Recharging a love for cars

Another electric hype?

First was the hype about hydrogen, then the rush for biofuels. These days, everyone is interested in electric cars. This might sound like a cynic's account of the trends in green technology, but for some it is also a cautionary tale about the dangers of jumping on bandwagons.

Electric cars are not a ‘new' new idea, but a very old one. (A recent report by WWF pointed out that in 1900 electric cars outsold their petrol-powered rivals.) But there are reasons to think that what could be described as “the car of the perpetual future” will become a reality. In the last year, Spain has announced plans to get one million electric cars on the road by 2014, France has started to build a nationwide charging network and the UK government has promised subsidies for buying electric or hybrid vehicles.

Electric cars have failed in the past for several reasons: lack of places to charge them, low mileage range, high costs, nerdy designs, the limitations of the battery technology. Some companies say that they have solved these problems (see main article), but other questions have not gone away.
Supporters say that electric vehicles produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than oil-based cars. WWF's report says that this remains true even when electric cars rely on power from today's fossil-fuel dependent grid. This advantage will only grow as power from renewable sources increases.

Nevertheless, sceptics remain concerned on just this point. Nuša Urbancic, a researcher at Transport and Environment, a campaign group, says that if more power generation is needed to meet demand for charging electric cars, emissions could increase. (Better Place will get all its energy from renewable sources, but this will not necessarily be true for other electric cars.) Urbancic thinks that electric cars have more potential than hydrogen-powered cars or biofuels, but warns regulators against picking technological winners.

“We are a bit sceptical about subsidies. It might be more problematic if it leads to more congestion ... and [contributes] to the whole idea that transport has to be personal.” She does not expect to see many fully electric cars on the road in the next ten years.

The European Commission is still deciding what line to take on electric cars. Officials recently finalised plans for an 18-month study that will report in 2011. Electric cars are also part of a Commission investigation into how growing demand for transport can be reconciled with the G8's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050.

But some incentives for electric cars already exist. A new regulation on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions performance standards allows carmakers to count “eco-innovative” vehicles towards their target of cutting average fleet emissions. Carmakers have to reduce average fleet emissions of new cars to 120 grams of CO2 per kilometre by 2015, but “eco-innovative” cars will count towards 7 grams of this target. In effect, the next-generation Prius could ‘cross-subsidise' old-style Porsches.

But the Commission must still decide what type of vehicles will count as eco-innovative. The category could cover not just purely electric cars, but also low-carbon options such as hybrid vehicles.

This suggests that there may be several types of cars on the roads in the future: fully electric cars, plug-in hybrid electric cars and cars powered by an array of different biofuels. Faced with uncertainty, policymakers must decide where to focus their political energy and public money.