Is 100% EV a realistic target?

I’m writing this week’s blog whilst in Greece for a classic car rally.  It’s the first time that I’ve driven extensively on the Greek mainland and what has occurred to me apart from the beauty of the countryside and the heat in a car without air conditioning is the total absence of electric cars.  I’ve not even spotted any hybrids though they are clearly more difficult to spot amongst their pure combustion engine equivalents.  Toyota is the market-leading brand in Greece, but I have not seen one Prius, even on the taxi fleets.  Official data shows that in 2021 a total of 6,967 electric cars were registered compared to 480 in 2019 with the market share going from 0.4 percent in 2019 to almost 7 percent last year.  This compares with 14% in Germany and 28% in the UK.  It’s possible that some of the cars registered here have subsequently been exported.  The Government has launched a series of incentives including for charging infrastructure and BEV taxis, but it still feels a very different world driving in Greece compared to northern European markets in terms electrification of the parc.  You even notice it in the density of fuel stations along the road network.

I am a BEV fan and totally accept the need for urgent action on climate change, but you have to question whether markets like Greece are really going to get to 100% BEV by 2035.  It is an extreme version of the situation you get in more rural areas of other European countries.  Over a third of the Greek population live in the Athens metropolitan area and are presumably also wealthier than their fellow citizens in more rural parts of the country.  It’s perhaps conceivable that they can be persuaded to switch to electric, and sufficient infrastructure can be installed within the metropolitan area.  However, we have seen some very rural parts of Greece over the last few days, and I cannot believe that anyone living there will ever buy a BEV.  Looking beyond Europe and the 2035 deadline, there are many other markets where the national infrastructure and economic conditions make a switch to a totally different energy source and fuelling system a huge stretch.

The issue is that in the wake of dieselgate, regulators and legislators decided on solutions rather than outcomes.  The whole industry has been forced into a specific solution in order to meet the timescales, with a tiny but growing following looking at hydrogen based solutions to generate the electricity, rather than relying on battery storage.  Other options which could continue to take advantage of knowledge and expertise in combustion engines and refuelling with liquid fuels have effectively been ruled out.  Earlier in the summer, I commented in my blog on the first signs of cracking amongst the European parliamentarians that might open the door to synthetic fuels.

Calculating the environmental and financial impact of following the synthetic fuel route compared to battery (or fuel cell) technology is hugely complex, and dependent on a whole range of assumptions about how the different technologies evolve along the whole supply chain and for electricity power generation.  For a BEV, we are already aware that zero emissions in use are offset by significant environmental negatives around the sourcing of battery raw materials and shipping batteries to the car assembly plants.  If the electricity used to power the BEV in service has not been generated from renewables, then we have only moved the pollution rather than eliminated it.  Battery technology is changing, but is putting the additional load of an electrified vehicle parc onto the electricity grid the best use of renewable generation capacity in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent loss of Russian gas supplies?  All of this is dependent in some form on government support and incentives for car purchase, operating subsidies, charging infrastructure and power generation.

Looking at synthetic fuels, technology already allows us to make internal combustion engines even more efficient and cleaner than their already relatively low levels compared to when we started on this march with EU1 emissions standards in 1992.  Synthetic fuels are available today – used for example in some areas of motorsport – and like any other technology will become better and cheaper with experience and growing volumes.  I am not a chemical engineer, but presume that at least the knowhow in oil refining processes, if not the plant itself, will be transferrable.  The refuelling infrastructure of storage tanks, filling stations and tankers presumably will be as well.  There may be a slight environmental cost in terms of tailpipe emissions, but potentially with offsetting savings from battery production and transportation.  The growth of renewable power generation can be directed at homes and industry, rather than at transportation.  Government support can be directed to ensuring that synthetic fuel is affordable, with no need to incentivise car purchase or charging infrastructure.

I fear that the train has already left the station in terms of this decision, but it would be better to recall it now, rather than carry on blindly and have some last minute U-turn in a few years’ time when development time will have been lost, investment sunk into technologies that have a lower take-up than planned, and potentially useful infrastructure and skills lost in the race to an ill-conceived combustion-free vehicle parc.