Decarbonisation of transport will be achieved through a combination of technologies including electricity, renewable fuels and hydrogen. For electric vehicles to be competitive with their alternatives, they will need to meet some technological challenges.
The major challenges of electric mobility are generally known. The main ones are cost, range and charging infrastructure.
Cost, which depends directly on the cost of the battery, is the main challenge for electric vehicles and largely determines the other challenges. If, for example, batteries were sufficiently cheap, it would theoretically be possible to achieve any range based on a quantity of storage. Similarly, if electric vehicles were fully competitive in price with thermal vehicles, they could be extended to the point of resolving the amortisation of charging infrastructures.
From 2008-2010, when interest in electric vehicles resurfaced, to the present day, the cost of batteries has fallen dramatically. There are two main factors: technology and economy of scale. Today, electric cars are not far from cost parity with thermals, although they still have some way to go.
The last few years have seen a slowdown in cost reduction, which is interpreted as both the evolution of technology and the economy of scale effect running out of steam. Therefore, the next significant drop in cost is expected to come from a leap in technology, probably a new generation of batteries.
Electric vehicle manufacturers have to split the cost reduction between making the vehicle cheaper and giving it a longer range.
Partly because of improved technology and partly because of cost reductions (as explained above), many current electric cars have a range of over 500 kilometres. This is more than enough for normal daily commuting, but not enough for travelling. It should be borne in mind that the range of electric vehicles is greatly reduced in travel conditions (motorway, air conditioning...) compared to the nominal range.
For its part, the charging infrastructure continues to develop alongside the development of electric vehicles. Two factors come into play here: the number of recharging points available and the speed of recharging.
Private home charging is growing directly with the number of electric vehicle owners. It is limited by the almost insurmountable difficulty of old buildings that cannot install electric vehicle charging or whose owners' associations are unwilling to make modifications. On the other hand, single-family homes and most new buildings can be equipped with the infrastructure. Charging in homes is always ‘slow’, taking several hours.
Meanwhile, charging in public places, such as petrol stations, shopping centres, etc., faces the greatest challenges in terms of the availability of electrical power and the existence of a sufficiently large fleet of electric vehicles to guarantee the amortisation of the installations. Charging in public places should preferably be fast, able to be completed in less than one hour. Public infrastructure is expected to grow in line with the vehicle fleet. Also, the availability of more fast public charging infrastructure incentivises the purchase of vehicles, so the two elements are mutually reinforcing.
Until relatively recently, the electric vehicle could be said to be competing against itself. In other words, if it is too expensive to be competitive, it will have to be made cheaper with technology and economies of scale, but in the meantime the solution has been to subsidise it because it was seen as practically the only way to decarbonise transport.
However, there are alternatives. Renewable or net-zero emission fuels are already sufficiently developed to be a real option. The great advantage of these fuels is that they are chemically the same as conventional fossil fuels. Thus, they can be used directly in the same vehicles without modification and without the need for additional supply infrastructure.
