Over the past century the use of cars has evolved to create an emergent organism which has oil in its bloodstream, and the auto industry at its heart, the supply chain, distribution channels and aftermarket as limbs. Its tentacles reach along the roads which control where we go and where and how we live, into the banks that finance the cars, and the governments that tax them and finance the infrastructure they need.

All that means swapping oil for electricity to fuel cars will do much more than displace the oil industry in favour of power utilities.

It will involve massive infrastructure investments, and additional demand pressure on energy supplies which already are constrained by overdue plant investment and the cost of cutting carbon. In the UK, just maintaining supply for current consumption levels will require about one-third of ‘current’ power stations to be renewed in the coming decade. Century-old grid networks require renewal and ‘smart’ reconfiguration around the world.

If it gathers pace, the great oil-to-electricity transition will ultimately require governments to replace oil-based tax revenues with others. Right now, an EV can drive 58 miles from Brighton to London for £1 of kWh. But before too long, current may need to be taxed as highly as petrol. Meanwhile, governments are giving cash away in piles – in grants for EV R&D, in tax breaks and other incentives for EV buyers, and in public EV infrastructure investment funding. It could amount to nearly €10k per EV.

This means that EVs are important for all of us – we’ll all be paying for them, like it or not. Beyond the short term, it’s not affordable. Yet to stop these subsidies before battery technology advances make EVs remotely competitive with oil at its present price would likely kill off the EV in the next five years, just as the energy density and ubiquity of petrol killed it a century ago.

Both the fiscal and technology requirements of the nascent EV sector get in-depth treatment in a new report from Trend Tracker: EVs: Energy, Infrastructure and Mobility in the Real World. It will be published in January 2011, with chapters on:

• EV technology
• Battery chemistries
• Profiles of X EV manufacturers and Y traction battery manufacturers
• EVs and power generation
• Recharging infrastructure development
• Oil and other critical resource constraints
• Market penetration forecasts
• Fiscal policies
• Business models

This report from Trend Tracker Ltd., one of the UK’s foremost automotive research companies, is based on strategic research and three years of tracking developments in the EV and automotive sectors. No mere technology update, it offers uncomfortable advice based on a mass of technology, energy and resources data. It’s designed to help investors, politicians, environmentalists and senior executives in the automotive and power utility sectors get to grips with the dynamics and problems of what could be the most seismic transition since globalisation –from oil to electricity.

Toby Procter

Trend Tracker Limited

0870 421 4350

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