Electric Vehicles

I am writing this in March 2012 and I forecast that electric vehicles will dominate the worlds roads in about 25 years time.

Well, that’s unusual for me. I’m not a big fan of electric cars at all. So what has changed my mind? Quite simply it is the result of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. Bear with me whilst I join up the dots!

At present, electric cars are, in my view, rubbish. The manufacturers have just been playing with it to cope with demand from the Green Lobby. But since Fukushima, Japan have had a major re-think on all sorts of issues. They are clearly ditching nuclear as a power source. And remember that Japan has no natural oil reserves, so they have to import to meet demand. Combine this with the Japanese being major car manufacturers. Now join up the dots and why not go “proper” electric vehicles?

Well, why not? What are the indications that things are changing? Quite simply, just 12 months on from Fukushima, the Japanese car manufacturers are now chucking money at their racing divisions. By doing this, major advances will result because that is what has always happened in motor racing history. There will then be, over time, be massive advances in technology and hey presto, it filters down to every day vehicles.

It’s not just aimed at cars either. This year on the Isle of Man, I am expecting at least 3 separate manufacturers to break the 100mph average lap speed. Now that is progress.

I have recently read a couple of press releases that have inspired this article and I have reproduced them below should be interested to read further.

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Tadashi Yamashina, Toyota Motor Corporation Senior Managing Officer and Toyota Motorsport Chairman, said: “Toyota has entered Le Mans before, but by using our hybrid technology this time will be a completely new challenge. We want to write a new chapter in the history of the Le Mans 24 Hours, as in the FIA World Endurance Championship, through our use of hybrid technology.

“In addition, we aim to learn from the experience of competing in such a challenging motorsport environment to enhance our production car technology. Le Mans is a legendary race and I would like to thank the ACO and the FIA for their constructive and positive co-operation over the last few months.

Toyota Motosport’s award-winning engineering services and all its current motorsport projects are unaffected by the announcement of the new racing programme and will continue as before. Toyota hopes the new enterprise will provide further impetus to Toyota Motorsport’s successful business development.

Toyota last competed in the Le Mans 24 Hours as a manufacturer in the late 1990s racing the GT-One, a car which famously established a new race lap record in 1999.

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A new electric race car prototype has been officially revealed by Lola Group and Drayson Racing Technologies (DRT).

The Lola-Drayson B12/69EV is a technology demonstrator that is aiming to break lap records for electric vehicles at tracks around the world.

Built around the current Lola LMP1 group B12 Le Mans chassis, the new vehicle uses a DRT electric drivetrain to generate 850Bhp, propelling it to 60pmh from standstill in 3.0 seconds. The weight of the car is 1000kg, slightly in excess of the regular 900kgs in the present LMP1.

UK’s Energy Supplies

It is only when there is an unusual weather event that you can truly judge how well our energy supplies fair. It is good to have a balance of different supplies. But here is my case for why are reliant on the nuclear option.

Wind Power

When we have a prolonged cold snap, it is caused by a high pressure weather system being in place for a long time. High pressure means no wind. This means no energy supply. And after all, when it is cold, we need lots of energy don’t we?

So, wind power has it place. I am all in favour of it. But it can only ever contribute a smallish amount to the nations supply. As at January 2010, wind farms account for about 5% of the UK’s power generation. In the cold spell we have just had, it accounted for just 0.2%. This was due to the lack of wind.

Coal

Coal is a historic energy supply. But recent years has seen its decline. I do not know what percentage of the nations supply it now produces. But it cannot be a truly significant amount. And this is unlikely to change either.

Many coal fired power plants will be closing in the next 10 years in any case. Why? Well, they don’t comply with EU regulations.

Gas

We have got ourselves into a right muddle over this one! Firstly our North Sea Gas supplies are slowly drying up. This causes shortages and price volatility – that is entirely of our own making. The answer was building substantial pipelines across the North Sea. Also, we have now built new Liquid Gas installations for more importation.

So all this is good, but we are now becoming more reliant on imports. And as we will use more when it’s cold, expect prices to change accordingly! Now the obvious way around this is to dramatically increase storage capacity. That way you buy when cheap, store it and it’s used when we have adverse weather.  And yes, you’ve guessed it; we make a hash of this. The UK’s maximum storage facility is an average 16 days worth. In France its 91 days and Germany is 73 days. Hence the price volatility issues – we have them, France and Germany do not.

And the latest news is that new gas fired power stations are to be built. The aim is to increase the output capacity by about 50%. Gas power plants are cheap to build and are less controversial than the nuclear option.

Nuclear

And so onto the last option: nuclear. Do we really have any other choice? Or do we want to be more reliant on importing gas and then suffer a pricing structure that we have no control over?

As usual in these debates, the ultimate bottom line is all about “price”. Decisions are being made right now that will have an effect on pricing for many decades to come. And yet there is very little media coverage.