autoregion international - Ausgabe 1/2021

8 E-mobility: Are the dice cast? By Armin Gehl, Managing Director of autoregion e.V., Saarbrücken If you look at the current registration numbers of the Federal Motor Transport Authority and at the same time an- alyze the medium-term product plans of European vehicle manufacturers, the conclusion that the battery-electric drive variant in its pure form or as a hybrid derivative seems to be making the race to replace classic combustion technology. However, an insufficiently available charging infrastructure and unresolved issues in the production and disposal of batteries are limiting growth. “German e-car target already half achieved” was the headline of the FAZ on December 28th, 2020 in a contribution by Martin Gropp. And this reads like the long-awaited fulfillment of a prophecy that has been almost unattain- able for many years. In 2009, the federal gov- ernment defined the goal: one million electric vehicles should be on Germany’s roads by 2020 and a nationwide charging infrastructure should be available in the major metropolitan areas. If you extrapolate the figures published by the Federal Motor Transport Authority in November 2020 to the end of 2020, well over 600,000 electrically powered vehicles are likely to be registered in Germany across all vehicle types. This is only around one percent of the total number of around 60 million vehi- cles, but the trend is clearly upwards. And the growth rates for electric and hybrid vehicles are indeed impressive. If you compare the new registration figures published by the Federal Motor Transport Authority in October and November 2020, they show an increase of 522,8 percent for purely electric vehicles and an increase of 177,2 percent for hybrid vehicles, with plug-in hybrids with one Plus of 383,4 percent are clearly disproportionately repre- sented. Liquid and natural gas vehicles were able to increase their registration share by an impressive 50,9 percent. Their share of all new registrations with alternative drives was only a meager 0.5 percent. What started this boom?Without a doubt, the decisive spark was the decision of the federal government to significantly improve funding for the purchase of electric vehicles. For ex- ample, on November 17th, 2020, at the “Auto Summit” in the Chancellery, it was decided to extend the so-called innovation bonus, which was already doubled as part of the Corona economic stimulus program, but was limited to the end of 2021. According to this, pure e-vehi- cles will receive funding of up to 9.000 euros, while plug-in hybrids will receive funding of up to 6.750 euros. In addition, there is the exemp- tion fromvehicle tax until December 31st, 2030 as well as relief for the private use of electric company cars. Fuel cell vehicles and vehicles with hydrogen propulsion are also promoted. In view of the significantly lower range of ve- hicles with this type of drive, the increase in new registrations is correspondingly lower compared to pure electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids, which all major manufacturers have in their current portfolio. When developing new vehicles, German ve- hicle manufacturers give top priority to the various battery-electric drive variants. VW has positioned itself most clearly in this re- gard. “In the foreseeable future, there will be no alternative to battery-electric drives,” announced VW CEO Herbert Diess at the VWAnnual General Meeting in Berlin in 2019, and since then VW has consistently imple- mented this programmatic requirement in its model policy. And the success seems to prove the Wolfsburgers right. Not Tesla, but VW, with a market share of around 17 per- cent, is in first place for electric vehicles in Germany. But the other German manufacturers are also marching in this direction. Audi is planning a 34 percent share of battery electric vehicles in relation to total production by 2030. At BMW it is 17 percent, with BMW already being the world market leader in plug-in hybrids. Under the strategy label “Electric First”, Mercedes plans to bring eight fully electric new models onto the market in the next two years - in- cluding the new S-Class. The ambitious goal for 2030 is: More than half of global sales should consist of plug-in hybrids and fully electric vehicles. Meanwhile, Porsche is stepping out of line and has its Chief Development Officer, Michael Steiner, announce in the FAZ on December 22nd, 2020: “We rely on a triad of drive tech- nology: fully electric models, efficient plug-in hybrids and combustion engines.” Conse- quently, Porsche and its partner Siemens Energy decided to set up the world’s first production facility for synthetic fuels. Only Opel seems to believe in the fuel cell as the drive system of the future for cars. The fuel cell competence center for the entire PSA Group is located at the headquarters in Rüs- selsheim, and the first series-ready vehicle is planned for 2024. In contrast, Mercedes has taken its only fuel cell vehicle, the SUV GLC Fuel Cell, from the market. The realization that the battery-electric drive variant for heavy trucks, at least in long-dis- tance transport, is no alternative has prevailed. Charging times that are too long and batter- ies that too heavy prevent economical driving. The South Korean manufacturer Hyundai al- ready offers trucks with fuel cell technology that do without the heavy batteries. Daimler and Volvo have bundled their development capacities and want to jointly bring heavy commercial vehicles with fuel cell drives onto the market. If the electric motors are largely known tech- nologies that have been tried and tested in other applications - such as rail technology, for example - which are now being adapted for the automotive sector, battery technol- ogy presents automobile manufacturers with completely new challenges in terms of tech- nology, ecology and economy . The key competition criteria for battery-elec- tric vehicles are range and charging times. Both criteria cannot be influenced by the electric drive unit, but exclusively by the further development of battery technology. S H A R E Armin Gehl, Managing Director of the association autoregion e.V. Image: © autoregion e.V.