While car manufacturers get all the attention, much of the innovation in the world of the motor vehicle actually happens at component suppliers. So when one of the biggest of those suppliers, Robert Bosch GmbH, gives its annual press briefing, it’s well worth a look if you want to see what we’re likely to be driving in the short to medium-term future.
According to Bosch, hybrids, let alone pure electric vehicles, aren’t likely to become mainstream vehicles for some time yet, though in their view they are the ultimate replacement for petroleum. Battery technology is improving a lot, but it’s still too expensive for what it offers, and hybrids are a lousy value proposition as well in the medium term. Instead, we are likely to see continued refinements of the internal combustion engine, with smaller turbocharged engines likely to replace big, naturally-aspirated ones, better fuel injection systems, and stop-start systems that cut off engines, and re-start them very quickly, when you’re stopped in traffic. You can see this already happening, with the latest generation of the VW Golf (featuring a relatively small 1.4 litre engine with both a supercharger and turbocharger), and the Holden Cruze is likely to be fitted with a small-displacement, turbocharged engine rather than a larger, naturally-aspirated one.
While of course Bosch was promoting their own technologies, they are such a huge company they’re involved in virtually every type of drivetrain technology, including pure electrics and hybrid cars. So you’d expect them to have a pretty fair idea of what’s likely to come down the exhaust pipe over the next decade. Of course, if there’s drastic action on climate change, or scarcity drives up the price of petrol high enough, the situation might change significantly.
Robert,
By any analysis of cost per unit of CO2 saved hybrids (ATM) make no sense. As you say, small displacement engines (and in particular diesels) are almost as, if not more, efficient than a hybrid at much lower cost.
Trying to convince a Hollywood star, or someone else more concerned about appearances, to drive a Fiesta turbo-diesel rather than a Prius would be difficult.
I dunno, if Mr Gore can win an Oscar, isn’t it time for low-emission-chic to arrive in Hollywood?
It’d win them more fans than scouring the 3rd world for adoption opportunities.
Common Rail diesel turbo intercooled for medium sized work veh’s are all the rage with vastly improved economy and power. Add the 50% investment savings and it’s difficult to find one ready to go.
There’ll be a heap of later model one-toners and utes at very good bargain prices except the old technology makes them dear to run.
Wish I could afford a change, my dinosaur runs on gas and although at 5 clicks a litre returns equiv. 12clicks on price, none of the “bargains”can match the running costs.
While I can see the point here — there may well be short-term savings in GHGs from resort to a highly efficient diesel vehicle over a hybrid (especially if the diesel is sourced from waste biomass or algae) in the longer run, if substantial stationary power comes from low-emission sources, then plug-in hybrids would be good. And of course you could have a serial hybrid with a small diesel generator to extend the range. For us urbanites, it would be good.
You may also have heard of an organisation called “Better Place” which is pushing an idea that involves V2G and battery swaps so that PEVs could run exclusively on electricity.
Indeed we have mentioned Better Place in the past, as well as the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid.
You’re quite right about plug-in hybrids, but they will still be very expensive for what they offer in the medium term. The battery pack alone is in the order of 5000 US dollars.
Robert: “Battery technology is improving a lot, but it’s still too expensive for what it offers, and hybrids are a lousy value proposition as well in the medium term. Instead, we are likely to see continued refinements of the internal combustion engine, with smaller turbocharged engines likely to replace big, naturally-aspirated ones, better fuel injection systems…”
Agree with you that the current state of play would suggest such a conclusion. However, having studied an elective on the growth of disruptive technology, I see strong parallels to historical tipping points. The fastest growth of innovation in incumbent technologies always, always, always occurs when they are under the most threat by an emergent technology. The incumbent technology is at its very best just at the point of being overthrown. The history is relentless on this, right from the days of sailing ships being overtaken by steam and diesel power, and the iceman being replaced by refrigeration.
The other fascinating thing, is that the incumbents poo-poo the new technology as cluncky, cumbersome, expensive, high purchase cost, high maintenance cost, etc. This is indeed true, in the beginning, but the emergent technology improves and when the critical retarding factors are overcome, we get lift-off.
The incumbents have all the money and all the power, and all the intellectual smarts to discover and dominate the emergent technology, but they don’t do so. They get caught with their pants down, every time. Fascinating!! Instead of spotting an opportunity, they fight the growth of the emergent technology with every weapon at their disposal, including spurious legislative challenges and claims of health risks, etc, etc. All intellectual energy is expended on defensive strategies. Vigorous attempts are made to shut down the offending emergent players.
Refrigerated ice, for example, was called “artifical” and “not natural”, therefore hazardous to health. Plenty of people believed such claims in the early days. Iron ships with diesel engines were “heavier than water” and therefore at high risk of sinking, not to mention ugly and dirty. You should download video clips of what the bosses of early IT incumbents had to say about each new major advance, even when their R&D people were telling them they were missing the boat. Former geeks not listening to their younger geeks. No end of astonishing!!
I reckon we are at one of those transition points right now. The incumbent manufacturers of internal combustion engines are churning out improvement after improvement like their livelihood depended on it. They say they will be dominant for years yet. The emergent technology is getting remorselessly better, and is close to being seriously competitive.
The biggest hurdle for electric or PHEV cars is the battery technology. The cost has been too great, the weight excessive, and the lifecycle too short. Well, the latest battery technology I know of is a new version of lithium iron phospate batteries. IIRC, they have an expected lifecycle of about 160,000 km or about 15-20 years. I don’t know about other households, but that would just about do us for the life of a car. Not in production yet, but not far off.
Maybe the petrol/diesel engine manufacturers will also get caught with their pants down…
Robert, that would still make them viable over time. A person whose fuel bill declines from a present $2500 pa to the interest on $5000 + about $200-$300 pa is not going to take long to recover that initial capital cost.
Now of course noty all the fleet is going to be able to go electric — heavy vehicles, especially refrigerated ones, aren’t going to be very feasible, and of course we ought to emphasise mass transport options as best of all — and reconfigure our cities to make this feasible, but I can easily see PEVs run this way as very viable — especially if the V2G system increases storage capacity for the output of intermittent sources of energy
I’d say that’s quite a respectable number of electric cars in just 6 years time.
If we all wait for batteries to get cheaper then nothing will happen. We’re up against Mother Nature here folks with a few million years of amazing dinosaur-juice creation. As the Bosch man says, economies of scale is the only thing that will drive battery prices down, so some of us have to look beyond our back pockets to really make a difference. It’s also important to understand that it’s cost per km that counts and EV’s have many well known advantages in that respect.
Plug-in Hybrids are the essential transition technology needed to wean us off our carbon addiction. They’ll help improve battery technology and costs. More importantly they’ll teach commuters that most of their driving can be done pure electric.
BTW, as Lutz himself has explained in the past, the Chevy Volt is not really a plug-in hybrid, it is an EV with a range extender. IMHO this might be a bad idea, if you’re going to carry around an ICE, better to drive the wheel directly (as in parallel hybrid) than push the energy through the batteries and reduce their precious cycle-life.
Re the Better Place post, the argument against them only holds a whisker of possibility if you don’t believe EV’s are ready yet, there are many of us who believe they are. It is simply a venture capitalist project with very ambitious goal, there is no evidence that they are looking for government hand-outs. From a BP talk I attended the other day they certainly seem to be doing their homework and are aware of the enormity of the task which includes pushing for re-charge standardization across the EV industry. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and wish them luck.
The consumer will be beaten by the competition.KeelyNet.com WhatsNew, has been following these stories a very long time now updating less regularly,he also posts other energy related matters.Included is the Polish idea of direct carbon dioxide use to fuel for vehicles.Russians have come up with new motor designs,Israelis have been active,and, someday someone in Australia will get serious research done on pure acetone added in small amounts to the fuel,because after all to be a hacker like American kipkay on video is also so terribly frightening to Australians.Including its well paid Academics,Police at higher echelons and a host of others willing to give money away to strangers.
I will bet London to a brick thAT Better Place are asking for government handouts. Do you really think they were just making courtesy calls on Evan Thornley when they ended up hiring him? They certainly got a massive implicit subsidy in Israel.
Furthermore, Bosch has a great deal of expertise in electric stuff. They make a big range of electric power tools, and much of their automotive componentry is electric. They also make components for hybrids, and have a joint venture with Samsung in the automotive battery business. Bosch is going to have a profitable business regardless.
But I take your point – the established players are likely to be overly pessimistic about radical innovation, just like the startups are inevitably overly opstimistic.
As to who’s going to make a go of the car of the future, I’m not sure the analogy of the computer industry is the one I’d go for. I’d point to the aviation industry as somewhere where startups have an appalling record, because there are massive institutional and regulatory barriers to selling a new car – as Chinese car manufacturers are currently finding out when they try to export their cars.
My guess is that the existing car manufacturers will still be around in 20 years, but the powertrains will be manufactured as a unit by other companies. Whether these other companies are existing companies or startups is another question.
“I will bet London to a brick thAT Better Place are asking for government handouts”
Funny you should mention it. They’ve got Ben Keneally heading up their Australian ops – ex Premier’s Dept and Boston Consulting. I heard him speak today. Not once did he mention government handouts.
Their biggest ally is actually electricity companies. Imagine having over a GIGAwatt of capacity kicking around in batteries, assuming (optimistically) a 90% takeup across the Eastern Seaboard. Sure, demand would increase, but intermittency with wind and solar is no longer a problem. Whenever your baseload plants are kicking at night or the wind blowing too much, these guys buy in cheaply. Also, because the big cost is depreciation of the battery (currently around $15k), chipping in for 100% Greenpower is a negligible increase in costs.
The presentation beautifully illustrated the complete fallacy of the ‘renewables can’t do baseload’ meme. Embarassingly they’re only putting up $700m to get it going here. That’s ~5% of the faux blood money we’re paying out to the EITE mafia
We have blogged on this topic last year. Extensively. But to reprise: cunningly, Bosch, like a shifty politician on Lateline, supply their own question and then proceed to answer it. The issue with batteries (at this point, lithium-ion and its iterations with vanadium doping and so on) is not their expense nor weight but how long the charge lasts and really importantly, how long it takes to do a “full-tank” recharge on a car. To answer the last question first, any longer than 5-7 minutes and it is not in the race. So it is on the battery issue that the future of an electric car rests. Solve the battery problem and it is good-bye internal combustion engine.
There are a number of solutions just around the corner if not on a lab shelf. I say this by looking at the history of the laptop and the mobile phone having seen the development flash before my very own eyes.
Indeed, I remember Apple betting on a lead-acid battery because it was “reliable” and offered a good charge hold time. The lead-acid battery Apple portable was ridiculously heavy and is now a historical curio. It got killed in the marketplace as technology developed at warp speed, with laptops shrinking and mobile phone ditto, seemingly every month. It was amazing to witness. There is no reason why the same thing can’t happen to car propulsive batteries, given the will and competition.
Redox Vanadium battery showed tremendous initial promise because it could be recharged by simply replacing its electrolyte fluid in which the charge is stored, so the recharging at a servo would involve an exchange of fluids rather than plugging in, thus approaching the convenience of the current pumped fuel technology.
Another idea is to lay electric current under main roads so vehicles can recharge as they drive along main highways.
The electric car will go some way of solving a geopolitical issue or two and help ease photochemical smog in some basins such as Sydney and LA by shifting pollution to where the electricity is being generated using coal. Ahem, but that still remains the problem, a separate problem as fgar as greenhouse gases are concerned – that of coal-generated electricity.
The story will change radically if governments screw up their courage and regulate to drive down the average fuel consumption of new cars. At the moment, average fuel consumption is about 11 litres/100 km. There are cheap small cars that do better than 5 litres/100 km and expensive small cars that can acheive 3 litres/100 km (33 km/litre) with many of the innovations that Bosch is talking about .
I calculated that, for a weekly trip combination of 6×30 + 1×100 km, a plug in hybrid would reduce petrol consumption by over 80% for a battery range of only 35 km – So we could get down to one litre/100 km by retrofitting a 5 litre/100 km car with a plug in hybrid = a 90% reduction compared with the curent average car.
It is worth noting that The current fuel consumption record for a driver carrying car is better than 3500 km/litre, about 4 litres/yr for the Australian average distsnce travelled/vehicle of 15,000 km. Not a car for driving around town but an indication of the dramatic reductions in energy consumption that might be acheivable if we use smarter sensors/controls to avoid collisions instead of designing tank cars that need over half a tonne of steel to provide protection from the affects of avoidable collisions.
It is also worth noting that most cars that pass me are carrying only the driver. We could also save quite a bit of fuel if more cars were designed to carry one or two people efficently instead of being designed for the off chance that you may ocassionally need more. (Families with kids are different of course – but they are a minority.)
I remember how the car manufacturers screamed when California introduced its car emission restrictions. Funny how a few years later the rest of the civilzed world accepted catalytic exhaust systems as the only way to go. The same will happen when we regulate on car realted greenhouse emissions.
Perhaps the future will involve a car based on this 4wd Skid Safe Motorbike. We could have a vehicle with the comfort and safety of a car with the width of a motorcycle.
I remember last year hearing about a battery the CSIRO were working on that was supposed to take a charge in about 3 minutes. Could have been this one.
Late last week I heard an item on Radio National where some professor bloke was warning that when the GFC was over we would be straight into peak oil. He reckoned there would be a panic on conversions to gas at that point and a panic on rolling out the infrastructure for filling etc. Food prices would go up.
I can’t find the item or remember which program I heard it on unfortunately.
This is basic economics, guys. Switching to hybrids is, at the moment, the most expensive (at least close to rational) way to reduce CO2 output. In short, given current technologies, this is the last thing you would do, as a final desperate measure, to reduce CO2 output.
Sure – put in the basic research to improve batteries. This will have payoffs in many areas. Just do not buy a Prius thinking you are doing any more than making a statement, as you would do better to buy a small diesel.
I don’t get where the value is in this Better Place play: it’s just a battery charge-and-exchange logistics scam isn’t it, not conceptually much different to tha gas bottles at the petrol station, nothing very smart or difficult, pure chutzpah, and working capital?
Sounds like exactly the sort of thing our superannuation funds, or a Nation Building financial vehicle, could finance. Surely even our automotive sector could design and produce a swap’n'go cartridge and powerpost system. The motor trades association of australia super fund is part owner of a brown coal power station, so the conceptual model is there.
It’s not like Chutzpah&Son are offering to set up fossil-fuel-powerstation- fugitive-CO2-capturing-algal-diesel plant to fuel existing roadstock for us or anything.
Danny, that’s about right – the trickiest bits of their whole scheme are convincing a) car makers to go with a standard form factor for EV batteries to make swap-out possible, b) make sure it’s theirs, c) convincing local councils to let them install recharge points.
They’re aiming to become the Telstra of the EV recharging racket. Good luck to them, but I don’t see why we should be handing them government money to do so, and I stand by my view that no investment bank in the world will provide them working capital unless they’re getting large chunks of subsidy from the government.
Well, they are a parts supplier and they need to meet the market demand, which in their case are the auto manufacturers. What the auto manufacturers build is based on what sells well, and that is in a large part determined by public perceptions.
If the major car makes said “all we’re going to make are EVs”, than you can bet that within a snap of your fingers Bosch would be supplying them with those parts.
Robert(17): Like we need another Telstra of anything.
There’ll be merchant bankers alright, of the Venice kind for instance, that’ll stump up capital on the basis of understandings that aren’t necessarily put into statute: risk remember is the name of the game, it provides the excuse for feeling entitlement up to and including extracting pounds of flesh, when really things are as safe as houses, if you’re the right sort of people.
Speaking of the right sort of people: why not let the ACTU have another lash at a SOLO for the C21?
For those too young: once upon a time, in a GirtBySea far away from here, Eth Unionz had a chain of petrol stations, their own brand, SOLO. I can’t remember if it was any cheaper or better, nor why it disappeared, but there there is a precedent in the unions stumping up the cash, or organising the stumping up thereof, to buy and sell things other than governments. Likewise, as above the MTAA example part-owning a brown coal power company.
We don’t need “Separate The Big Numbers From The Small Numbers” Evan and his latest scam. I guess he was at least honest in showing his contempt for the electorate and it’s crypto-democratic processes when he abandoned the parliamentary seat (so much trouble was put into getting him) at the first sign of there being a better and easier offer. How he can show his face down at the Fabian club I just don’t know. The tragedy is, he could have been just the sort of guy to get a good idea that could go to scale, like an electric vehicle logistics chain/brand, off the ground as a Peoples’ Gig, if he was a real Fabian.
Woolies or Coles or Patrick or Linfox or quite a few other operations that have managed to get to scale will be able to manage the Jetson car concession, they can tender for it, kind of how they used to sell spectrum. But don’t bring Hu-Hu.
Andrew @15 …
The best way to achieve lower emissions in transport is clearly to get a higher proportion of single occupant vehicle drivers into multiple occupant vehicles, since, quite plainly, the energy expended carrying the dead weight — the vehicle itself — is spread across more passenger miles. I recall reading that over about 600 miles one aircraft passenger in a commercially loaded jumbo is no more energy-expensive than each of the two people in a typical car. If we could substantially increase the use of mass transport or car pooling or bicycles or walking at the expense of the least efficient usages this would be far better than resort by one person to almost any kind of passenger vehicle once could conceivably build. An added bonus is that lighter traffic loads on roads mean fewer energy-inefficient stop-starts, and very probably fewer rear-end collisions so we get all sorts of wins.
That said, within that context, anything that doesn’t draw upon fossil fuels as much is a good thing. In the longer run, given the lead times in building new manufacturing capacity, and the growing resort to low carbon stationary energy one suspects that hybrid/plug-in technologies are going to be key. Indeed, given that V2G would be one of the ways in which we can manage slew rates in the energy distribution chain, this is especially valuable
In this respect take a look at:
A discussion on managing slew rates
The whole site is well indexed and argued and authored by people with expertise, so well worth a look.
Except for pure electrics recharging from a 100% non-emitting grid. But that’s a long way away.
As far as increasing vehicle occupancy goes, colour me a little bit skeptical. My strong suspicion is that a lot of people like sitting alone in their cars, because it’s some time alone in a comfy chair with your favourite music (or talking book, or talkback radio).
RM: “My strong suspicion is that a lot of people like sitting alone in their cars, because it’s some time alone in a comfy chair with your favourite music (or talking book, or talkback radio).” …
I’m convinced of that too: ASAP and ALAP away from the maddingly distracting family, but, increasingly, not taking advantage of the respite for morale-building, spiritually-edifying, re-creation purposes, rather just taking the opportunity to bang on on the hands free, getting down to business ever earlier and longer, done with a manic devotion to monetarist duty.
Andrew @ 15: Right now plug in hybrids are the most coste effective way of dramatically reducing our oil imports in the short term. They are already being produced overseas, they dont require new technology, they don’t require new infrastructure and they don’t require changes to car design rules. In addition, for normal urban use, they don’t require large batteries to acheive serious reductions in fuel consumption. (See @13 above) In the longer term low energy cars may be developed by reducing weight, reducing air and rolling resistance and designing cars for the effficent transport of one or two people. However, to make serious progress there would certainly need to be a change to car design rules. Even then, plug in hybrid will still make sense. Improving energy efficiency will reduce the size of generators and batteries required. The following post from climate progress gives some information on what major US manufacturers are up to. US plug-in hybrid progress
I think you’ve nailed it, Robert. Although when the competition issue was raised, Keneally mentioned open sourcing enough of the process to allow ‘roaming’ on different ‘networks’. They’ll do whatever dirty deals it takes to get their infrastructure up and running and deal with other ‘Better Places’ when they arise.
Robert@21
I’m not so sure that your hypothetical 100% emission free grid would improve because under that scenario, the mass transit options (or car pooling) would have the same kinds of relative advantage. Tyres and belts on cars still need to be produced. Some sort of batteries are still required. Perhaps the relative advantages would be less in quantity. In any event as you acknowledge, we are a long way from that, and if we ever got there and I were in any shape to evaluate it, I probably wouldn’t lose any sleep over the difference.
As to car pooling I don’t doubt that there are many who would prefer sitting alone in their cars. The question surely is though, would they always prefer it if the alternative were lower car operation costs, lighter traffic on the roads and a less demanding drive to work?
In the last couple of years I’ve managed to car pool with colleagues quite a bit and all of us have saved money both in fuel and wear and tear on our cars. An organised system maybe using WAP and social networking technologies (twitter? facebook?) could substantially reduce the number of single passenger journeys. Some people might even do it as a niche part time business.
One can also imagine that with fairly unremarkable changes to the organisation of the urban transport system we could encourage quite a bit of car pooling.
There’s a lot of low hanging fruit in energy efficiency, redundant capacity etc. Imagine, for example, if you put major multi-storey carparks (six floors of parking?) with good vehicle access on the major approaches to the city. You run large articulated buses during the peak and electric shuttle buses at cost to and from the city for all those using the car park during the shoulders and off-peak. They pay a fee based on car space plus shuttle (if they need it) plus recharging of EVs (if needed). There’s access to recharge your vehicle in the space while you’re at work. On the roof of the car park is a set of wind turbines powering the building backed by a CNG generator.
After a time, the regular commuters who lived near each other would swap numbers on the shuttle and start carpooling. The range of EVs would not be important because you could recharge at the carpark. The shuttle buses could switch battery packs. Most of the energy would be wind-sourced and because you’d be recharging batteries you don’t need separate storage.
Imagine the effect of taking that many vehicle miles out of commuting. Instead of vehicles headed into town with only a driver, you’d have most of them sitting in a car park somewhere, waiting to do the part of the journey it wasn’t economical for the public to provide.
But who pays for the car parks, I hear you asking? Well there’s residential development for a start. There’s a dearth of land that close to the city. Then there’s retail. How many retailers would like to have shops sitting just above massive numbers of commuters and close to the city? Commercial offices?
Quite a few. One suspects that businesses would in many cases subsidise or pay for their employee parking, since they are already paying city rates now.
Fran
Let me start by a full-disclosure statement. I have been working with alternative fuels since the mid-80’s and specifically with natural gas vehicles (NGVs), both here in Australia and overseas since 1996.
All of the talk about new technologies – hybrids, plug-ins, hydrogen, second- generation biofuels etc, may be realities in the future, but we need to stress the future. We do not have the technology today for these technologies to become mainstream.
The internal combustion engine is going to be with us for many, many years. There is little hope of any other technology (or several technologies) realistically having a market share of 50% before the end of the century.
Petrol and diesel’s role in the fuel supply equation is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term if the Peak Oil claims are correct, and in any case we will be more and more dependent on the politically volatile Middle East and East Asia for our supply.
Biofuels from traditional crops have the disadvantage of competing with food production, and poor energy conversion rates. Unless new technologies and sources of feedstocks become economically available, biofuels would seem to have limited impact on our future fuel needs.
So now we come to the crux of my argument. We need a transitional fuel that is financially affordable and environmentally responsible – and that fuel is natural gas. In an internal combustion engine, it offers the lowest life-cycle and tailpipe emissions of any fuel or current engine technology.
Natural gas is a 100% indigenous fuel with a nationwide pipeline distribution network. It is the only fuel that is independent of oil imports. It is rated at 130 octane, which makes it ideal for low emission, high performance ICEs.
Australia is 15 years behind the rest of the world in adopting natural gas vehicles, which currently represent the only growth sector in the worldwide automotive industry. A Honda NGV has been rated the greenest car in the USA for the past seven years and a CNG VW has been rated the cleanest car in Europe in 2009.
Government support for the NGV industry In Australia is non-existent, partly because the fuel is not as sexy as all of the exotic solutions, but it is a practical, inexpensive transitional fuel for the 50 years or so.
I am pleased to be associated with a company that has seen the potential of NGVs and will be opening the first public CNG (compressed natural gas) refuelling station in Melbourne in six to eight weeks. It is going to take a few dedicated entrepreneurs to get the industry off the ground in Australia, but public response in Melbourne has been enough to encourage us to plan several additional sites both in Victoria and interstate over the next 12 months.
It would be a financial, economic and environmental victory if NGVs could get the same recognition in Australia that they do in the rest of the world.
Kevin Black@26
While I agree that NGVs would be preferable in some contexts, I think you overstate the problems with second gen biofuels.
Firstly, and most obviously, most industrial societies have left landfill gas largely untapped. Equally, very little effort has been applied in areas such as TDP (thermal depolymerization), waste biomass to syngas and ultimately through FT to liquid fuels, butanol from prairie grasses, algae to biodiesel, and much else.
Discussing all of these in detail would take a lot more space than is desirable in this place but in concert with real and swingeing reductions in the use of transport fuels, I do believe biomass can make a useful contribution to the transition from fossil fuels into the transport energy mix of the future.
Kevin, we have discussed NGVs on occasion on this site, and I agree it is a viable near-term option.
However, I would strongly dispute your statement that we’ll still be using an internal combustion engine powered by fossil fuels – gas or otherwise, for the rest of the century, as our primary means of powering ground transport.
The only way that this will be possible is if some environmentally benign way to remove arbitrary amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere is developed, and that this method is cheaper than switching to an alternative, non-emitting way of powering ground transport.
Electrifying ground transport (through fuel cells, batteries, or even something really exotic like a boron-fuelled gas turbine) has so many other benefits that it’s still going to be difficult for fossil fuels to compete in the long term.
I would make a possible exception for aircraft, where the energy density advantages of hydrocarbons are paramount.
Lithium-ion battery performance seems to be improving about 10% a year, and shows no sign of levelling out yet. Beyond that, there are several other alternative battery chemistries to explore.
I didn’t want to go into too much detail in my post, but think about this. Assume we have one (or several) low emissions alternatives commercially available (and economic) by 2015.
Australia puts approx 1 million new cars on the road each year. About half are replacements for old stock that has been scrapped and the remainder adds to the total stock of cars. We have about 14 million cars on the road today.
If we assume the current growth rate being sustained and between 2015 and 2025 assume that 30% of all new cars on the road are “new technology” (and we have the infrastructure to fuel them) and this increases to 40% during the next decade, then 50%, then 60% (this is very simplified) the result would mean that in 2065 we would have 21 million “new technology” cars on the road and 24 million “conventional vehicles. So we will have almost twice as many “conventional” cars as today – all of which will require some form of conventional fuel.
Natural gas is the only fuel that might be able to fill the gap. Apart from vast reserves of conventional gas, we have access to almost as much coal seam gas (~98% methane). We must also move to production of biomethane from organic waste (sewage, animal wastes, garbage etc) with a view to recovery and re-use as compost/fertiliser, and the capture of landfill gas until we do away with landfill altogether.
The use of biomethane from organic waste when used in a motoer vehicle is carbon neutral at worst.
The important point is that NG is a “here and now” technology. There is no need for any further major technological development.
However, I am not arguing that we should not pursue other technologies. The worst thing we could do is to become reliant on a single solution. Our addiction to oil is what got us into the mess we are in today. We need to be a lot smarter in the future.
Sorry, in connection with the take-up of new technologies, the best example is the introduction of the simplest technological change in recent years, and it was a compulsory change.
In 1985, the government mandated that all new cars must be built for unleaded petrol. 24 years later, approximately 1 million of the 14 million cars on the road are still reliant on leaded or lead substitute fuels or additives.
If this was a matter of choice, do you really think that 100% of new car buyers since 1985 would have paid the extra $500 or so for an unleaded option?
Kevin Black @ 26, 29, 30: Agree that compressed natural gas is a reasonable interim substitute, given that we are indeed likely to go straight from GFC to Peak Oil. We would be there already except that the GFC dampened demand.
Many Australian households already have reticulated natural gas, so with a small compression pump they could fill their own cars at home. You would not need to provide new filling station facilities, except in areas that did not have reticulated natural gas (e.g. some suburbs of Brisbane).
More interestingly for your company, I would think, is that the mining companies have HUGE diesel consumption for the mining fleets. If you can pursuade them to migrate to CNG natural gas engines, then you would have a big and profitable market for your services. And the mining companies would have security of supply and containement of operating costs for a critical operating expense. That may mean they would have higher profits, which would mean more tax revenue and (via the stockmarket) higher superannuation returns for all Aussies. Win for you, win for them, win for us all. How good could it get…?
Kevin@29
I don’t see the growth rate in motor vehicles being anything like that you suggest if Australia is to meet reasonable emissions targets.
Hopefully, by 2050, the world and Australia with it will have limited population grwoth to about 50% or a little less and then have stabilised — so that Australia will have a little more than 32 million people. Even on current vehicle ownership ratios that would imply about 20-21 million vehicles.
Of course, what we (the world and Australia) absolutely positively must do is reduce the number of vehicles per capita, by making much more frequent use of mass transport, car pooling, car rental and so forth. I’d like to believe that we could, by 2050, lower current per capita vehicle ratios here by 60-70%, meaning that we would have a little over 6.3 million vehicles by 2050, of which the vast majority would be low-emissions.
Fran
Kevin, old technologies can die off pretty quickly in some cases.
How many CRT televisions do you see at your local Harvey Norman? How many film cameras?
Yes, there is an enormous existing pile of televisions remaining in use. But in 20 years or so, the CRT television will quite literally be a museum piece.
Fran Barlow @32: Totally agree that it would be good to increase the use of mass transport and migrate the vast majority to low-emission vehicles.
Shaun Williams @8: “By 2015, we expect to see a sales volume of some 500,000 electric vehicles. I’d say that’s quite a respectable number of electric cars in just 6 years time.”
Actually I have a huge problem with this projected figure. Firstly, Aussies buy about 1 million new cars per year, and have a total car stock of about 15 million or so (almost 2 cars per household). At 1 million/year it would take 15 years to replace our car stock with low-emission vehicles. Meanwhile Shaun says the projection is 0.5 million/year (in Australia or globally??).
My understanding was that Toyota Prius only just reached 1 million total manufactured globally. Holden Camri’s with low emission were only going to be at the rate of 10,000/year (only 0.01 million correct me if I am wrong). We need 1 million PER YEAR and would still take FIFTEEN YEARS at that rate, to halve our oil consumption from household vehicles. The production rate is too slow.
Meanwhile the Chinese are producing as many gas-guzzlers in 1 month as Aussies buy in 1 year, and increasing all the time. Never mind the rate of growth of Indian cars.
Cars apparently account for 25% of our carbon emissions, so migrating to low emission vehicles would help our green credentials. We could perhaps reach half of our 20/20 target just by the government mandating that all cars must have a fuel efficiency better than 5 l/100 km.
However, my immediate concern is that we will be landing slam-dunk into an oil crisis long before we manage to change out our vehicle stock. Just as soon as the global economy recovers, which might be next year, the oil price will start heading skywards again. And how many low emission/low consumption vehicles will we have on the roads? About nine-tenths of bugger-all, I would guess…
And the point Elise@34 is that given the fairly long lead times for churning the bulk of the car fleet and the high embedded energy cost in new vehicles, the most sensible approach involves focusing on getting people not to get new low-emissions vehicles but to simply use their existing vehicles a lot less than they do now until such time as the vehicles don’t make sense to maintain — at which point they are discarded and such materials as can be are recycled into something productive or modified for low-emissions use where practicable.
It would be far better if our existing trained car workers got busy building new buses and new rolling stock for rail (heavy and light) to carry all those people who have given up their cars in whole or in part.
Fran Barlow @35, yes I agree that people will likely use their cars less, and where possible use mass transport more.
Unfortunately our cities are not properly designed such that everyone can use public transport easily. Most routes are apparently uneconomic, so have infrequent service. A chicken and egg situation, to be sure.
However, given the economic constraints imposed by trying to stimulate ourselves out of the GFC, it may be hard to get the level of investment needed to redesign our cities more efficiently. Did you see the amount of stink caused by building the Perth-Mandurah rail line? That is just one example of a very useful mass transport link for Perth’s elongated coastal-city development. But the stink it caused in the media would make any sane person wince at the idea of doing anything equally ambitious and far-sighted.
Elise@36
Of course it isn’t easy but we do need new investment in infrastructure and that includes housing — we need to go to higher densities close to the centre of the markor urban areas in order to make mass transport both tailored and deliverable at costs per person that people find reasonable.
It makes sense to do it now because now we are retooling anyway.
Fran, I’d go back to the point I made earlier with regards to cars, and make it with regards to higher densities – you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t necessarily make it drink.
Attempts to increase Melbourne’s density aren’t exactly working brilliantly, in large part because residents in existing suburbs don’t want increased density, and partly because a large fraction of the new housing market doesn’t seem to want to live in denser suburbs and would prefer to live in former sheep paddocks (or former native grasslands).
The connection between climate change and urban land use patterns is simply not yet being made in the minds of a large fraction of home buyers.
I quite agree Robert@38 but this is where I think we get to the longterm not so touchy-feely part of living within our environmental means.
Plainly, there are things governments copuld do to drive this process. Getting rid of negative gearing is one thing. Setting escalating equity requirements for borrowing with residential housing as collateral would be another. Expanding the stock of public housing would be a third. These measures could be sold in part as a kind of “immunization” against Australia ever getting into sub-prime problems, reducing mortgage stress, and dealing with housing shortages — and massively increasing the thermal efficiency of our cities and its housing.
It would be very hard for the conservatives to oppose measures aimed at stopping people over-leveraging into housing, especially when you consider that such a measure would in practice free up resources for more productive investment, and yet any fall in the number of people in the outer suburbs suffering from massive housing related debtservice costs would take the sting out of the whole “interest rates are always higher under Labor/they are putting the next generation into hock” meme that the conservatives like to run. More density would make it possible to have more local schools and shops and services and have suburbs more often self-contained (rather than mere traffic routes). In the longer run, this would be very saleable, IMO.
What would also be saleable is the idea that housing was not a commodity one could expect to make predictable real investment gains on — since this would make it much more likely that people could make decisions based on the suitability of the housing to their other needs. Right now, people who own housing and have substantial equity are loathe to sell out of the major urban markets because they fear they will be excluded forever by real relative price rises if they do — so buuying and selling becomes an exercise in either longterm abandonment of the city or a calculation based on what one thinks of the relative state of the markets one is moving between.
Fran Barlow @39, I fear that your idealism will shortly carry you off on fairy wings!
Nothing but severe economic hardship is likely to pursuade the average Perthy to live more than 5 minutes from the beach. If you look at the RBA data on housing, you can see that the prices rise with proximity to water, Australia-wide. That means, to my mind, that most Aussies will pay a premium to be near water. Fancy arguments about immunizing against sub-prime won’t change that preference.
We live near the city, incidentally (so I’m not plugging away to defend a personal preference), but that is because I’m no beach bunny – don’t tan well, and find it boring. However, we would never live in a flat for your model “dense living”, because we like gardens and a bit more privacy. We lived in a block of flats once for a month while house-hunting, and nearly climbed the walls.
You don’t have to have “dense living”, if you solve the transport problem with a low carbon alternative. Solar-refueled electric cars (and for example, fuel cell based mass transport) will enable people to keep their gardens or their proximity to water. That’s where we are headed. We’ll either buy a plug-in hybrid (or equivalent), or we will rip out our combustion engine and retrofit the car ourselves.
By all means, you can have your dense living, but you may not pursuade the bulk of Aussies to join you.
I fear Elise@40 that you may have misunderstood my advocacy.
More dense living doesn’t necessarily entail everyone living in “flats”, still less forcing them to do so. Nor should you assume that my vision of high density living corresponds with your recollections of life in a flat.
It would be entirely possible to design blocks of apartments and towenhouse villa living that had lots of adjacent green and open space, that were light and airy and yet retained significant private spaces where access was quite limited.
You are right in that we have, over the years, developed a cultural predisposition to freestanding dwellings surrounded by land, but I beleive that this is already beginning to shift as we test the limits of our infrastructure and are beginning a process in which we demand convenience. The fact remains that whatever one makes of the aesthetics of urban sprawl, it massively enlarges the unit cost of supplying and maintaining water, power, data, transport, health, transport and education services. Large sections of the populace every day drive away from their 1000sqm of mortgaged bliss, spending 10-15 hours each week doing nothing but sitting in traffic, burning petrol and getting stressed. If this piece of property is of value to them at all, its value is much diminished. Urban sprawl has also been listed as a cause of obesity and over-reliance on convenience food. It’s almost certainly a contributing factor in family dysfunction.
Higher densities strike a better balance between what people need and what is available with the existing resources to provide. And for those who still want their 1000sqm in Airds or Eaglevale? It will still be there, at a lower cost in initial capital and traveltimes.
Fran @41: “It would be entirely possible to design blocks of apartments and towenhouse villa living that had lots of adjacent green and open space…”
We have that concept in mind for our late 70’s and onwards, when we are too old to look after our own garden. It probably also appeals to young DINKS with a full-on clubbing life.
The internet and home office should eventually reduce the need to drive to work at the same time, every day, in peak hour traffic. That is an overhang from the days of manufacturing and shift work. I think Australian companies are simply too old-fashioned to redesign the work model.
Furthermore, we have a large percentage of the population reaching retirement age, so they will not be needing to commute to work every day, and will not need to be in close proximity to the CBD.
Perhaps the current problems of peak hour commuting could abate without recourse to “dense living”?
Elise @42
What you say of telecommuting is fair enough, but in the end, for quite some time, we are going to need people to work in retail, distribution, services and so forth. While the per-capita commuting traffic might decline, this side of redesign, the sheer volumes of traffic will increase.
I have a question: the debate seems to be deisel versus gasoline powered hybrids. I wonder why there are no deisel powered hybrids. Is it technically impossible for companies like Bosch not to have their cake and eat it too?
Peter, have a look here. Plug-in diesel hybrids using biofuel could be the way to go.
Brian@45
Thanks for this. I agree that this is certainly one attractive option, especially if
a) it’s a serial rather than parallel hybrid (since this would maximise the advantages the liquid fuel has by avoiding thermally inefficient cycles and making maximum effective use of the stored electrical energy.
AND
b) biodiesel from waste biomass or some other second gen feedstock (eg algae, ground fuel) were available widely in commercial volumes
Given tha b) is unlikely for some time and the likely development of renewables in staionary energy I’d like them to be PHEVs.
Probably the earliest example of a diesel hybrid is the diesel-electric locomotive (at least 60 years old), although they’re a bit bigger than you were thinking of, Peter.
Even on a small scale, it’d make a lot of sense, as diesels are most efficient if you narrow the power band right down.
Brian, thank you very much for the link. I am glad some effort is being made in the development deisel hybrids. It is unfortunate more attention is not given to their potential advantages as listed by Fran.
Mass transit can’t and won’t replace private vehicles, especially when the growth of mass transit has been suppressed over decades, to the point where massive investment is required to maintain current capacity let alone expand and extend routes.
Who isn’t? Shame you won’t find anyone willing to bet against it, Robert.
Aeroplanes are not mass-consumer items. Cars are, and so are computers, hence the comparison is valid, Robert. Look at how few regulatory problems there were in getting Hyundai and Proton set up here, and when the Tata Nano starts being exported the regulatory barriers will be swept away like chaff.
Consider that the next big export bonanza of vehicles powered by something other than the conventional petrol/diesel engine is going to come from either China or India (the superpowers of the future) or the US (perhaps even the same companies to which Australian taxpayers have given billions of dollars – do you seriously imagine that ‘regulatory barriers’ will stop us recouping our money?
IBM stayed in the PC-manufacturing business long after it was tactically wise for them to remain there.
For the moment, Danny, for the moment …
Yanked out of context, this is pretty funny. Any savings to the environment from small numbers of NGV conversions has been more than negated by the rise of the 4WD market, where a station wagon is replaced with a Hummer.
Andrew E@49
The objection is beside the point. Mass transit *must* substantially replace private vehicle usage if anything like sustainable living is to be achieved. Chaos and misery is the alternative to this future.
Yes investment required is massive, but not as massive as the levelized cost of doing what we do now publicly and privately. We are making rods for our own backs this way.
Fran Barlow @50: “Mass transit *must* substantially replace private vehicle usage if anything like sustainable living is to be achieved. Chaos and misery is the alternative to this future.”
That is a very strong statement Fran.
Where is your proof that e.g. electric cars recharged by household solar panels, is going to cause “chaos and misery”???
Elise@51
There is of course no proof that electric cars recharged by household solar panels will cause chaos and misery. That however, is not germane because you will never get a sufficient number of solar panels onto household and other rooves to generate the power needed to maintain the current car user ratio and usage patterns we have now, particularly when you map this onto the likely increases in population andf thus car use we are likely to see. You’re also ignoring the full energy lifecycle costs of all those vehicles, which also has to be generated someplace. And of course you’re ignoring the environmental costs of all those solar panels, the materiel for which also has to come from someplace.
The massive installed cost of all those panels has to come from some pool of funds too and of course they have to be maintained to do their job. The fully levelized cost of these is likely to be well at the upper end too.
You’re also forgetting the timelines — the schedule feasibility question. Given the huge time lag involved in switching vehicles and the considerable expense involved it’s unlikely that a substantial number of ICEs will be replaced anytime soon and if they start being discarded, their cost will fall creating a Jevons’ paradox-style drag on the transition.
That’s why the most energy efficient alternative at scale that could fit onto a timeline of rapid trasnport emissions reductions necessarily has a major switch away from individualised commuter transport at its heart.
The future of automobiles if gonna stay exactly like it is today unless we can find another Henry Ford who can get the cost of the alternative solution to be 10x lesser and the benefits to be 10x more. Auto leaders are just playing time right now and as another one bites the dust the golden parachutes come popping up. Would anyone want to risk it to introduce anything revolutionary?
Some good sense has come out of the US on the need to reduce motor vehicle use
Interesting.
The problem I have with articles like Fran just linked to where it says:
and
is that for a large number of these trips it is to get something that is not easilly transported on a bike. I am forever going down to the hardware shop – 2 kms away – to buy lengths of wood and whatnot for home projects. Other times its 5 or 6 bags of groceries. Or a large doona, or other heavy stuff. People just don’t want to have to lug this sort of stuff on the back of a bike or on public transport. You are going to have a really hard time getting people to give that sort of freedom up.
Not to mention the time factor as well. I can go to the hardware shop and be back to my project in 1/2 an hour. Try that with a bike or public transport.
The car – or something like it – is with us permanently, and thank god for that. It’s probably the most liberating technology ever.
Good point Peter. In the US in particular, and in other 1st and 2nd economies more and more, the combination of urban sprawl and the rise of big box retail outlets at the expense of more local shopping villages, means using automobiles is very heavily hardwired into accessing the necessities daily existence.
Also it’s gonna get really Darwinian as more and more electric cars silently hit the roads where more and more people are plugged into iPods and earphones. I can see the TAC ads now. “He didn’t listen.”
Peter@55
I quite take your point about cartage (and one might add that in some cases the trips would probably involve mutliple persons, elderly or infirm etc) but the point is that out of that 40% there would be many that could be done by walking/biking or avoided through trip consolidation.
Part of this is a back end problem — we need to start redesigning cities to decrease the typical distances between residences and jobs and major services precisely so as to facilitate more rational driving practices, car pooling etc.
Are you guys familiar at all with “Better Place”?
http://www.betterplace.com
It is worth a look – viable electric cars on green power in the near future.
At least that is what they claim.
Yep, at least I am.
It’s important to appreciate Better Place’s part in the scheme of things – they’re not inventing the batteries or making the cars, they’re just running the recharging scheme and financing the batteries to overcome the sticker shock.
They’re also a startup, and even successful startups are reknowned for being wildly optimistic on product schedules.
Bosch’s take on things is probably a bit pessimistic, but you’re not going to see significant numbers of electric cars for a few years yet – the battery tech just isn’t ready yet.