An intelligent alternative

The elec­tric fu­ture we have heard so much about is fi­nally here, al­beit not en­tirely. Thanks to re­cent events in the sec­tor, such as the Volk­swa­gen en­gine tam­per­ing scan­dal that has be­come known as ‘diesel­gate', what has for a num­ber of years been a mere ec­cen­tric­ity, own­er­ship of elec­tric ve­hi­cles is now a grow­ing trend.

In this coun­try, how­ever, it is a trend that is pro­gress­ing at a snail's pace. Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from the Cata­lan en­ergy in­sti­tute, ICAEN, until Sep­tem­ber this year only 513 elec­tric cars were reg­is­tered in Cat­alo­nia and 1,143 hy­brid ve­hi­cles. Yet, it is still an in­crease on 2014 and 2013, when 425 and 184 elec­tric ve­hi­cles were reg­is­tered, re­spec­tively.

The, grad­ual, up­ward trend in elec­tric cars can be clearly seen from the fig­ures, al­though at the same time they do not pro­vide enough rea­sons to be overly op­ti­mistic: “We are below the lev­els in other Eu­ro­pean coun­tries and so we need to keep work­ing to in­cen­tivise it,” says Mercè Rius, the di­rec­tor of ICAEN.

Ac­cord­ing to the sta­tis­tics, only four out of every 1,000 ve­hi­cles reg­is­tered in Cat­alo­nia are elec­tric, and there are cur­rently a total of around 4,000 such cars in the coun­try, of which only 1,044 are pri­vate ve­hi­cles (the rest are ei­ther two-wheeled ve­hi­cles or ser­vice ve­hi­cles). What's more, of these 4,000, some 3,300 are all in the greater Barcelona area only.

In some other coun­tries, such as Nor­way, one out of every three ve­hi­cles is elec­tric, while the ratio for the ma­jor­ity of Eu­ro­pean coun­tries is some­where be­tween seven and 38 out of every thou­sand, which even at the low end is higher than here: “We have not ful­filled our ex­pec­ta­tions, but then they have not been ful­filled any­where,” says Rius, who at­trib­utes the slow pace of progress to a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors, from the eco­nomic cri­sis to an in­suf­fi­cient sup­port in­fra­struc­ture.

Cat­alo­nia cur­rently has 1,000 in­di­vid­ual charg­ing sta­tions and 720 si­mul­ta­ne­ous sta­tions (of which 650 are in the Barcelona area). How­ever, new fast-charg­ing sta­tions are planned in 2016 for Badalona, Mont­cada i Reixac, Bar­berà del Vallès, Sant Cugat del Vallès, Pallejà, Sant Joan Despí, Gavà and l'Hos­pi­talet de Llo­bre­gat.

“Re­new­able en­ergy in trans­port can only grow,” says Josep Julià, pro­fes­sor at the Eada Busi­ness School. “In a few years, we will see the same progress we saw with diesel, 10 or 15 years ago,” he adds.

What is true is that man­u­fac­tur­ers of both cars and com­po­nents are work­ing to make bat­ter­ies that are lighter and longer-last­ing, as well as bet­ter per­form­ing car en­gines that can go fur­ther on a sin­gle charge.

All man­u­fac­tur­ers are work­ing on elec­tric ve­hi­cles, says Julià, “so as not to lose trac­tion or to avoid being over­taken by com­peti­tors.” The pro­fes­sor picks out Japan­ese car maker Nis­san, whose Leaf model can go 250 kilo­me­tres on one charge and has be­come a sales suc­cess, while the com­pany's e-NV200 van is also sell­ing well. On the other hand, Volk­swa­gen an­nounced in Sep­tem­ber the launch of a range of 20 elec­tric and hy­brid ve­hi­cles in five years' time, while the Ger­man com­pany's sub­sidiary, Seat, has de­cided to keep its dis­tance until the mar­ket has ma­tured, ac­cord­ing to a num­ber of news re­ports.

In gen­eral, the sec­tor con­tin­ues to fund re­search and ex­perts pre­dict that ad­vances in lithium bat­ter­ies will pro­vide the de­fin­i­tive rev­o­lu­tion in the de­vel­op­ment of elec­tric trans­port. This tech­nol­ogy promises to pro­vide cheaper bat­ter­ies and allow ve­hi­cles to go up to 300 kilo­me­tres on a sin­gle charge.

“In four or five years there will be an ex­plo­sion of elec­tric ve­hi­cles,” says Ramon Caus, for­mer kart­ing racer and di­rec­tor of the Ex­poelèctric trade fair. “In 10 years, we will see sig­nif­i­cant changes,” he pre­dicts. He also points out that, de­spite a lack of in­ter­est from some, in gen­eral the in­dus­try con­tin­ues to work and re­search in this area.

“Elec­tric ve­hi­cles are the ve­hi­cles of the fu­ture,” says Rius. “It is still a mi­nor­ity op­tion for a num­ber of rea­sons, not least the eco­nomic cri­sis, which has not helped at all,” but she also thinks that “when peo­ple stop look­ing only at the short term and look ahead and con­sider the medium to long term, elec­tric ve­hi­cles will be­come a re­al­is­tic op­tion for them.”