The Green Piece Article, Tuesday 24 November 2009

The Chinese government and businesses have been making a big deal about electric cars over the last few years with a number of upstart companies emerging that could yet put China on the automotive manufacturing map. Meanwhile, the US is determined to play catch-up after its leading brands, including General Motors and Chrysler, were left teetering on the edge of peril earlier this year in part because they had failed to move with the times and embrace fuel efficient cars.

So perhaps a partnership between the two countries, as was announced last week (see article), is only natural and promises to be mutually beneficial. However, some critics have hit out at the so-called US-China Electric Vehicle Initiative – so what do the proposals involve and how will they affect the future of electric cars?

What does the partnership entail?

According to the US Department of Energy, the two countries will explore the development of joint products and testing standards for electric vehicles including common design standards for the plugs to be used in electric vehicles; and common test protocols. The initiative will also link more than a dozen cities with electric vehicle demonstration programmes in both countries – the paired cities will share data on charging patterns, grid integration, consumer preferences and more.

The US and China will also create a multi-year roadmap that will identify research and development needs in addition to issues that relate to the manufacturing and introduction of electric cars. The roadmap will not only boost the US and China but will also be used to assist the global industry.

In addition, the countries will develop and disseminate materials aimed at improving public understanding of electric vehicle technologies. This will build on the success of the US-China Electric Vehicle Forum that was established in September.

So what’s the problem?

Certainly the proposals sound good in theory, but there are criticisms aimed at the initiative’s ambition and how it will be prioritised.

Speaking to the New York Times, Lee Schipper, an energy and transportation specialist at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford, commented that creating zero-emission cars for China won’t solve the much bigger problems of urban congestion, traffic fatalities, and paving over once beautiful cities to make room for more cars. He described energy as just a means to an end – and questioned what the end is – urban access and mobility, or cars for a small minority?

Writing in The Energy Collective, Simon Donner highlighted that the clean energy initiative also puts a clear emphasis on coal. He suggests that any climate change initiative can only be embraced if the source of the electricity is substantially less carbon intensive than oil, but the two sides are, according to the Initiative, “working in both countries to promote 21st Century coal technologies”. They have agreed to promote, on a large scale, “carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) demonstration projects and to begin work immediately on the development, deployment, diffusion, and transfer of CCS technology. The two sides welcomed recent agreements between Chinese and US companies, universities, and research institutions to co-operate on CCS and more efficient coal technologies.”

This is then followed by a brief paragraph on renewable energy – seemingly suggesting that coal will remain the king for the foreseeable future.

So what does this mean for electric cars?

Head of the Renault-Nissan Alliance Carlos Ghosn believes that uptake for electric cars will be a gradual process, predicting that around 10 per cent of vehicles sold worldwide will be powered by electricity in 2020. Ghosn has been one of the most vocal supporters of electric cars and has positioned the Nissan LEAF to be a potential market leader when it is mass produced by 2012.

During these formative years, electric cars need as much support as possible and while co-operation is good, the initiative seems to stop short of really throwing both countries’ might behind this new technology.
It appears that electricity is emerging as the leading choice ahead of hydrogen or other alternative fuels in the race to power the automotive vehicles of the future. However, if electric cars are to truly drive down emissions more investment is needed in renewable energy and in resolving the bigger picture of how and where we take our energy from.

So perhaps the US-China partnership can be seen as one small step for electric cars – but not yet a giant leap for vehicles of the zero emission kind.

Faye Sunderland