For the past several years, almost all the electric action on the roads has come in the form of electric hybrids with gasoline engines, a concept that Toyota popularized with its Prius but adopted by a number of other manufacturers. But it's starting to look like, within the next several years, it will be possible to buy electric vehicles from a variety of manufacturers, many of which are taking significantly different approaches to the problem. In the wake of several announcements timed for the Frankfurt Auto Show, we'll take a look at some of the technologies that will be vying for a place in your future vehicle purchase.
For the most part, it looks like everyone is going with some variant on the lithium-ion technology that you'll find in a typical laptop battery these days. Audi, BMW, and VW are all showing electric concept cars at the show, and all of them plan on using some form of lithium tech. The same goes for previously announced vehicles: GM, with the Chevy Volt; and Nissan, with its Leaf, will also be using lithium batteries; the Tesla is already on the market with them.
That said, not all lithium batteries are the same, and there are several different approaches to how the charge is stored and the material itself is structured. The key determinant here seems to be how quickly the car is expected to appear on the market. The ones that are coming sooner, like Nissan's, are using technology that's already common on the market, while those with longer time horizons are betting on approaches that are just now appearing on the consumer level, or are still in development.
In any case, manufacturers are focusing on bringing the quality of the production up. It may be acceptable to lose a noticeable amount of charge capacity within a year on a handheld device, but that's not going to cut it in a vehicle.
Intriguingly, the odd man out here is Toyota. Bloomberg News has an in-depth look at Toyota's internal testing of lithium batteries. They apparently worked quite well, meeting Toyota's performance and safety standards, and lowering the total vehicle weight, bringing a slight increase in gas mileage. But the company has simply decided that the added cost compared to the older nickel technology that it's currently using isn't worth it.
Would you like an engine with that?
Toyota is also sticking with hybrids, rather than pure electric vehicles (it will offer a plug-in hybrid in the near future, but that won't make it much more than 15 miles before the engine will need to kick in). But here, it seems to have some company. For example, the Chevy Volt is designed to run for 40 miles without the engine starting, but its engine will charge the battery while the car is in use, greatly extending its range.
At the Frankfurt show, BMW showed a concept car it's calling the Vision. It's a plugin hybrid that can go roughly twice as far as Toyota's before the engine needs to kick in. The electric drive is paired with a three-cylinder turbo-diesel; combined, the two produce a gas mileage estimated at over 60 mpg. But BMW is tuning the system for performance: it will go from zero to 100kph (62mph) in 4.8 seconds and top out at 155mph.
That's precisely the sort of performance Audi is promising from its concept car, the e-tron. The big difference: Audi's is electric only. It's promising over 150 miles out of each charging of its 53 kilowatt-hour battery pack, of which only 42KWhr will be used, in order to extend the life of the battery. It's also water cooled, with the waste heat being used to help heat the cabin in cold weather. Each wheel will have its own electric motor, and will use regenerative breaking to help Audi meet its goals when it comes to range.
High end or budget
BMW, Audi, and Tesla are all targeting the high-end market when it comes to electric vehicles, and this makes a degree of sense. That market segment focuses on cutting-edge technology, and buyers there are willing to pay extra to get something that might be an extravagance on the mass market (they're also probably used to a degree of inconvenience). That's why it's somewhat surprising that Volkswagen, which owns several high-end badges, is targeting its electric efforts at the low end.
At the Frankfurt show, VW announced that, by 2013, buyers will be able to purchase an all-electric econobox. The E-Up! (based on Audi's name, it seems that capital letters are now low-end) will take nearly three times as long to hit 100kph as Audi and BMW's cars, and have a range of just over 80 miles. According to greentechmedia, VW expects that it will take until 2013 for battery technology to drop in price sufficiently for the car to make sense economically.
Of course, by that point, GM's Volt and Nissan's Leaf will have been on the market for two years, which may give those companies a substantial head start both in terms of manufacturing experience and mindshare. That said, they each will face problems caused by bringing their vehicles to market early. GM seems to be pricing the Volt a bit high for its vehicle class, while Nissan is said to be relying on a system where owners lease their cars' batteries, which may qualify them for various financial breaks and government incentives.
The wildcard in all of this, however, may be Better Place, a company that's planning on a combined rollout of electric vehicles and stations where an entire battery pack can be swapped out, which it hopes will make having a fully charged vehicle as convenient as pulling up to the pump. But, so far, there's been little indication of when its vehicles will be ready to hit the streets in the locations where it's planning on testing the system.
In any case, it looks like electric cars are ready to arrive on the streets in numbers, as most major manufacturers have at least a plugin hybrid in the works, and many have purely electric vehicles in the pipleline (Ford is also working on one). If anything, the diversity of approaches is cause for optimism, as it's more likely to uncover an approach that works both with consumers and the existing power infrastructure.