Battery Electric Automobiles: A Passing Fad?

Virtue is widely attributed to those driving an electric car rather than a carbon-emitting gas-guzzler. It is questionable, however, whether propulsion dependent on half a ton or more of lithium ion batteries is any easier on the environment than use of an internal combustion engine. For one thing, battery electric cars come with a substantial up-front carbon-emission cost relating to the mining of lithium for the battery. For another thing, much of the electricity that powers battery electric cars, whether in the US, China, or Europe, is generated by carbon-dioxide-emitting, coal-fired generating stations. 

But batteries are not the only way to power electric cars. This is evident from the recent development of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (and here) that offer the power and performance of a Tesla S without the massive weight, cost and negative environmental impact of a battery. These are one off vehicles, but they demonstrate an electric vehicle technology with which Tesla and other battery electric car makers may soon find themselves having to compete. 

Another way to make automobile use carbon neutral would be to remove from the atmosphere carbon dioxide equivalent to that emitted by gas-powered automobiles. The cost of so doing could be very much less than the cost of switching to electric propulsion. For example, combustion of a litre of gasoline produces 2.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide. The cost of extracting 2.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with technology now at an advanced stage of development would be around 15 cents. Thus a moderate charge added to the price gasoline (about 50 cents per US gallon), if applied to the creation and operation of carbon capture plants, would make gas-powered automobiles carbon neutral. For the motorist driving 10,000 kilometers per year, that would add $580.00 to their yearly motoring cost, which is less than the cost of trading a standard automobile for a Tesla.

But whatever may be the outcome of technology competition at the high end of the electric vehicle market, it will be at the bottom end of the market that electric vehicles with small batteries and short range are most likely to win out, as they already have in China. There, the clunky looking, short-range Hongguang Mini is selling a million copies a year at a cost competitive with the cheapest gas powered automobiles. Such vehicles, if made available with better styling will likely prove hugely popular as city runabout/commuter cars in Western markets. Introduction of such vehicles to Western markets will be delayed however, as established automakers strive to avoid undercutting sales of more expensive family-sized sedans and SUVs, whether gas or electric.

Another type of low emission vehicle is the plug-in hybrid for which there is a considerable present demand. There is no doubt such vehicles can save much gas. But the plug-in hybrid is, like the big battery electric, a clunky solution, having two full drive trains, one electric, the other dependent on an internal combustion engine. This makes for high cost, high vehicle weight, and hence a vehicle with a high embodied carbon content. so although the plug-in hybrid will play an interim role in the transition to low carbon transportation, it does not constitute an likely end product of automobile evolution.

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