Everywhere electrification of power trains is used - in EU funding schemes like the green car initiative, in national programmes covering research and climate change. But is it offering a true solution or is it a hoax?
There are some concerns expressed by the following hypothesis':
1. The energy intensity of all resource deplenishing actions is influenced in the first order by the users demand, not the energy conversion technology aka power train which comes only second.
2. The history of the automobile aka OEM industry came into age with mass production, thus offering cheap mobility - but this clearly stands in the way of sustainable transport, because of the competitive advantage against public transport and arising zero emission niche markets which both have very high initial costs for the operator/user.
ad 1. If you calculate the demand in primary energy the demand in use energy is divided through the energy conversion efficiency. Now we have cars consuming approximately 6-8 l per 100km (0.6-0.8 kWh/km) and pedal electric (electrically assisted) bicycles consuming 2-7 Wh/km. So even in case we have 80% efficiency with cars instead of 20% which we have now, the factor in between would be 0.175/0.0045=39 which is nearly 42! Yes the answer is always 42, whatever question you are posing ;-)
ad 2. Investment into individual mobility starts at 1500€ for a used five seater. There is no valid business model for the masses buying battery electric luxury cruisers. Battery cost would be a problem with cars, even after becoming massively cheaper - lets- say one tenth of actual costs!
Concluding, the only way is to invest more money in making the rides lighter consuming less use energy and only afterwards caring about alternative power trains! This will be manifesting itself in safer more acceptable tilting trikes and quads and microcars having a seating capacity matching the demand of 1.x and less with commuting.
Tuesday 13 October 2009
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