NISSAN LEAF
A visitor to the Frankfurt Auto Show, the biggest event of its kind, might think all is well in the car world.
Outside the vast exhibition halls, auto makers may be firing tens of thousands of workers and losing billions. But inside, the cars gleam like polished gemstones, exhibitors swill champagne and executives and engineers burble enthusiastically about the dawn of a new era: The electric car is here.
Electric mobility – e-mobility to use the new buzzword – is the auto show's theme. Dozens of electric cars were rolled out at the start of the Frankfurt show last week. Many manufacturers, big and small, announced plans for electric car production or development.
Some were ambitious. France's Renault and Japanese partner Nissan plan mass production of a family of e-cars, among them the Nissan Leaf, starting in 2011.
Some seemed little more than publicity stunts. German toy car maker Herpa wants to relaunch the Trabant, the primitive, smoke-belching brute that put millions of East Germans on the road during the Cold War, as an all-electric green machine.
The internal combustion engine, and all the woes that come with it – planet-frying carbon-dioxide emissions, urban smog, noise, burning lungs and eyes – is, apparently, on its way to the grave after more than a century of yeoman's work. The auto industry's e-car push will turbocharge innovation, employment and profits, and everyone from the laid-off factory worker in Michigan to Al Gore will approve.
And if you believe that, we've got a special price for you on a creampuff Trabant.
Hype and over-the-top PR campaigns naturally go with any auto show. Frankfurt excelled in this category. Two years ago, there was barely a mention of all-electric cars in Frankfurt; hydrogen-powered fuel cells still seemed the razzle-dazzle technology. Not even the hybrid gas-electric Toyota Prius could generate much buzz. By then it had been in production for almost a decade.
Today, hydrogen is barely mentioned and e-mobility is all the rage. E-mobility promises zero-emission cars that will drastically reduce carbon footprints and the dependency on imported oil. It will make streets clean and quiet. With their tremendous torque, electric cars can put the thrill back into motoring. They will allow the owner to sneer at his troglodyte, SUV-driving neighbour. They don't present the infrastructure problems faced by hydrogen cars because electricity grids cover most countries.
So what changed in two years to thrust e-mobility to the forefront? Nothing much, really, which is why the e-mobility rage should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. Adjusted for inflation, oil prices are pretty much the same today as they were in 2007. True, last year's $147 (U.S.) a barrel peak oil price scared the auto industry, and many drivers, into thinking that gasoline and diesel cars would become luxuries. But the price spike also showed that the best cure for high prices is high prices – oil has fallen by half since 2008.
Battery technology has not improved dramatically in two years, nor have battery prices fallen substantially. In other words, no technological or economic breakthrough in the e-mobility industry has been made.
Lithium-ion batteries are still the state-of-the-art gizmo and they're not quite good enough. Until something better comes along, e-cars will have inadequate range (maybe 100 kilometres, though some manufacturers claim much more) and inadequate charging times (several hours, depending on the voltage).
Electric cars are also highly expensive. GM's Chevy Volt and its European sister, the Opel Ampera, to be introduced as 2011 models, will cost about $40,000 (before tax credits). The California-built Tesla roadster, with Ferrari-like acceleration, is in production and costs more than three times as much. “Who's going to pay twice as much for no advantage over a regular car?” says Wolfgang Schneider, the vice-president of government, environmental and legal affairs for Ford of Europe.
Indeed, look under the hoods of the car makers and you will find that enthusiasm for e-mobility varies considerably. The biggest supporters are Nissan-Renault, GM, Mitsubishi and Tesla. Beyond that, the interest level drops off, though no car maker will officially admit that e-mobility is a dud or a dream for another generation. Car makers covet the “green halo” effect even if they are not pumping billions into e-mobility development. They watched in awe as a single niche model – the hybrid Prius – painted Toyota green, even though Toyota's fleet is stuffed with gas-sucking SUVs and pickup trucks. They want a piece of that lovely PR themselves.
Making an appearance in Frankfurt, Tesla Motors' business development chief, Diarmuid O'Connell, predicts that, within 10 years, “close to 30 per cent” of the car market will be made up with purely electric vehicles, with hybrids and internal combustion engines sharing the rest.
Tesla, which is about to open its first Canadian sales office, in Toronto, is the e-car industry's flavour of the month. Launched in 2004 in Silicon Valley, its engineers took an agnostic view on the technology. Cars powered by oil (of the natural and plant-based variety), hydrogen and hybrid motors were all considered. Oil was out because it was yesterday's technology, one that would not fit comfortably into a world obsessed with carbon reduction. Hydrogen was out because it lacks a generation and distribution infrastructure. The hybrid idea was discarded because Tesla considered it an interim step toward the ultimate goal – a fully electric machine.
Tesla would make that technology leap. And it would make cars that were fast and sexy.
The result was the Tesla roadster, a two-seat rocket sled powered by lithium-ion batteries that can travel about 300 km on a single charge. Tesla delivered its 700th vehicle at the Frankfurt Auto Show and must be doing something right, because in May, Germany's Daimler, owner of Mercedes, bought just under 10 per cent of the company.
“Tesla was a pioneer,” says Stefan Bratzel, head of the automotive centre at Germany's University of Applied Sciences Bergisch Gladbach. “They showed you that e-vehicles could be fun.”
But fun at a hefty price. Only the wealthiest can afford them. But Mr. O'Connell thinks prices will come down fairly quickly. The energy “density” (the amount of energy stored in the battery) has increased by 8 per cent a year for the past decade, he says; at the same time, the prices have dropped by a similar amount – a mini-Moore's law, in effect.
Combine the lower prices with the fact that cars can be charged at home, or at a network of plug-in charging stands, and you have a recipe for mass production, Tesla believes.
Dream on, say other car makers. Take Porsche, the sports car maker that is merging with Volkswagen. It believes the gradual improvement on battery technology is not enough. “It's all about battery technology; there has to be a quantum leap,” says Klaus Berning, a senior Porsche sales executive. “In 10 years, electric will not be a mass product.”
Porsche and other skeptics also note that electricity doesn't come from wall sockets any more than food comes from supermarkets. If e-cars arrive in the millions, electricity-generating plants and transmission grids could be overwhelmed. China is pushing e-mobility hard because it lacks oil reserves of any size. How many more coal-fired generating plants would it have to build to run a national e-car fleet? Certainly hundreds. Clean cars and dirty skies don't seem like progress.
Lithium supplies are another potential problem. Mitsubishi, the maker of the new i MiEv electric car, has already warned that e-car production could send lithium prices soaring in the next few years.
Porsche, Ford and Toyota predict a slow burn on e-car adoption, which is why they're not giving up on hybrids. Ditto Daimler, which is pushing hydrogen fuel cells. “We see this as a development that will take decades,” Ford's Mr. Schneider says.
They may be right. IHS Global Insight, an international consulting and research firm, predicts that e-cars will account for a mere 0.6 per cent of global industry production volume in 2020, with an additional 0.7 per cent coming from hybrids. That's a long way from Renault's 10-per-cent forecast and Tesla's 30 per cent. There's no doubt that e-mobility is coming because oil is a finite resource. But the vast majority of consumers won't go near e-cars unless they go as far, and cost as little, as regular cars. And that could take decades.
Source: theglobeandmail
