Electric cars are likely to play a big role in America’s – and the world’s – transportation future.
Forty percent of cars on the road by 2050 will be electrics, such as Ford's Transit Connect van, predicts Shell's Peter Voser.
Shell CEO Peter Voser is one advocate. By 2050, the world’s fleet of automobiles will grow to 2 billion vehicles from 1 billion today. About 40 percent of them will be electric cars, he said Thursday.
A key motivator will be the high price of oil. But improvements in electric motors and battery technology will bring in buyers who today might sit on the fence.
Perhaps the biggest improvement will need to come to batteries. Experts say advances in lithium ion batteries, the most common choice for electric cars, are hard to achieve. The batteries have the potential to double or triple in performance. But it could take a decade or more.
One company taking the first steps to understand electrics and batteries is Ford, which will begin selling its first electric vehicle in the fourth quarter of this year.
The company’s first pure electric will be the Transit Connect commercial van. The pint-sized van is powered by a 600-pound, 41 amp lithium ion battery installed under the van’s cargo bay. It has 192 cells, generates 28 kWh of juice and has shown amazing durability in testing, says Praveen Cherian, program manager.
The battery, made by Johnson Controls-Saft, has been driven about 186,000 miles in trials and shown only about 5 percent deterioration, he said on Thursday, strong results for a technology some expect to degrade more rapidly.
The vehicle is designed to last 10 years, or 120,000 miles, and should be able to meet that criteria, Chervian said during a San Francisco test drive.
The van is to go into limited production in the fourth quarter with volume manufacturing kicking off in the first. Ford projects 1,000 units will be made. No price has been announced. The vehicle is designed for short-range commercial deliveries and use by repair crews.
It will be followed by the electric Focus in 2011 and a plug-in hybrid electric in 2012. The 2012 vehicle will likely to be the Escape SUV.
While these first few vehicles represent a chance for the company to learn as much as consumers about this nascent technology, the lessons will be taught on the go. If Shell’s Voser is right, there won’t be much time to sit around contemplate.
Wonderful post – I was heading for a similar article which I will probably still take a shot at, but from a slightly different angle. Thanks for sharing this with your readers…Obviously a lot of others appreciate it too!