How to develop a charging infrastructure policy

The debate about charging standards rages.

The land grab for charging spaces continues.

The ridiculous proliferation of charging maps amuses (60+).

The lack of a coherent national UK policy frustrates.


The void created by the absence of government insight and therefore policy and control is confusing both the trade and consumers - yet it need not be this way.

Here's how I see it:

Start with the customer. What are the customer segments and what are their needs? How do they behave? What is the most cost effective and efficient way to meet those needs? A simplified view:

Charging at home, at work, and at hotels/airports and other places offering long term car parking can be slow charging, because at these places an electric car will typically be parked for 8 hours or more. No need for expensive fast charging, unless you wish to pay a premium to be able to do so. In many cases, charging can be solar p/v i.e off-grid and zero emission.

Charging everywhere else can be fast charging and eventually, a premium price paid for it - although the cost and price of fast charging infrastructure must come down by 50% or more to create viable business models. Public car parks, shopping malls, retail parks, supermarkets, city centre kerbside parking, these are the places where stays will be short and where speed and convenience has its price, or can be offered as an incentive to visit. One point to note is that the tax man may have something to say about workplace charging however, as it may be seen as a Benefit in Kind (BIK).

According to US charging firm 360 Green, for home charging of 50 miles in the US, a Level 1 (110v) charger will take 7 hours at 1.7 kWh charge rate compared to a Level 2 (220v) charger which will take 3.6 hours at a charge rate of 3.3 kWh.

For public charging, where the average stay at a US grocery store is 26 minutes, a Level 2 (220v) charger would charge 6 miles and a Level 3 (DC 480v) fast charger 80 miles.

As with all matters electric, the landscape will settle down as governments develop policy and companies develop their business models based on cost reductions and economies of scale, combined with an understanding of customer needs and our willingness to pay.

Opel EV microcar concept

The micro city car trend continues. First it was Renault and Nissan, then Audi and Volkswagen, now Opel will be revealing a two-seater 'One Euro' microcar 'serious design concept' EV called the RAKe in the design style of the Ampera with a range of 60 miles and a top speed of 70 mph. 

 I tweeted  a week ago that this looked like the start of something and I am feeling confident that we are looking at a future tipping point in personal mobility as economics and ecology pushes governments and automakers towards smaller, energy efficient vehicles.

Now, what do we do about large, heavy, energy inefficient vanity cars? Time for policy makers to step up to the plate and provide a framework that incentivises and prioritises this new breed of microcars.

 Interestingly, the RAKe is twice as 'fuel efficient' as the Leaf and could retail for £9,000.

EV trial results encouraging

A series of UK car trials involving EVs funded by the Technology Strategy Board has reported positive results.  
20,000 charging events and over 110,000 individual journeys covering just under 680,000 miles in electric cars provided by smart, BMW, Mini, Liberty Electric Cars, Nissan and Mitsubishi were included in the trials. The data covers the collected information received from the CABLED, MINI E, EVADINE and EEMS Accelerate trials to name a few. They formed part of TSB’s £25 million Low Carbon Vehicle Demonstrator programme.

•  83 per cent of private drivers involved in the trial said the vehicles met their daily needs.
• Range anxiety dropped by 35% after 3 months of driving an EV.
• 95 per cent of participants said they didn’t find using an electric vehicle any more difficult than their conventional combustion cars.

Prior to the trials, only 16 per cent of private drivers and 14 per cent of Fleet Drivers expected their EV to perform better than their normal car.  However, these scores improved by 24 per cent and 26 per cent respectively after three months.

Another small step in the right direction then.

Suzuki Stromos EV for Germany

German E-Cars (that's the name of the company), a subsidiary of the Frager Group,  is converting Suzuki Splash hatchbacks into full electric cars and is currently selling them to German corporations such as Siemens, Sixt and SAP for 41,900 euros (that's approximately $60,000) - possible when the Nissan Leaf is not yet available in Germany.

Top speed is 75 mph and range is approximately 60 miles, on show at Frankfurt.

Volvo C30 EV goes into pilot production

Volvo has commenced production with an initial run of 350 C30 Electrics, destined for Sweden, Belgium and Germany.
The limited volume will be accompanied by a premium price, with some reports estimating a 3 year monthly lease of 1,500 euro. Clearly it is a cautious learning process for Volvo, rather than a grab for market share. 


Range is similar to the Nissan Leaf at 75 to 95 miles under typical driving conditions from its 82kW (110bhp) electric motor and 24kWh lithium ion battery pack . The C30 Electric features a 14.5-litre bioethanol tank which is used to power the cabin climate control, relieving strain on the car’s batteries and ensuring that the range isn’t compromised in cold weather conditions.
Full production of Volvo EVs are not expected until 2015, although hybrids will probably be released earlier.

Report: EVs more expensive until 2030

According to a new report - and in contrast to many other forecasts which suggest that the TCO (total cost of ownership) of EVs will meet or be less than that of conventional cars before the end of this decade - electric cars will not be able to compete with conventional cars on price until 2030.

The government's climate advisers wants to see 11m electric or plug-in hybrid models on UK roads by 2030, to meet the UK's carbon targets.

The total cost of ownership of environmentally friendly electric vehicles is currently around £5,000 more than petrol and diesel cars, found the study undertaken by consultancy Element Energy and commissioned by the public-private LCVP (Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership).

But even if fuel prices double to £3 a litre, the authors said, the overall cost of electric cars will be higher than conventional combustion engine cars. Electric cars today cost around £30,000 without a government grant of £5,000 - nearly double the equivalent petrol and diesel rivals. But they are cheaper to run, with a Nissan Leaf costing around 2p per mile, compared to 14p for a Ford Focus. 

The Daily Telegraph quotes Greg Archer, managing director of the LCVP, who said falling battery costs would help electric cars compete in the next 15-20 years. "After 2020 the range of new technology will be more commercially available. It's obvious that there needs to be a reduction in the price of batteries and fuel cells to achieve market share and become competitive. It remains to be seen if [cost] reductions will be achieved, but these [the projections in the report] are not conservative estimates, they are the best estimates based on probability."

He added there was a very small chance that electric cars and other alternatively fuelled vehicles would become competitive by 2020, but said that was around a one in 20 likelihood. "Major technology takes a couple of decades before it receives parity with current technology," said Archer.

The LCVP report suggests electric and plug-in hybrid cars produce lower carbon emissions over their lifetime compared to petrol and diesel cars, provided they are powered with renewable electricity. But Archer said it was unlikely such cars would make a large contribution to government carbon targets. "The majority of carbon savings in transport will come through the improvement of conventional cars and the switch to biofuel," he said.

As I have said many times in this blog, these reports should be taken with a pinch of salt, not least because we have yet to see a forecast proved correct for the EV market.

First EV estate car trials

First shown at lat year's Paris Auto Show, the Skoda Octavia E Line will now be put in to a test fleet, with production of 10 cars.


As far as I am aware, this is the first estate car to be put into e-trials.



Based on the Octavia Combi, the E Line features a 26.5kWh lithium-ion battery pack placed under the floor and an electric motor with a constant output of 60kW (80HP) and a maximum power of 85kW (110HP). As with all electric motors, its torque (270 Nm or 199 lb-ft) is available immediately.


With this setup, the Octavia accelerates from 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) in 12.0 seconds and reaches an electronically limited top speed of 135 km/h (84 mph), while its maximum range is about 140 km (87 miles).


The trial starts this Autumn.

Audi A2 EV concept

The Wall St Journal reports on the Audi A2 EV concept:

Luxury car maker Audi says it will unveil its A2 electric concept car during the Frankfurt Motor Show this month. Audi says the vehicle, which is about 12 and a half feet long, is still roomy enough for four people. The company also says the car represents the “future of electric mobility.”

The concept car’s interior is designed to make the most of available space. It has a flat floor, storage space under its fold-up seats, a two-level rear load area and enough space between the rear seats for a city bicycle with  its front wheel removed.

The center console is attached to the driver’s seat instead of the floor and the rear console extends forward between the two rear seats.

One of the car’s main purposes is to show new types of automotive lighting, including its “matrix beam” headlights that use light-emitting diodes and microreflectors to produce defined light with less glare. The A2′s tail lights adjust intensity depending on visibility conditions. The rear fog light forms a beam of light and projects a red triangle warning  onto the road.

A band of light that runs from the front to the rear of the A2 under the edge of the window from the front to the rear of the A2 concept, called dynamic lighting, forms side markers, directional signals and includes sensors that detect the driver and respond to gesture commands. The vehicle is scheduled for launch in 2016.


[Note: here are the now released photos}

Should EV quadricycles be banned?

The British media have been reporting this week the inquest into the sad death in her G-Wiz EV of Dr Judit Nadal, a successful and much loved biochemist who worked at Imperial College, London. A verdict of accidental death was recorded following the news that she was on her mobile phone and not wearing a seat belt and had made a fatal error in turning into an oncoming car's path at a known traffic blackspot in London. 

Dr Nadal's G-Wiz was struck by a larger and heavier Skoda Octavia and a few journalists have raised concerns that the G-Wiz is an unsafe vehicle because as a quadricycle it lacks the safety levels present in conventional M1 cars.  What was not reported (and in order to to provide a context for consideration of the safety issue) is that this tragic event was the first known fatality or serious injury in a G-Wiz over a ten year period in more than 180 million km of customer driving in 20 countries; or that quadricycles (the G-Wiz is classified as a L7e quadricycle and not a full M1 conventional car and not subject to the same safety requirements) have a superior accident record to conventional cars, because of the limited speeds of the vehicles and the slower urban roads on which they are driven.  

-        Quadricycles, also known as microcars, exist in a continuum of vehicles. They offer customers a vehicle that is safer than a motorbike or scooter and in the case of electric quadricycles, more affordable than a conventional electric car (the G-Wiz is one third of the price of a Mitsubishi imiev, for example). In addition to being zero emission at the tailpipe and extremely low cost to operate, the G-Wiz is small, lightweight and nimble and so is easy to drive and to park. In traffic congested central London, where the average speeds are about 10 to 15 mph and most speed limits 30 mph, there are approximately 1,000 G-Wiz used on a daily basis resulting in a small but loyal following. G-Wiz drivers are fully aware that they are driving a vehicle in which they are less protected than if driving a conventional car. 
      
   Quadricycles are quite a common sight in some European cities, with approximately 400,000 on the streets of Western Europe, particularly in France and Italy. If anything, the category is about to become more popular because automakers see it as a potential growth segment. Renault are launching the Twizy quadricycle in 2012, whilst VW and Audi are showcasing single and two seat urban EV concepts at the forthcoming Frankfurt Show. 

      The last government announced an intention to review quadricycles on the grounds of safety, following a government crash test of a G-Wiz to M1 safety standards (which it failed, unsurprisingly, and which led to the development of an improved safety cage for the current model). There were calls then from Labour politicians to ban quadricycles, leading to an equally vociferous defence from now London Mayor, Boris Johnson. My own position is that I support any constructive review of safety - but I do not see the point of a witch hunt to ban quadricycles which does not consider all the facts. 

      The existing L7e quadricycle regulations limit the vehicle weight to 450 kg excluding batteries, which effectively limits the safety level that can be achieved in the vehicle. One option - which I have called for elsewhere in this blog - might be to increase the existing 450 kg limit to say 650 kg excluding batteries, which would enable additional safety features to be incorporated into the vehicle and using the latest technologies, to achieve a target NCAP safety level of 4*. I am not alone in calling for such a move - Professor Gordon Murray of Gordon Murray Design has called for a new category of 'Urban M1', which would focus automakers on small, lightweight, safe and energy efficient vehicles suitable for everyday commuting. 

-       Our challenge is to ensure that vehicle safety is optimised whatever the category. We must design the regulations correctly to enable and ensure that manufacturers build vehicles with appropriate levels of safety given the state of technology at any given time and with due regard to usage and affordability. In other words, let's reform the quadricycle regulations by all means, but let's approach such a move without the mass of emotion swirling around a single event.

      As the former Managing Director of GoinGreen, I launched the G-Wiz and was almost certainly head of the company when Dr Nadal purchased hers. Her death has touched everyone involved in the business past and present. I hope that any debate can be constructive and undertaken with the aim of creating a category of safe, energy efficient and affordable electric vehicles.
    
Let us also remember that it is heavy, large, energy wasteful cars marketed for their excessive speed or size and which perpetuate dangerous or careless driving, that are the real problem here.

New Smart forvision EV concept

Thegreencarwebsite.co.uk reports the latest initiative between Smart and chemicals company BASF.

Using plastic wheels and carbon fibre body structure, BASF and Smart have been able to save 50 per cent weight compared with steel, or 30 per cent compared with aluminium, resulting in an impressive increase in range of 20%

Called the Smart forvision, the car uses unique materials to make advances in energy efficiency, weight and temperature management.

Unique new materials include the use of completely plastic wheels to minimise weight, solar cells, energy-saving light-emitting diodes, infrared-reflective films and coatings as well as high-performance foams for insulation against cold and heat.

Using Smart’s automotive expertise and BASF’s material and system competence, the new concept features many ground-breaking materials which have so far only ever been seen in the laboratory and other others which are only now ready for production. Hexagonal transparent areas on the roof of the Smart forvision are not only an eye-catching feature – they form part of the first light-transmitting roof that also generates energy.

The transparent solar cells cover the entire roof surface of the vehicle. The cells use organic dyes which are light-activated. Even in diffused light and poor light conditions they generate enough energy to power the multimedia components in the car and the three fans that assist with climate management in the vehicle interior. If the vehicle is standing in the sun the ventilation is permanently operated with the help of these solar cells, keeping the car cool.

The Smart forvision will be unveiled at the Frankfurt Show.