Electric Vehicles Land, Water and Air in 2013 PART ONE
Electric Vehicles Land, Water and Air in 2013 PART ONE
  • Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman of IDTechEx
  • 승인 2013.02.05 18:34
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CAMBRIDGE, UK - The hybrid and pure electric vehicle business will continue to prosper in 2013, with profits and growth the norm in most sectors. Laws will proliferate that make electric vehicles the only way to go. For example, more of the world’s lakes will ban diesel engines. Harbours, city centres etc. will get tougher. It has long been illegal to have pollution-emitting vehicles banned indoors and even in some orchards. The market for pure electric indoor forklifts is largely saturated but the market for pure electric mobility vehicles for the disabled that inevitable have to go indoors is growing strongly. With the ageing of the population and the determination of the elderly and obese to stay mobile, they are now an impulse buy. Taiwan will cease to make 70% of global output of mobility vehicles for the disabled in 2013 as many others enter this business, with its record percentage profit.

 

Buying peace and quiet

2000 years ago, Julius Caesar banned vehicles from moving in Rome after the early evening. This was to reduce noise pollution and we increasingly see an echo of this in modern life. Examples are the new MAN hybrid trash truck that can work all-electric for brief periods to gather and compress trash during the night. It follows the earlier pure electric golf course mower from Textron that mows silently in the night without disturbing the neighbours. Pure electric aircraft are now commercially available from Lange Aviation, PC Aero, Yuneec and others and there will be more models available in 2013. See the frequently updated report, “Electric Aircraft 2013-2023” (www.IDTechEx.com/evaircraft ) from IDTechEx.

The SYNPER pure electric helicopter that entered the Guinness Book of Records a year ago was followed by a German multicopter but neither are yet commercial, though their potential is huge. e-volo, the Karlsruhe-based company, made global aviation history last year by successfully operating the world's first manned flight by means of a purely electronically powered, multi-rotor vertical take-off aircraft, the VC1. e-volo and their partners will work on a project with 2 million euros of funding from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology to build the VC200, the first Volocopter in the world to carry two people. Following a huge growth in the market for toy electric helicopters, manned ones will become commercial within a few years and near silence will be a selling point.

VC200 two-man Volocopter. Source: e-volo

 

The military also value the near silence of electric vehicles, not just the relative lack of heat or gas signature and the military market for electric vehicles land, water and air is growing. See the IDTechEx report, “Electric Vehicles for Military, Police & Security 2012-2022” (www.IDTechEx.com/military) .

Bus usage in the Netherlands increased 13% when electric versions were adopted, riders citing the lack of noise and vibration. Indeed, buses form a central part of the Chinese National Plan because they reduce noise and gas pollution and efficiently deal with congestion on roads. See the IDTechEx report, “Electric Buses and Taxis 2012-2022” (www.IDTechEx.com/evbuses) . Expect silence to be more of a selling point in 2013.

 

Superior payback, less hassle

Buying electric vehicles primarily for payback is unusual but it is increasing. An electric golf car has long been cheaper to buy and use than an internal combustion one. For hilly golf courses the internal combustion version has remained because the tired old designs of golf car with lead acid batteries cannot cope but now that is solved with lithium-ion batteries or hybrids. Contrast outdoor forklifts where the hybrid pays back well on reduced maintenance, reduced fuel cost and longer life, the sharply reduced noise and pollution being a bonus. We are rapidly approaching the point where pure electric and hybrid electric buses have more superior cost of ownership, improving on the typically eight year payback in 2012. In future, more component and system suppliers will get behind the promising new and imaginative vehicle programs rather than queuing up like idiots to get designed into pure electric cars that will not sell. If we include the large number in China, there are now over 100 manufacturers of pure electric cars looking glumly at a near- empty orderbook.

 

More versatile, more acceptable

By contrast, the military is going electric with mission critical vehicles primarily because a planned 70% reduction in fuel requirements stops deployments being inhibited by fuel supply logistics. Boeing is making hundreds of airliners into electric vehicles when on the ground because this saves the airlines millions of dollars a year and they will be deployed in 2013. Kilowatts of electric power into the nosewheel replaces megawatts of inefficient, noisy and polluting jet engine power when taxiing. The recent fatal helicopter crash in the centre of London highlights the importance of the electric powertrain as a lifebelt in conventional helicopters: it will let it land in a more controlled fashion when the main system fails. This is being pursued by Eurocopter and separately by Pascal Cretien of SYNPER in France who flew the world’s first pure electric helicopter in 2011.

Millenworks Light Utility Vehicle in hybrid form. Source: IDTechEx

Bombardier, Polaris Industries, the Chinese and Indian e-bike industry and others will increasingly replace lead acid batteries in their leisure, and other small electric vehicles to make them more hassle free and reduce cost of ownership. Someone will develop a modern, common platform for golf, mining, leisure, military, microbus and other Jeep like electric vehicles, embarrassing the incumbents that do not modernise. This platform will be pure electric but, where appropriate, it should have a drop-in range extender as an optional extra. See the IDTechEx report, “Range Extenders for Electric Vehicles 2012-2022” (www.IDTechEx.com/range) .

 

PART TWO

In this second half, we look at other aspects of what will and will not happen with electric vehicles land, water and air in 2013, whether they are hybrid or pure electric.

 

New range benchmark

Many more of the new affordable pure electric vehicles will have 150 miles range making today’s ones with only 100 miles range, whether land water or air, look very tired. Affordable 200 mile range will occasionally be on offer in 2013 thanks to a myriad of small improvements. However, for on-road private vehicles, the tipping point for a leap in sales will be some longer range and/or lower price not achieved in 2013. When it happens, the “lifebelt you may never use” called the roadside charger, may no longer be needed.

 

Simplistic investors

In the face of all this success and imminent further expansion, it is unfortunate that so many investment organisations are being imprudently simplistic and panicky. We hear of investors “getting out of green energy” and increasingly “shunning electric vehicles following the car disaster”.

Fortunately there are more intelligent ones around that look at the detail. It is true that sales of electric cars are tiny, at a fraction of the number of profitable, pure electric vehicles such as small commercial vehicles, buses, mobility for the disabled, golf cars, electric bikes, scooters and forklifts. For example, see the IDTechEx report, “Light Electric Vehicles 2012-2022” (www.IDTechEx.com/lev) and “Hybrid and Electric Vehicles 2012-2022: Forecasts, Technologies, Players” (www.IDTechEx.com/ev) .

Global EV sales, in thousands. Source:IDTechEx

 

However, pure electric cars are a very special case. It has to be, “all things to all men”. An up-front affordable family car may not even be available in 2013. Financial engineering such as leasing or rental will not attract the masses in 2013, though it did eventually help in the early days of television, a more compelling consumer proposition. For early television, there was the Sword of Damocles of huge maintenance cost, something echoed in the huge cost of buying and later replacing a car traction battery today.

 

Totally new components and structures

The good news is that even pure electric cars will become a compelling proposition for many of us by the end of the decade and that is because the electric vehicle industry is unique in replacing, or being about to replace, almost every part with something completely different. It is a very long list but consider how the Toyota racing car, the MAN bus and the Riversimple car have replaced the lithium-ion battery with supercapacitors. For more on that see the general IDTechEx report, “Electrochemical Double Layer Capacitors: Supercapacitors 2012-2122” (www.IDTechEx.com/EDLC) and the drill down, “Supercapacitor/ Ultracapacitor Strategies and Emerging Applications 2013-2025” (www.IDTechEx.com/superApps) .

Thanks to graphene and other advances, supercapacitors will be announced in 2013 that have greater energy density than lead acid batteries and ten times the charge-discharge speed of even lithium-ion batteries with four times the life of lithium-ion batteries – fit and forget. Some vehicles using such new technologies will attract premium pricing, their manufacturers avoiding a race to the bottom on pricing.

 

Components are replaced and merged

Consider how lithium-ion batteries are starting to replace lead acid ones in boats, e-bikes (all the one million sold in Europe last year, for instance) and forklifts etc. In 2013, silicon carbide power components start to replace silicon to give better temperature and frequency performance. Switched reluctance traction motors have recently had their first design wins and a rapidly increasing number of motor suppliers are adding them to the range in 2013, primarily because they have the lowest inherent cost. See the IDTechEx report, “Electric Motors for Electric Vehicles 2012-2022” (www.IDTechEx.com/emotors) . Structural components, smart skin, printed electronics and multiple energy harvesting including electric active suspension is arriving but this is a very long list. However, the necessary formable photovoltaic film for infrared and light energy harvesting across most of a vehicle will not be available until after 2013. See the IDTechEx report, “Stretchable Electronics Comes to Market” (www.IDTechEx.com/stretch) .

Disbelievers in this wave of formable, flexible, thin film and printed electronics and electrics need to look at the latest Ford Fusion car which has an overhead control cluster that is cast in one piece from laminar and printed circuitry and lighting, giving up to 40% improvement in space, weight and cost and maybe tenfold improvement in reliability and maintenance cost. That cluster now consists of layered printed carbon and silver conductors and actuators, plastic film, a few LEDs and not much else and there are no moving parts or filaments.

2013 Ford Fusion. Source: Ford

The whole land and air electric vehicle industry is now chasing that technology because even copper wiring could be printed, see www.IDTechEx.com/research/pe for our full range of printed electronics reports.

 

Range of all electric vehicles will sharply improve

Add better aerodynamics, more efficient powertrains, the planned drop-in emergency range extenders that go beyond the piston engine (rotary, fuel cell etc), the merging of batteries and their controls and interfacing and motors and their controls and inverters, the move to higher voltages, structural components and so on and huge improvements in performance of land, water and airborne electric vehicles are in prospect. For example, the achievement of Pipistrel of Slovenia in winning the NASA aircraft economy prize shows the way for pure electric light aircraft, which it has been selling since 2007. Improving range several-fold is not just a matter of waiting for the vicious competition in lithium-based vehicle batteries to resolve itself in a price war as costs tumble. The savvy investor will therefore sieve through this cornucopia rather than make simplistic statements before going for that long lunch break.

 

Wireless charging arrives

Following the success of the Bombardier pure electric buses that charge wirelessly, we shall see first evidence of the collaboration between German car manufacturers to offer wireless charging on premium models. See the IDTechEx report, “Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure 2012-2022” (www.IDTechEx.com/EVcharge ).

 

Role model of success

Want a role model of success beyond the proliferating number of niches Toyota continues to grow sales of its hybrid and pure electric buses and forklifts, its hybrid cars and its cautious entry into pure electric cars totalling around 50% of global revenues for all electric vehicles land, water and air. Profitable You bet.

For more, consult the largest range of in-depth studies with forecasts on the total electric vehicle industry land, water and air and all the key components and infrastructure – 22 reports in all (www.IDTechEx.com/research/ev) . For free daily analysis on the whole industry that is free of excessive bias towards what is going on in the USA or, for that matter, the electric car industry, both being seen in the context of what is happening globally, a much bigger and more vibrant market, visit Electric Vehicles Research (www.IDTechEx.com/EVR) .


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