Ruth Williams is disappointed by the lack of battery content at the 27th edition of The International Electric Vehicle Symposium & Exhibition (EVS) in Barcelona. Just like EVs in many respects, the show was found wanting in the basics.
People visit Barcelona for the weather, food and to see the architectural touches of Antoni Gaudi that adorn the city. What visitors may not realise is the push the Spanish city has made to reduce CO2 and increase the number of electrified vehicles on its streets.
Above Boys toys: This three-wheel e-scooter from Dutch Virto was a great break from the conference hall. It features a lithium iron phosphate 48V/10Ah battery that riders can whizz about on at 25km/h on public roads— great fun in the Spanish sunshine
The week of EVS27 brought torrential rain that made seeing Gaudi’s buildings difficult; so there was nothing to think about but the EVs.
The city boasts more than 300 EVs in public fleets, including street-sweeping trucks that move silently through the narrow streets. The packs of bumbling tourists take a long time to notice their looming presence, which seems a fitting analogy for electrified vehicles– they are slowly creeping up on us and most people do not notice.
The venue had space for the 232 exhibitors and 4 000 visitors in attendance, and the centre of the hall was taken up by automakers showing off the latest electric or hybrid models. Bringing a sexy car and pretty girls to talk about the car seemed the best way to attract attention of visitors and increase footfall to a stand. The side avenues of the hall were comparatively hushed as people gravitated towards the shiny vehicles.
Being an electric car show, these will tend to pull the crowds. The ancillary supply companies can hope to attract the wayfarers, but it is tough competition. And while everybody seems pleased with the attendance, it begs the question if this is the right place for battery makers? Or are they getting lost in the crowd?
A big positive for the exhibitors was the long lunch break each day, which gave plenty of time for delegates to visit the stands and test drive the collection of EVs in the car-park.
The Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid plug-in hybrid EV with a 9.4kWh lithium-ion battery combined with a 3-litre supercharged engine. It emits just 71g/km of CO2— unheard of for a car of its class
The Volkswagen XL1 plug-in hybrid that comes with a 5.5kWh capacity lithium-ion battery combined with a 2-cylinder combustion engine. VW quotes up to 31 miles of all-electric driving range
The BMW i3 is the first all-electric offering from BMW has a range of 80-100 miles and emits just 13g/km of CO2
The Renault Zoe has a 22kWh lithium-ion battery that delivers a range of 130 miles. It is the top selling EV in France with sales over 5,000 units from December 2012 to November 2013
The EDI Auto T300 is a Chinese-made three-wheeler that can hit 125mph with a price tag of $50K. But it does look like the Batmobile and attracted a lot of attention to the stand
The first session of the conference featured Olivier Onidi, the European Commission’s Director of Innovative & Sustainable Mobility, who welcomed the audience with this opening gambit. “We have come here to learn what is bringing the best results from all the ideas and designs that are out there at the moment.” Quite a promise to live up to.
In lieu of a hardcopy programme, there was an EVS27 app to download on arrival. Unfortunately it had limited information beyond session times and who was speaking. Not even all the presentation titles appeared to be included, let alone a summary.
This left delegates planning which sessions to attend based on luck. Another annoyance was the sessions took place in partitioned rooms of the main exhibition hall that did not eliminate much background noise and, worse, often resulted in two sessions being audible at once.
In the dedicated battery track the majority of the presenters were students discussing their work, while the names and companies on the programme who sounded interesting were session chair-people rather than speakers. Why two co-chairs were required to fill this role was a mystery.
The highlights from the battery sessions included Dan Radomski, director of market development of NextEnergy, speaking about how the supply chain dynamics within the US could be improved for domestic lithium-ion production. Radomski says there is a global overcapacity for automotive lithium-ion batteries, this has ranged between 300 – 1000% but vehicle production to actually use these batteries is picking up.
Asia is handling all the demand for components at present; Radomski says any ‘would-be’ US suppliers are restricted by low-volume production, so they lose out to Asian competition. The window of opportunity lies with short shelf-life products such as salts, additives and solvents for the electrolyte and copper foil for current collectors. Shipping time from China is too lengthy for these components to be useful when they arrive on US shores, so domestic supply would assist cell and pack makers.
Interestingly, there was no talk of range anxiety for EV drivers; this problem seemingly is now at the feet of charging companies and networks rather than battery makers. One of the major themes of the battery track was that battery performance is hampered with the ageing of cells. With the cost of an EV being largely due to the high cost of the battery, if said battery is only good for eight years then the vehicle is a less than prudent investment.
There was a host of presentations of graduate and post-graduate work testing cells and batteries at different states of charge. The trouble was the work is preliminary and often just the starting point of something more comprehensive.
For instance, Rughavendra Arunachala of Brussels University discussed the start of his work on cycle life characterisation of large format lithium-ion batteries. Arunachala identified these as the best option for EVs because they offer high energy and power but have less wiring to go wrong!
He discussed his findings of putting lithium (nickel manganese cobalt) oxygen cells inside a climate chamber, showing cell temperature increased as the cells aged. He concluded by saying the reasons for the ageing are not known and more detailed studies will be required.
Similarly Genki Kaneko, a student at the Waseda University in Japan, presented his work addressing degradation mechanisms of lithium iron phosphate batteries. He pointed out that while LiFePO4 is good for charging and cycling, it suffers from degradation of cells over time. He found by testing batteries at higher temperature and state of charge (SoC) increased capacity loss and caused more degradation.
Kaneko said temperature had a greater effect than SoC and that capacity loss is due to chemical reactions. Using batteries at lower temperatures and SoC will extend the battery’s life but it won’t perform as well.
The optimised charging to extend battery life would be at 24% for warmer climates and 38% SoC in colder weather. The drawback is this has been based on calculated data real world testing is required for validation.
These presentations showed that electrochemistry students performing extensive testing on cells and modules are making incremental gains in battery performance, but there were no big breakthroughs or developments from companies to shout about.
The various presentations sought to establish the optimum working conditions and ideal configurations to get the most out of cells, modules and packs in an EV. The limits of each study leave scope for continued research for many years to come. If nothing else, it shows the impressive numbers of on-going battery studies and just how many eager students are waiting to begin a career in electrochemistry.
To be fair to the research students, they presented their work well, but it seemed out of place at the world’s biggest international EV event. It probably did great deal for the students’ own work prospects and hopefully some cell and pack makers were listening with perked ears to facilitate taking the work to the next level.
So what else was there? Well, Norway is the ‘poster girl’ for EV success: It has the highest number of government-backed buying incentives of any country in the world. They include exemption from taxes, use of bus lanes, free ferries and free parking, which have been in place since 2003.
From 2014 new incentives will include VAT exemption for EVs and batteries. This push has worked – there are 3500 EVs in Oslo and 16 000 across Norway; in September 2013 8.6% of cars sold in Norway were EVs, 7.2% in October. The Nissan Leaf was the country’s best selling car for October 2013.
The other big issue was charging, so it was fitting that Qualcomm was a global partner of the event and held the most prominent position in the exhibition hall. No one could fail to see the racing car from the newly unveiled Formula E series, in fact, this was the first time the actual car rather than a model had been exhibited. It was positioned over a Qualcomm charger, as partner to the E-race series that starts in September 2014.
Qualcomm’s VP of business development and marketing Anthony Thomson spoke about the company’s wireless charging that uses resonant magnetic induction system to automatically charge a car parked over the sensor. It would remove the barrier to the uptake of electric cars, which is in Qualcomm’s view, is the lack of charging infrastructure.
Working with Formula E Holdings on the race series, the company will develop its charging system for use with road and passenger vehicles. Thomson argued that charging little and often was a better way to get cars on the road and fitting in with customers’ driving habits instead of an overnight mega charge.
Senan McGrath, a member of the Task Force EV division of European electricity industry association Eurelectric, addressed the issue of whether the electrical grid could even cope with charging requirements of mass uptake of EVs. By Eurelectric’s calculations, if there were 100% EV uptake, the KWh capacity for the continent would need to be increased by 20%, individual countries would only need a 1% increase in electricity supply – achievable in anyone’s eyes.
McGrath said if charging of cars could be guaranteed to take place off-peak then no change would be needed. He added 10% of all cars would have to be an EV before the grid notices any impact.
The argument EVs merely move the emissions from the tailpipe to the power station was counterbalanced by McGrath with calculations that even if the electricity came from coal-fired power stations it would still achieve the 2015 Europe-wide goal of lowering carbon emissions to 130g/km. Using gas-fired power stations could reduce CO2 to 56g/Km, using wind power to make electricity could reduce it further to just 9g/km.
McGrath concluded Eurelectric sees the significant savings that are possible with the widespread adoption of electric cars but stressed that utilities must be heavily involved in any discussions on EVs and charging.
Over 62 000 of these have been sold globally since 2010 and US order have doubled for 2014 based on sales from last year.
The classic ‘chicken and egg’ argument about electric cars and charging stations gave some interesting insights. Takashi Shirakawa of the Nissan Technical Centre Europe said their customers’ habits show they charge at home rather than on the road, so infrastructure is less important.
It seems a short-sighted view that this behaviour would remain if all cars were electric, especially in cities where residents are far less likely to have a driveway or garage. Qualcomm’s Thomson had a more rounded view that yes, people will charge at home but if this is their prime car they need to be able to charge it wherever and whenever they need. He says: “You wouldn’t buy a petrol car if there were no petrol stations.” Too true.
In the spirit of being an international conference, it is fitting to address the need for a universal charging system that is suitable for use anywhere. A consortium from SAE, the international society of automotive engineers, has developed just that.
Their Combined Charging System combines common AC charging with DC fast charging in one system. Robert Weber of BMW talked about the single system that means EV drivers only need one charger regardless of where they are in any country or continent.
Weber said the system is safe and robust: if anything goes wrong it will shut down. The amount of current drawn is controlled at the connection point that has both AC and DC charging options for long overnight charges or opportunistic fast charging.
The development is supported by all the major automakers in US, Europe and Asia and is not subject to license to encourage universal use. International standards associations including SAE, IEC and ISO have been involved throughout the design process so the charger can be used and sold globally.
Cornel Pampu, manager of the combined charging office at Carmeq GmbH, reinforced the importance of a universal charging system; he says making the system user-friendly and compatible with driving-styles is as important as the connections themselves: People need choice and flexibility – they get that from petrol cars so to replace petrol cars the alternative must be as at least as adequate and flexible. Will fast charging become a key selling point?
It seems EV fans have been overly optimistic about uptake numbers. Changing the driving habits of billions is ambitious. However, as technology and aesthetics improve the cars are starting to sell, as Norway has demonstrated, we are slowly seeing them creep into everyday life.
From a battery-centric viewpoint, as a core element to any discussion on electric vehicles batteries getting more attention at EVS would be just.
