Annual report 2008/09 - Axpo Group

Axpo believes in the potential of electric mobility. In future,
electric and hybrid vehicles will be an integral part of the
Swiss streetscape and a dense public transport network will
link town and country. As a result, the importance of electricity
as an energy carrier will increase substantially, and electricity
will be the “fuel” of the future.
The race is on to produce the fi rst electric car
for mass production
Small, innovative car manufacturers still have the edge, such as the
Californian company Tesla Motors with their sporty Roadster or the
Norwegian manufacturer Think, which started developing its Think
City electric car 18 years ago. With fuel-saving cars now becoming
a roaring success in the US as well as Europe, they would like to keep
the market to themselves for a few more years.
This, however, is not likely to happen: the major car manufacturers
may have been dragging their feet for a long time, but now they
are all the more determined to catch up. Backed by large R & D budgets,
they are focusing on alternative engines for the cars of the future.
At the IAA International Motor Show in Frankfurt in September 2009,
several car manufacturers exhibited electric cars that are more
or less ready to go into production. The Chevrolet Volt, the Mitsubishi
i-MiEV and the Nissan Leaf will be available on the market sometime
in 2010.
Illustration: Think
Illustration: Tesla
Californian car manufacturer
Tesla Motors demonstrates
with its Roadster
that electric cars
can look really sporty.
Already available: Think
City, the electric car from
Norway, has a range of
180 kilometres and
achieves a top speed of
100km/h.h.
Electric cars use energy far more effi ciently
than vehicles with internal combustion
engines. Although an electric car
uses around 15 kWh of electricity to
travel 100 kilometres, the decisive factor
is the way in which this electricity has
been generated. The Swiss electricity mix,
more or less CO2-free, means that an
electric car releases far less CO2 than even
a fuel-effi cient internal combustion engine.
CO2 emissions in transport can be
reduced signifi cantly with electric cars
and our low-CO2 electricity mix.
The battery is what matters
Axpo is proceeding on the assumption
that electric mobility will gain a larg -
er market share in the longer term. At
present there are approximately 500
electric passenger cars with marginal
electricity consumption on the road
in Switzerland. If just 20 % of all vehicles
in Switzerland were electric, only
around 1.6 terawatt hours of electricity
would be needed (total current electricity
consumption for Switzerland:
58 terawatt hours). As electric mobility
is likely to develop slowly, electricity
consumption will also grow slowly and
not in a single leap.
But it is energy storage that is
causing developers the biggest headaches
– the battery systems in use at present
are hugely expensive and heavy, and they
limit the distance that a car can travel.
Researchers around the globe are working
feverishly to develop the battery of the
future. The lithium-air battery is a beacon
of hope – fi rst prototypes exceed the
energy density of the present-day lithiumion
battery eightfold. Another advantage
lies in the fact that this technology
uses atmospheric air, thereby saving
weight. However, there are still many
obstacles to surmount before such
systems are ready for the market.