Role of EVs in the energy transition.

Welcome everyone.

I am Pavol Bauer and I am a Professor of the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.

I lead the research group of DC systems, energy conversion and storage at TU Delft.

In this lecture, we will answer a few fundamental questions about electric vehicles.

What is an electric vehicle?

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

How can EVs enable the energy transition?

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

Any vehicle propelled by an electric drivetrain taking power from a rechargeable battery or
from a portable, refillable, electrical energy source like fuel cell or solar panels, 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 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 then began between the two types of vehicles.

As you might have corrected guessed, the fossil fuel powered cars won this competition due
to two main reasons.

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 the 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.

(new EV shows)-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 200-mile range that can be charged in less than an hour.

2 million electric cars are already on the roads globally in 2016, 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.

Let’s have a look at the four main advantages: Sustainability; Efficiency; Convenience and
Economy.

The first 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 liveability and 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 or
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-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.

Moving on, the third benefit of EVs is Convenience EVs have no gears and are hence 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 EV 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, electric vehicles 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, EV would have complete self-driving capabilities in the future, opening a plethora
of opportunities.

The final category 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 cars’ lifetime is lower for
the electric car.

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.

The first two are related to range anxiety of electric vehicles First, EVs require long charging
times of a few hours which is still much longer than the 2 min 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 EV 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.