Electric vehicle
perspective

TƯƠNG LAI CỦA Ô TÔ ĐIỆN

This Academic pill will answer a few fundamental questions about Electric Vehicles (EVs):

1. What is an Electric Vehicle?

2. What are the key benefits of electric vehicles over fossil fuel-powered vehicles?

3. How can EVs enable the energy transition?

First, let’s begin with the definition of an electric vehicle.

Electric vehicle is a type of vehicle propelled by an electric drivetrain taking power from a rechargeable battery or from a portable electrical energy source (like fuel cell, solar panels, etc.), which is manufactured for use on public roads.

The key point to be noted here is the electric drivetrain. This is what differentiates an electric vehicle from a conventional fossil-fuelled vehicle where the drivetrain is mechanical.

What is interesting to note is that the first cars were indeed electric in the end of the 19th and the early 20th century. In the meanwhile, fossil fuel-powered cars with internal combustion engines became available in early 20th century.

An intense competition began between the two types of vehicles. But the fossil fuel powered cars won this competition due to two main reasons.

Firstly, due to poor battery technology, electric vehicles had a low range in those days and could never travel the long distances reached by a gasoline powered car. Further, charging them took much longer than refueling gasoline.

The second reason was that the mass production of cars like Ford Model-T made gasoline cars affordable, with abundantly available and cheap fuel. Fossil fuel powered cars became the clear winner over electric cars.

As a result, the internal combustion engine car has gradually dominated the market since then until this day. However, decades of research and development in batteries, motor & power electronics technologies have helped bring back electric vehicles to the forefront.

We now have affordable EVs with a 320 kilometers range that can be charged in less than an hour.

More than 10 million electric cars are already on the roads globally in 2020, and this number is only expected to exponentially rise in the future.

Electric vehicles shortly referred to as EVs have numerous advantages over conventional fossil fuel vehicles. They have four main advantages: Sustainability; Efficiency; Convenience & Economy.

The first one is Sustainability. As most of you must be aware, the main driver for moving to electric vehicles is because they have no tail-pipe emissions. This reduces the pollution due to carbon-di-oxide, sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and improves the air quality in our cities.

Moreover, when electric vehicles are charged with electricity generated from renewable energy sources such as wind turbines or solar photovoltaic panels, the emissions due to the electricity generation are zero as well.

EVs play a key role in the transition to renewable energy. This is because the main bottleneck for the expansion of renewable energy is the variability in the generation and the need for energy storage. Since EVs are essentially a big battery on wheels, the EVs can be used to store the surplus renewable energy by charging the EV with solar energy in the day and wind in the night. In the future, there is another function that the EV is able to achieve, called Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G). When the grid is overloaded in the peak time, the EVs can feed their power back to support the grid.

The second advantage is Efficiency. Well-to-Wheel efficiency is the specific life cycle assessment used for transport fuels and vehicles considering all energy losses right from the source of fuel, all the way to the wheels of the vehicles. The Well-to-Wheel analysis is used to assess total energy consumption, energy conversion efficiency and emissions, including their carbon footprint.

In this flowchart, we can see the well-to-wheel efficiency for both the EV & ICE, that is calculated from the energy efficiency of each conversion stage.

First of all, when comparing the efficiency of the vehicle from the fuel tank to the wheel, the efficiency of the EV drivetrain is around 85%, which is much higher than the 25% efficiency of the ICE vehicles.

Secondly, the EV has a Well-to-Wheel efficiency of 35%, which is around 50% higher than the ICE vehicle Well-to-Wheel efficiency of close to 22%. This goes to show the far superior performance of the electric drivetrain.

Further, this is a diagram which shows the Well-to-Wheel greenhouse gas emission versus the total Well-to-Wheel energy usage.

Ideally, one would like to have a vehicle that is close to the origin, low on emissions and low on energy usage. From this pic we can see that the Gasoline and diesel engines footprint is located in right upper corner, which indicates high Well-to-Wheel emissions as well as high energy usage. In the contrary, EVs charged by wind and solar are located in left-hand lower corner, and that means low well-to-wheel emissions and energy demand.

Hence, we can conclude that the EVs have lower Well-to-Wheel emissions than ICE irrespective of the type of electricity production, even if it is 100% coal powered.

Further, it is easier to manage emissions from a power plant such as coal or diesel as emissions are from a single source. Hence, EVs are more health and environmental friendly than the ICE Vehicles.

The third benefit of EVs is Convenience.

EVs have no gears and are much easier to drive than conventional cars. The lack of a combustion engine and mechanical drivetrain makes EVs much quieter than their ICE counterparts, especially at low speeds.

You can charge your EVs whenever you wish at home, just like charging your mobile phone. This provides the convenience of not having to go to the fuel station.

EVs have a far lower number of components and a simpler drivetrain in comparison with ICE cars.

Hence, EVs hardly require any maintenance. Only mechanical parts such as bearings and brakes must be maintained.

Further, with clever design, modern EVs like the Tesla Model S has larger internal space with two boots, one in the front and one in the back.

Moreover, EVs would have complete self-driving capabilities in the future, opening a plethora of opportunities.

The final advantage is Economy.

Even though the buying price of an electric car is higher than a conventional gasoline car today, the total cost of ownership over the car's lifetime is lower for the EVs. EVs have a lower total cost or TCO in short, because of lower maintenance costs, lower taxes, cheaper fuel i.e. electricity, and due to a subsidy from the government.

Even though electric vehicles have many advantages, it is also now faced with serious technical and economic challenges. I will highlight three of the major ones.

First, EVs require long charging times of a few hours. Which is still much longer than the two minutes needed to fill up a fuel tank.

Second, there is limited charging infrastructure available today in public places and along highways.

Finally, the capital cost of batteries are still high which hinders the battery size, driving range and cost electric cars currently in the market.

Hence, EVs still have an enormous potential to be improved upon, both in technical and economic terms

As a conclusion, EVs have made a comeback today owing to great leaps and bounds in battery, motor and power electronic technology. The key benefits of EVs are their zero tail-pipe emission, the possibility to sustainably power them from solar and wind energy, their superior well-to-wheel efficiency, low well-to-wheel emissions, convenience in driving and lower total cost of ownership.

VOCABULARY BANK:

Energy transition /ˈenədʒi trænˈzɪʃn/ (n) : Chuyển đổi năng lượng

Definition /ˌdefɪˈnɪʃn / (n) : Khái niệm, định nghĩa

Electric drivetrain /ɪˈlektrɪk draɪv tʃeɪn/ (n): Bộ truyền động điện

Rechargeable battery /ˌriːˈtʃɑːdʒəbl ˈbætri / (n): Pin có thể sạc lại được

Portable energy/ˈpɔːtəbl ˈenədʒi / (n): Năng lượng lưu động

Fuel cell /ˈfjuːəl sel/ (n): Pin nhiên liệu

Solar panel /ˌsəʊlə ˈpænl/ (n): Tấm pin mặt trời

Public road /ˈpʌblɪk rəʊd / (n): Đường xá công cộng

Battery technology /ˈbætri tekˈnɒlədʒi/ (n): Công nghệ pin

Range /reɪndʒ/ (n): Phạm vi

Mass production /ˌmæs prəˈdʌkʃn/ (n): Sản xuất hàng loạt

Abundantly available /əˈbʌndəntli əˈveɪləbl/ (adj): Dồi dào

Dominate /ˈdɒmɪneɪt/ (v): Thống trị

Power electronic /ˈpaʊə(r) ɪˌlekˈtrɒnɪk / (n): Điện tử công suất

Exponentially rise /ˌekspəˈnenʃəli raɪz / (v): Tăng theo cấp số nhân

Sustainability /səˌsteɪnəˈbɪləti / (n): Sự bền vững

Tail-pipe emission /teɪl-paɪp ɪˈmɪʃn/ (n): Khí thải từ ống xả

Air quality /ˈeə kwɒləti / (n): Chất lượng không khí

Wind turbine /ˈwɪnd tɜːbaɪn/ (n): Tua-bin gió (điện gió)

Solar photovoltaic panel /ˈsəʊlə(r) ˌfəʊtəʊˌvɒlˈteɪɪk ˈpænl/ (n): Tấm pin quang năng (tấm pin mặt trời)

Bottleneck /ˈbɒtlnek / (n): Trở ngại

Overload /ˌəʊvəˈləʊd / (n): Quá tải

Peak time /ˈpiːk taɪm / (n) : Giờ cao điểm

Energy loss /ˈenədʒi lɒs / (n): Tổn thất năng lượng

Assess /əˈses/ (v): Đánh giá

Energy consumption / ˈenədʒi kənˈsʌmpʃn/ (n): Năng lượng tiêu thụ

Energy conversion efficiency /ˈenədʒi kənˈvɜːʃn ɪˈfɪʃnsi / (n): Hiệu suất chuyển đổi năng lượng

Power plant /ˈpaʊə plɑːnt / (n) : Nhà máy điện

Fuel station /ˈfjuːəl ˈsteɪʃn / (n): Trạm xăng, cây xăng

Self-driving /ˌself ˈdraɪvɪŋ / (n): Tự hành, tự lái

Subsidy/ˈsʌbsədi / (n): Trợ cấp

Charging infrastructure /ˈtʃɑːdʒɪŋ ˈɪnfrəstrʌktʃə(r)/ (n) : Cơ sở hạ tầng cho việc sạc pin

Capital cost /ˌkæpɪtl kɒst/ (n): Giá vốn

Thank Delft University of Technology in Netherlands for materials and information using in this post.