The emission norms are soon going to become even more stringent across the world. So it?s imperative that the global automotive industry has to find a solution to address this concern. To respond to climate change, an integrated approach is required from all the concerned stakeholders, including the government for putting in place infrastructure and incentive scheme.
Various technologies such as better fuel efficiency, advanced development in hybrid (including plug-in and next generation clean-diesel vehicles) as well as development of alternative fuel vehicles such as fuel cell and electrical vehicles (EVs) that are underway to address the climate issue are at an early stage of development at this point in time, so it becomes difficult to determine the scope of application in future and full-pledged development.
To develop a technology that takes into account the concerns of all the stakeholders, the government should play a key role in terms of providing various incentives, including R&D incentives to the vehicle manufacturers as well as the research institutes. Electrical vehicles can contribute in meeting the challenges with regard to CO2 and pollutant emissions, noise and congestion as well as energy efficiency. The benefit of electric vehicles include keeping vehicular pollution down and thereby reducing greenhouse effect. There are very few moving parts and they don?t need fluids such as engine oil, or transmission fluid, and therefore the maintenance costs are far less. Their excellent reliability reduces down time too. Choosing EVs instead of combustion-powered vehicles results in overall reduction in dumping of engine oils into the environment. These vehicles don?t emit any pollutant from the tailpipe, too. The overall emissions associated with using EVs are typically far less than the emissions from their combustion-powered counterparts. EVs generally cost less to own, operate and maintain than combustion-powered vehicles.
Some of the issues that EVs are facing is lack of public awareness with regard to alternatives compared to conventional, gasoline and diesel vehicles. Though initially the cost of EV seems to be on the higher side, it comes out to be cheaper to own and maintain over its lifetime. But unfortunately the people do not realise this and decisions are generally made on the initial tag price. But there remain some problems such as the safety issue of connecting vehicle to the electricity grade and the ability to meet the electricity on demand etc.
In addition, there are ongoing debates on matters such as energy used by the coal-fired power stations to create electricity, to power the electrical vehicles makes them ineffective to an extent in addressing the climate control issues. There is a big push required to make EVs a reality, especially from the OEMs, the customers, research bodies and the governmental authorities.
The author is auto analyst, PricewaterhouseCoopers