CLEVELAND, Ohio – Electric vehicles are coming, and automakers aren’t the only ones adapting.
Cleveland-Cliffs will sell new types of steel, and more of it. Goodyear has already come out with EV-specific tires. And FirstEnergy, with its subsidiaries including Ohio Edison and Illuminating Co., must make sure the electric grid is ready to charge them all.
But electric vehicles are not around. According to the US Department of Energy, less than 1% of the transportation sector relied on electricity, as of 2020. Internal combustion engine vehicles, often called ICE vehicles, will still dominate the roads for the foreseeable future.
An electric vehicle future, whenever that future arrives, will change things for some Northeast Ohio companies. And they are already looking ahead.
How EVs are driving the evolution of Goodyear tires
Electric vehicles, like their gas-powered counterparts, will of course run on tires. But those tires will have to be better in many ways, explained David Reese, Goodyear’s vice president of product development.
“The pace has definitely picked up in the last few years, but these are things we’ve been working on for at least a decade,” Reese said.
Some changes are intuitive. The average electric vehicle is heavier than a traditional vehicle, so the tires must handle heavier loads.
Electric motors, known for quick acceleration, also produce a lot of torque, so they need more stable gears.
Other changes are more subtle, such as reducing tire rolling resistance, which is the friction between the tires and the road a vehicle must overcome to move. With less rolling resistance, a vehicle can get better fuel economy, regardless of whether that vehicle uses gas or electricity.
Range has been a big focus for EV makers, Reese said.
A less obvious difference: How do the tires sound? An internal combustion engine is noisy and masks the noises a tire makes. But an electric vehicle is much quieter, so drivers are more likely to notice tire sounds.
Reese said Goodyear has developed SoundComfort Technology, tires with built-in foam to reduce the noise they make.
Another change, geared more toward autonomous vehicles, involves non-pneumatic tires. These tires have no air in them and are less prone to flats. That becomes a bigger focus in some applications, such as self-driving delivery robots, Reese said.
Many of these changes were already a focus for Goodyear. But Reese said electric vehicles are accelerating the evolution of tires.
Many EV manufacturers are choosing to put Goodyear tires on their vehicles, he said. The company launched the ElectricDrive GT, its first replacement tire for electric vehicles, in December.
“OEMS (original equipment manufacturers) are the ones that are helping to drive the industry,” Reese said. “We are thrilled to be such an important part of this new vehicle architecture.”
How FirstEnergy will coordinate charging, bringing electric vehicles into the grid
Imagine if every house on the block had a dryer in the same time. If enough drivers choose electric vehicles over gas-powered ones, this drag on the electric grid could become a reality.
That’s the future FirstEnergy is preparing for, and why it’s proposing pilot programs aimed at EV charging, said Camilo Serna, the company’s vice president of rates and regulatory affairs.
However, it is a long way off. A US Department of Energy study said about 25% of Ohio’s vehicles would need to be electric to impact the distribution system. As of 2020, EVs accounted for 1% of vehicles in the state.
Serna said the country could reach that level in the 2030s, but it’s hard to predict how government incentives and new vehicles will change that pace.
“We need to plan for our future where we have many customers with electric vehicles,” said Serna.
Part of that planning is an upcoming pilot program where drivers will use smart chargers that FirstEnergy can connect to. It would provide data to FirstEnergy and also allow the company to delay and schedule charging.
For example, many people will plug in their chargers when they get home from work around 7:00 p.m. FirstEnergy may delay some of the chargers, scheduling some to start at 9:00 p.m., others at 11:00 p.m.
Crowding out the chargers would reduce peak demand and get more power through the grid with fewer upgrades, Serna explained.
“What we want to do is add all this load with the minimum investment needed,” Serna said.
That could be great for customers, as electric vehicles have the potential to lower electricity bills, Serna said.
Tariff prices are calculated by volume over cost, or how much energy is used divided by how much it costs to operate the grid. If electric vehicles use much more electricity and FirstEnergy doesn’t have to spend as much money on grid upgrades, Serna said that could help lower rates.
Serna said utilities could upgrade the system in the future by installing new transformers or power lines, but the grid is mostly ready for electric vehicles. Utilities made major improvements in the 1960s and 1970s when air conditioners became widespread.
FirstEnergy is also proposing pilot programs geared toward battery storage so superchargers can tap into the grid during business hours. It’s also looking at fleets, like a parking lot full of vehicles, and how it can handle those loads.
Electric vehicles will need more steel and specialty materials from Cleveland-Cliffs
Cleveland-Cliffs and the automaker are linked at the hip, said Celso Goncalves, the company’s chief financial officer. And they see the shift to electric vehicles as positive.
“Not only do you need steel for the vehicles of the future, but you need steel to build the infrastructure for those vehicles going forward,” Goncalves said.
Cliffs is the largest supplier of steel to any automaker in North America, and the shift to EVs will mean more demand for steel. Goncalves said the average electric vehicle is 1.1 tons, compared to an average of 1 ton for internal combustion vehicles.
For more than a decade Goncalves said automakers have been trying to make vehicles lighter. Due to the heavier batteries in electric vehicles, this trend will change slightly to handle larger loads.
But the types of steel will also change, Goncalves explained. An example is non-oriented electrical steel, a specialized material needed for electric motors. He says Cliffs is the only steelmaker in North America that currently supplies that steel to vehicles.
Steel is more sophisticated than people think, Goncalves said. Cleveland-Cliff’s research center works with automakers to design their vehicles, and the steel each vehicle uses can be different.
“People tend to think of steel as a commodity,” Goncalves said. But this is not correct. “These are very specific specs that every automaker and every car is looking for.”