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What can eCars learn from Biogas?
April 17th, 2012 Henrik Hodam Tags: Automotive, eCar, Electromobility, Sustainability, Utilities
Posted in Uncategorized |
Almost everywhere in the press we can find articles about the introduction of electric vehicles in every part of the world. In many countries the first pilots have been started and the car manufacturers have brought the first EV models at the market. But all the existing activities are still looking for the right business case which will be mainly influences by the user acceptance. For the user acceptance the industry has to solve some technical problems like the range extension and a next generation of batteries.
Beside the technical challenges there is still the question about the ergonomics of the new type of mobility. How users have to adopt their daily behavior has always been a major driver for the final acceptance of new things. To make things worse the nowadays users already have their experiences and procedures regarding mobility. We all are used to drive a petrol car and know all necessary steps to make it running. In the past we have seen some other activities to introduce alternatives to the traditional petrol car like the usage of biogas.
But analyzing today these activities have not been very successful because their market share is still negligibly small. But we could have a look at their experiences about user acceptance and adopt them for eCars.
The first challenge is the rebuild of the car. To have the advantage of both worlds and to be more independent from the new infrastructure there have been almost only hybrid cars (petro and biogas). So as long as the charging infrastructure for eCars is not sufficient hybrid cars will have a better change to be accepted.
The second challenge of biogas and EV is the refill process. Here the car driver has to find dedicated stations to refill the energy storage in the car. For user convenience the network of such stations has to be very dense and the driver needs tools (map or App) to find the station.
The third aspect also belongs to the changing process. Clearly for petrol and gas the refill takes only few minutes but we see even there that people do not plan their refilling. They just facing the situation that the petrol tank is empty and they expect that there is a petrol station close by. Here we can learn to have a sufficient net of available charging spots. There is a strong demand to have an easy way to find and to do some reservations. As an alternative the possibility to exchange the battery has to be taken into consideration as well.
Furthermore the refill process is currently very simple. No registration of the car or the driver is necessary. This has to remain. In my opinion here we have the biggest problems with the establishing of the eCar infrastructure. There are plans that the car and the driver have to be identified by the changing station? Even if there are technical advantages the user will request anonymity and if the process is complex it would be faulty what reduces the user acceptance.
If it comes to the impact on IT we could see mainly the following consequences. First there is the need for added services for the drivers to find the charging spots and to plan the charging process (e.g. reservations). Secondly the underlying processes to enable the charging processhave to be as simple as possible and interoperability is a key success factor. The new infrastructure that has to be established there must be robust, easy to use and (due to the tough business case) cost effective. Some basic acceptance requirements like privacy and security have to be taken into account.
So the question remains, how can we make the introduction of the EVs a success. The key is the user acceptance which will be driven by simplicity. Why not learning from the past and using the experiences similar businesses have made ?
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Henrik Hodam
Henrik is head of Portfolio Management for the Public, Transport and Utility business unit of Atos Worldline Germany, a member of the Atos Scientific Community and the global track leader for Electromobility. As portfolio manager he is responsible for the definition and the development of the Atos Worldline offering within this markets. This function includes the transformation of innovative ideas into products and business implementations.
Hi Henrik,
I totally agree with you that simplicity is one of the key drivers that people will change to electromobility. The other major drivers are economic advantages (which is currently not the case due to the high TCO) and the ecological advantage in case you use “green” energy from renewable sources.
But it seems that there might be a revival of natural gas driven cars. At least in the US it is currently a boom market (also driven from the government due to high natural gas sources in the US). And as the natural gas price in Europe is currently also on a very low level, maybe the boom comes to Europe too.
So eventually there will be a phase of natural gas driven cars which could slow down the mass market entry for electric vehicles.
The countries with the most natural gas driven cars are currently Iran and Pakistan with almost 6 million natural gas cars on their roads.
Best regards,
Alex
Henrik,
Very interesting views. Simplicity is, as always, an essential factor for end-user adoption. But I think that there are some important uncertainities, with important consquences for the deployment of the (always expensive) infrastructure.
For example, if the end-user adopts an hybrid plug-in, where a “dirty” petrol engine serves to overcome “range anxiety”, the need of a public charge infrastructure is diminished, as most probably the user will plug their car at homes, or work, and use petrol for long travels. So, the traditional “gas station” will prevail, as demand for “electric station” is not big enough for a sustainable business.
As an emergent field, this kind of “unintended consequences” can hava a long-lasting impact.
Regarding the hybrid vehicle I have my doubts. We have identified the groups of first adopters and here we have many users that come with ecological background. Using hybrid cars will probably not be in their focus.
The second group is highly cost sensitive – hybrid cars will probably be more expensive than pure eCars.
So lets see if hybrid will be a significant option in a midterm range.
Hello !
Why not consider parking meters, at side walk, connected to the eletric network, making the delivery charge by cards (eg: Credit cards, pre-charged cards, smart mobiles, etc).
Everyone will be able to park and recharge the vehicle, the service will be billable and the existing eletric network is already installed, making it possible in a short time.
Well, this is the way I see it.
Best regards.
Nelson.
Yes, conneting the existing parking infrastructure with the new demand of recharge is definitely something that has to be considered. Again simplicity (e.g. regarding payments) seems to be one key aspect.