Opportunity knocks and knocks, but Australia sleeps on

Even taking into account the problems of a small market over a large landmass, Australia's legislature sits among the tardier in the developed world in its effort to push consumers towards sustainable motoring. That's not likely to change while petrol remains affordable.

But nor can that  last forever, and the lobby effort is building to wake our legislature from its slumber and push it slowly in the direction of electromobility's theoretical win-win moment, when all the benefits of electric motoring converge in the advent of a network of vehicles powered by renewable energy sources.

If people like sustainability researcher and engineer Andrew Simpson have their way, this would extend to a technology known as ‘vehicle-to-grid' (V2G), which integrates a network of smart EV power packs with the grid in a way that allows them to give and take energy, effectively turning each one into an storage extension of the grid itself.

Simpson arrived early in what's becoming an exponential growth area. Before taking up as a senior research fellow with Curtin University's Sustainable Policy (CUSP) Institute, he was one of the lead engineers working with Tesla in California on the project that turned up on the market as the Roadster. All up, he's spent more than a decade studying hybrids and EVs, their relationship with the electricity grid and renewable energy sources, and their potential in helping staunch climate change.

If September's Frankfurt motor show made one point, it was that the hard sell is on for electromobility. It's happening on three fronts. First, the one that spawned it -- alternative power's potential to reduce the global private transport fleet's impact on climate change.

Second, in adding excitement. This is essential, given high-end petrol powered roadware's entrenchment atop the consumer scale of thrall and desirability, and the electric motor's traditional place in milk vans and geriatric scooters.

At Frankfurt, the counter-attack was spearheaded by Audi with the e-tron super-EV. But it's a line Tesla's been spinning with its Lotus Elise-based Roadster since 2007, with fellow Californian design house Fisker joining in with its Karma PHEV last year.

Third, and most complex, is the still developing but crucial business case -- the subject of a yet to be released study by Simpson and his colleagues for what he will only call "a state government".

Simpson believes Tesla blazed an important trail with the Roadster by opening consumers' minds about EVs and shattering perceptions of them as golf-buggy power. "Yeh, it certainly did that -- broke down peoples' ideas of what EVs are about and what they can do, I think."

But it's the dollar factor that will turn EVs into the daily drive of choice for mainstream urban motorists, he says. According to the report and an analysis piece he wrote for Business Spectator in September, EVs already present a compelling case for individual consumers, fleet operators and legislators alike.

Simpson and his CUSP colleagues conclude that EVs already withstand scrutiny for total cost of ownership, even though the market for them is in its infancy. And once they gain critical mass, that figure will drop as the economic and social costs of the internal combustion engine rise.

He says the CUSP study is as comprehensive as any conducted worldwide, looking at all the costs involved including power consumption, battery degradation, fuel, ongoing maintenance, registration and insurance.

The fuelling costs of an EV being charged at $0.20 per kilowatt-hour come to about a third those of a petrol burner of comparable size and range at $1.30 per litre. "There's further powerful incentive in deriving that mobility from home-grown power rather than imported oil," he adds. "More again when exercising the option to use renewable power.

"The thing with EVs is that once they're on the road the operating costs are prospectively so much lower. At the moment we're in the very early adoption stages, so it's marginal. But already they demonstrate a slight advantage over fossil fuel vehicles. Over the next decade, as they find popularity, the economies of scale grow and the batteries get better, that margin will open up. More again as the economic, environmental and social costs of fossil fuels mount."

Electric motors cost less than internal combustion systems because they have fewer moving parts and they're not dependent on heat. This makes them easier to cool, subjecting components to less stress through expansion, contraction and friction.

Simpson estimates these factors combine to deliver an operating cost advantage of up to 50 pc from the moment the car rolls out of the showroom. "Say a small petrol car costs about $4000 a year to run week to week. Using those comparative fuel price points of $1.30 a litre and $0.20 a kWh, a similarly sized EV will cost about 1 per cent less all up. Even this early in consumer EV history. The maturation of EV technology and the market it serves over the next couple of decades will allow that electric car's running costs to drop to just under $3000 a year, while the petrol car's costs will remain static or rise.

Simpson puts industry expectations of EV maintenance costs at about half those of petrol vehicles. But this might be overshadowed in the early-adoption phases for EVs and plug-ins by the high cost of buying in. Holden has told the Carsales Network the local incarnation of GM's Volt is likely to arrive in showrooms costing more than $60,000.

This is predictable. All new technologies have a settling-in period during which enthusiastic consumers buy in at high prices then live with the grief while manufacturers eradicate operational bugs on the way to wider consumer acceptance.

"And there are new business models emerging," says Simpson. "Like battery leasing and fleet EV subscriptions, that help keep emerging markets viable and staunch that so-called sticker shock."

Overseas governments have sought to hasten the process with buyer incentives providing pain relief on hybrids and EVs. US buyers, for example, get tax credits -- US$6000 on a hybrid, $7500 on an EV. "But we don't -- and look at the difference in market and manufacturer penetration there and here. Most of the big-name indigenous manufacturers offer hybrid models and they do well," says Simpson.

"Incentives are important in getting over the economies of scale barrier and creating a clear market. Look at the comparative markets for the Prius here and there: in the US, you can buy one for about A$25,000. It's closer to $40,000 here. The tax break makes a huge difference. It helps right the imbalance while the new technologies get off the ground.

"And in the States that tax break is purely about the environmental benefits of hybrids. Plug-ins and full electrics redouble those by dispensing further with fossil fuels.

"But look at where Australia stands against the US, Europe and much of Asia. They all have well established incentive schemes for hybrid and/or EV buyers -- it's that important to them."

Simpson argues that Australia's tardiness in this respect means we're failing to make the most of more than $4 billion of stimulus largesse being distributed worldwide to prop the industry up and speed up powertrain diversification.

Part of the issue for policymakers and carmakers alike starts with new technology's old chicken-and-egg problem: consumers won't commit when the support and infrastructure's not there; manufacturers won't commit while consumers appear to balk. Policymakers, meanwhile, say consumer incentives won't work when the supply's not there.

Simpson argues that incentives provide both sides with a vital signal of support by intent. "To avoid being on the tail end of the EV revolution, those policy makers should also consider the societal benefits of EVs," he wrote in the Business Spectator piece. "Because they are compelling -- far more than converting your car to LPG, which does get a subsidy."

What makes this slowness to act odder still to Simpson and other exponents is the EV's potential benefit for the national trade deficit. The study suggests that at those current energy price points, every EV replacing a petrol fuelled vehicle will cut oil imports by more than eight barrels a year -- a saving of $700 a car for both consumer and treasury.

"Even if we're charging our EVs off the coal-fired grid, it's realistic that each vehicle living an average commuter life will cut greenhouse gas emissions by one tonne a year. And that's just the start of it -- the more we move to renewable energy sources, the better it gets. At its extreme -- that is, using a 100 pc renewables-powered grid -- it would allow each EV to cut 4 tonnes a year off current net transport levels."

The implications ripple out beyond oil cost issues, too. "The Australian Transport Council, the peak national and state government advisory body on matters of transport, estimates that each EV that cuts toxic urban pollution by 150 kg a year will deliver a public health saving of about $400 apiece," Simpson says.

He questions the priorities behind the federal government's allocation of the $1.3bn it has earmarked to fund local green car development. "It's a good move, but limited. Looks like it's all going to big operations, for things like Holden's Volt, and Ford's 4-cylinder Falcon and Toyota's hybrid Camry. I'm surprised that none of it's gone towards stimulating an EV market. There's no clearly defined support for the setup of a charging infrastructure."

Especially considering the technology's prospective social benefits at what's now its pointy end, but won't be forever. That is, the use of a smart charging infrastructure to integrate the vehicle battery with the grid, effectively turning each battery into an extension of the grid capable of storing energy it doesn't use and feeding it back when it's needed.

V2G has it within its reach to help dismantle one of the biggest barriers to wider acceptance of renewable energy sources. That is, Mother Nature's flakiness in the day-to-day provision of wind, waves and sunshine. Simpson says this is the chief problem with renewables for the network operators. "They don't relish having to install costly control mechanisms in the infrastructure to optimise distribution -- the switching systems they'd need for seamless shifts between renewables and conventional coal-fired sources. And who can blame them? It's not cheap and there's no quick payoff."

V2G allows the grid to use the EV fleet as a cellular storage facility. With the right batteries in the fleet working with a smart grid, smart metering and broadband, it can effect dramatic reductions in the burden on utilities to provide the power.

How efficiently? Simpson says CUSP research suggests that V2G-ready vehicle could furnish the grid with more than 40 megawatt hours of energy annually, while consuming only  three megawatt hours for its own needs. That adds up to about 37 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil-fuelled energy plants, reducing the total cost burden imposed on the community by around $2000 per vehicle.

"They don't give those consumer tax credits and other incentives away for no reason," he says. "But it does take a bit of longer term thinking."

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