Saturday was the first day of the EVS25 symposium, which added seminars, workshops, and various presentations to the trade show that started yesterday. These included a whole range of lectures, from “we need to agree on a standard for the plugs to charge cars” to “our company will save the world”. Naturally, I am very skeptical towards the latter, as a company always has investors and/or shareholders that want to see the return on investment. In the case of e-cars, saving the world is a by-product of making money. This is a noble idea, but it also lowers the value of some high level speeches. Nevertheless, the value out of this first day was great, and I would like to share some of this here.
One of the first discussions I want to present here is familiar to all automation companies: the importance of standards. These mainly center around the grid and charging, but these technologies also affect the car itself, which has to include inverters etc. to charge the battery. Especially looking at quick charging, car manufacturers have to be prepared, since the temperature and voltage of the battery has to be kept in the optimum range. Otherwise the consequences range from sinking capacity to ”boom”! The further discussion unraveled 4 main priorities for the policy makers:
· Help to set standards
· Enable a commercialization of technology
· Enable charging and infrastructure
· Create security for economy that e-cars will be support in order to make investments more secure, which leads to larger investments
The thrid points aims at the smart grid. Although it is also possibe to plug a car into a standard electrical socket, only smart grid technology turns an e-car from a simple user into an integral part of the grid that can stabilize demand and supply to avoid price peaks.
Battery technology, as the enabler of widely used electro mobility was a topic by Prof. Ishitani (one article can be found here), who demonstrated the fuel savings possible by a plugged in hybrid electric vehicle, PHEV, in the case of city cruises and especially in the case of driving in the mountains, where the gained potential energy is feed back into the battery when driving down and braking. There were much more interesting technical topics, but reporting them in detail would be too long here.
After the lunch break, the technical sessions ended and there was room for the CEOs and politicians to present their business. Presentations were held by Siemens, BYD, GAC, Yintong Energy, Nissan and Fuji Electric, among others. While Siemens has been active in the field of electro mobility since the early 20th century, BYD is a new player in this field that could already be described as one of the most aggressive. BYD gave an excellent presentation on the potential savings in fuel by replacing the Hong Kong bus fleet with electric buses and the related CO2 savings. However, BYD also presented its vision of using solar panels, where they are also active, their overnight chargers, and their buses to flatten the grid load. At this place I leave it to you, dear reader, to think about the solar panel fired overnight charging system to reduce CO2 emissions.
Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., Ltd., GAC, entered the market for E-cars comparably late, but the company is planning to invest heavily in this new technology to grow. The heavy investment will lead step by step to the development of a purely electric vehicle (PEV). Yintong Energy was already mentioned in yesterday’s blog. For this company the battery technology is a key technology that they want to have in-house, which is why they acquired 51 percent of Altair Nanotechnology, a specialist for lithium titanium batteries. Nissan openly discussed the problem with the volatility of renewable energies and their approach to it. Also, Nissan focused on the importance of batteries and even looks at business in the aftermarket, since the batteries will first be used in cars (until they have 80% or less capacity) ,then be reused as energy storage, and afterwards will be recycled.
No comments:
Post a Comment