Buzzword: Electrification
Electrification is one of the hottest buzzwords in the industry right now and on many companies’ agendas, perhaps especially in the vehicle industry. According to Johan Hellsing, Senior Technical Specialist Electric Propulsion Systems at CEVT, the current strong electrification trend can be considered to be due to the fact that the interest in climate measures coincide with the technical and commercial achievements of batteries. Right now, the vehicle industry is working primarily with two clear trends that affect the entire value chain.
The first trend is to combine the best of electric motors and batteries with the best of internal combustion engines. Many know this as hybrid drivetrains or simply “hybrids”. The user of the vehicle is driving and refueling just as usual, but a lower fuel consumption is achieved through this powertrain combination – and hopefully also an improved driving experience.
The second trend is to transport the vehicle entirely using electric power. This is not really anything new since we started electrifying train transport about 100 years ago. But for road vehicles, a battery is required instead to store the electricity – a battery that is charged from the mains when the vehicle is parked. The fact that road vehicles are starting to be electrified now is that the battery technology not until now has become good enough and cheap enough to seriously compete with the internal combustion engine.
Positive effects of electrification:
- transportation becomes emission-free.
- the vehicle itself is not dependent on fossil fuels. Both this and the previous aspect are very important, as many big cities have huge problems with bad air and that our impact on the global climate forces us to leave fossil fuels in the ground.
- The total energy consumption is lower because the electric drive line is so much more efficient.
- Many people also feel that electric powertrains provide an improved driving experience, but it must probably be considered more of a positive effect rather than a propulsive force.
Negative effects of electrification:
- The need for metals increases and that extra energy is spent on the actual production of the vehicle.
- Electricity consumption in society will of course increase – even if energy consumption goes down.
- Mining of metals often has negative local environmental aspects, but it is of course something that can be minimized by means of regulations. It is also important that the need to break new metals is minimized by taking care of the metals as far as possible in connection with the scrapping of electric vehicles.
Source: Johan Hellsing, Senior Technical Specialist Electric Propulsion Systems, CEVT Powertrain Engineering
