Turning a new leaf

If you observe the traffic in Colombo even casually, you will not fail to see completely electric cars in circulation. This is simply a revolution for a developing country, because these cars are rare even in the developed world. A big ‘thank you’ must go to our authorities who decided to grant duty rebates to both hybrid and electric cars. Thanks to this initiative, hybrid cars are now everywhere in Sri Lanka. There is no doubt that the same will happen with electrics.

There is one other South Asian country that has gone even further: Bhutan. After all, when you bill yourself as the happiest nation on earth, it only makes sense that you would drive the happiest cars: electrics. India too does have electric cars from local manufacturer Mahindra, but it does not yet grant any duty rebates for imported electric cars.

The Kingdom of Bhutan recently selected Nissan to supply electric cars for its taxi and government fleets. The designated car is the Nissan Leaf, which is becoming a common sight on our streets as well, having sold around 100,000 units around the world including Sri Lanka in 2-3 years. The Leaf is an ideal city car, with a range of around 150 Km on a full charge (this can vary). Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said the deal would involve hundreds of electric cars. Over time, he predicts it will be thousands. Other developing countries should take a leaf out of Bhutan’s plan.

Charging

Nissan will electrify the country's fleet and help the country develop its charging infrastructure. “There is a lot of courage, a lot of will, a lot of vision behind the prime minister of Bhutan's positioning on the electric car, and I feel good about supporting this,” Ghosn said. “Obviously, it's within the interests of Nissan because we have our own interests here. But I think this can create a lot of other examples in the future and hopefully Bhutan can become a showcase.”

It is quite nice to have electric cars on our roads, but without the required charging infrastructure one just cannot go on a long trip in an electric car. It is a bit of a “chicken and egg” situation, because there is no point building a huge network of charging stations if there are not enough electric cars. The companies that import electric cars in Sri Lanka are trying to get charging stations on-line. However, this is a massive investment that only car manufacturers and governments can tackle. This is why the Bhutanese example must be studied. The only other country that has a similar program is Norway, with Tesla instead of Nissan. Indeed, Norway leads the world in electric car penetration (in terms of population) with around 21,000 of them on its well paved roads. And they can use bus lanes too.

It is time that our authorities too entered into a formal agreement with an electric car-maker to supply a fleet and to develop charging infrastructure. With car-makers working on a single standard for chargers compatible with all electric cars and plug-in hybrids, this is an idea that should be considered seriously as electric car numbers are rising rapidly in Sri Lanka. An islandwide charging network will end the “range anxiety” commonly associated with electric cars even though several new electric cars such as the BMW i3 feature a “Range Extender” - a small petrol engine that can work in tandem with the electric motor to extend the range.

Electric

However, there will be no point in having thousands of electric cars on our roads if they are charged through the national grid. That will result in a huge drain on our electricity network, even with fast charging. Australia’s Adelaide is showing the way with its Tindo electric bus network, recharged by the sun. The entire operation is zero emission and carbon neutral since solar electricity is used to charge the bus batteries. It may be expensive initially, but once installed it is completely free. One can just imagine the foreign exchange savings that can be made if oil imports are reduced at least marginally. Private owners who have electric cars can also be encouraged to install solar panels to power their vehicles.

The authorities pragmatically gave duty rebates for hybrid vehicles and we believe that this has been extended to pure electrics as well.

But it would be even more beneficial to give a bigger duty concession or even zero duty for pure electric cars, which do not use any fossil fuel at all. For this purpose, cars with range extenders too should be considered as pure electrics. (In a hybrid, the primary motive power is provided by the gasoline engine, whereas in a pure electric equipped with a range extender engine, it is the electric motor which takes the bigger load).

Besides, they are completely environmentally friendly, having no emissions at all. Other concessions such as free parking too should be provided for electric cars. Moreover, all electric cars now on our roads have been imported by private companies other than the sole agents. More people will gain confidence to purchase electric cars if the official sole agents, who generally have much better after sales service, are involved.

Our transport authorities have proved that they are keeping pace with the latest trends in the motoring world. Even as electric cars keep improving, several car-makers are ready to unleash another equally promising technology - hydrogen fuel cell. Fuel cell cars, which emit only water vapour, will be sold from 2015 - 2016.

However, this will require hydrogen storage infrastructure in key cities. We should have a long-term plan that accounts for the use of both electric and hydrogen-powered cars, both of which should be common on the world’s roads by 2020.

There is another equally promising technology that we have not taken into consideration so far: Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). Countries such as India have huge CNG distribution networks and cars that run on CNG. We will be taking a look at this technology next week.