustion took precedence as the powertrain of choice for the automotive industry.

Now, with CO2 emissions a black mark against internal combustion and peak oil leading to the inevitable extinction of any engine that burns fossil fuels, society is ready to return to electric vehicles.

Recharged from a standard AC Mains power outlet, EVs are cheaper to run and better for the environment -- even if recharged with 'black power'. They cost relatively little to develop, compared with fuel cells, and there's universal (household) infrastructure to support them.

So why aren't we all driving EVs right now?

Well, for starters, the apparently accessible infrastructure is not ready for widespread adoption of EVs throughout the world, says Toyota's advanced powertrain development guru, Bill Reinert.

"At Cobo [Centre in Detroit, the venue for the NAIAS]... we saw a lot of people with electric cars there," he told Australian journalists who had visited the North American International Auto Show.

"Rule of thumb: You're going to pay about [US]$500 up front for every electric mile you travel...

"Tesla: 200-mile range, [US]$100,000 cost."

Reinert's 'rule of thumb' applies at the other end of the scale too. The Chevrolet Volt is expected to achieve a range of just 40 miles, which would, using Reinert's rule, set the Volt's purchase price at around US $20,000. That sounds about right. If purchase price is predicated on a car's range -- and vice versa -- there are other impediments to EV ownership also.

"You get a lot of 'electrical' people who say: 'Oh, we'll charge these cars up overnight, offpeak -- when you don't have to provide infrastructure to charge the car'. First of all, none of you wait until 10 o'clock at night to put gas in your car -- and so it's counter-intuitive to the customer to have to regulate their behaviour.

"Second of all, I believe Australia is like the United States in that a lot of your electrical infrastructure was developed immediately after World War II -- perhaps 20 years [afterwards], within that period. It wasn't designed to accommodate LCD [TVs], it wasn't designed to incorporate a house with three 'Mac' computers with 27-inch screens, it wasn't designed to incorporate air conditioning -- so the feed to your house is undersized, the feed from the pole back to the transformer is undersized, the transformer is undersized and the substation is undersized...

"So it's not a trivial issue to think about these things in a holistic manner if you start to worry about the electrification of cars -- and the charging of cars.

"There's no magic," says Reinert. "People say 'Well, we'll have fast-charge and we'll charge your car up in 10 minutes'.

"Take the kilowatts out of the kilowatt/hours you need. Divide by 10 minutes and you'll figure out what the kilowatt demand is and you'll find out that... if you want to charge your battery in 10 minutes, then that demand... is enough electricity for your whole block. Not for your house, for your whole block."

And that would be just recharging one car in 10 minutes. Imagine watching your favourite TV program, downloading music from the Internet or lazing under the air conditioning -- only to have the entire house 'brown-out' as your neighbour recharges the Tesla for a trip to the shops.

As Reinert explains, a large EV-driving population would put "incredible peak strain on the distribution grid", but he believes that the changing lifestyle of the world's population will make electric vehicles something of a necessity, all the same.

"For the first time, this year, half of the world's population lives in an urban centre," he explains.

"Cities take up four per cent of the land mass in the world and use 90 per cent of the resources. 70 per cent of the CO2 emissions come from building and maintaining urban areas."

50 per cent of the population, 90 per cent of resources, 70 per cent of the carbon load; sounds like an argument for decentralisation...