Electric cars ‘vehicles of the future’, says WWF

According to the WWF report, the link between fossil fuels and transportation, which has been "locked in" for the past century due to infrastructural developments and the influence of large oil companies and automotive manufacturers, has to be broken. 

"Automotive transport is ripe for transformational change," it claims, and this cannot be achieved solely by finding new sources of carbonaceous material to liquefy, it says, warning that hydrogen or biofuels could do as much environmental damage as crude oil from conventional wells. 

Instead, it says, the future lies in battery electric cars, which, though "relatively immature", can be "over 60% more energy efficient than today's conventional ICEV (internal combustion engined vehicles), across the entire plant-to-wheels life-cycle". 

What's more, the increased efficiency of the electric powertrain occurs whichever source of energy (crude oil, natural gas, coal or biomass) is used to power the grid it uses, the study finds. 

The NGO adds: "Considering the potential for technological advances over time – which will inevitably favour the less developed electric powertrain – this efficiency advantage is likely to increase." 

But it stresses that this will not be possible without strong policies "to dismantle market barriers to superior technologies, and to remove hidden and overt subsidies which perpetuate the liquids paradigm at the expense of competition". 

It also recommends that all vehicles should be subject to energy labelling and efficiency improvement requirements similar to any other energy-consuming appliance. For instance, it says liquid-based measures of fuel economy (litres per 100km) should be replaced with technology-neutral indicators of energy consumed per kilometre. 

Lastly, it says, incentives are needed to encourage customers to make the right choices, including exemptions from tolls or charging schemes or providing 'green car' drivers with access to priority lanes. 

Car manufacturers say they are not against the introduction of alternative technologies, pointing to the fact that electric cars have been available for more than a decade. But, they stress that many highly CO2-efficient cars have met with very low demand. 

"We need to sell the products that consumers want," the Association of Automobile Manufacturers' (ACEA) spokeswoman Sigrid de Vries told EURACTIV. 

ACEA Director of Environment and Economics Rolf Stromberger agreed that the challenge is "to develop a stage of technical maturity which is acceptable for the customer – as they do not accept comfort deficits – and, if possible, with no additional costs compared to existing technologies". 

Technical challenges linked to heavy and large batteries, which increase weight and create space and durability problems must also be resolved, Stromberger told EURACTIV. 

He nevertheless believes that electric vehicles are "one option for future mobility and they will find their market". But this, he believes, is likely to remain confined to "certain utilisation behaviours" such as short distance travelling, where infrastructure to recharge the batteries can be made available. 

While he agrees that electric vehicles can have higher efficiencies compared to conventional internal combustion engines, he insists that general statements cannot be made because it depends which car type you compare and how the fuel is produced. "What counts for the environment is the outcome of the emission balance under consideration of the well-to-wheel approach," he noted. 

In a bid to reduce the transport sector's oil dependency and its contribution to air pollution and climate change, the Commission last February proposed making it compulsory for vehicle manufacturers to cut average emissions from new cars to 130 grammes of CO2 per kilometre through vehicle-technology improvements. A further 10g/km reduction is expected to come from improvements in other areas including tyres, fuels and eco-driving (see LinksDossier on Cars & CO2). 

In March 2007, EU leaders also committed to raising the share of biofuels in transport from current levels of 2% to 10% by 2020. However, this biofuels goal has since been widely criticised for the potentially disastrous consequences it could have on food prices and the environment (see LinksDossier on Biofuels). 

Yet, the Commission views biofuels as the only currently viable green alternative to oil. Other options, including hydrogen and fuel cells, but especially electric plug-ins, are still considered solutions for the distant future (see LinksDossier on Alternative Fuels). 

EU official documents

• Commission:Transport and Environment - Key topics

Business & Industry

• Association of Automobile Manufacturers' (ACEA):Highly Efficient Cars are available but not much loved

NGOs and Think-Tanks

• WWF:Cars should plug-in to a new future (press release)(2 April 2008)
• WWF:Plugged-in: The end of the oil age: Summary(2 April 2008) I Full report