Shift to electric cars will take a power of change

One attraction of electric cars is their relatively simple plumbing, compared with an internal combustion engine. They have fewer moving parts.

But that’s just the vehicle itself. The whole EV project, from go to whoa, requires a spreadsheet of ingredients and much of it is uncharted territory. For example, the way electricity is piped to homes, where most recharging will take place.

The existing system could cope with one or two EVs in your street, but if the whole suburb drives home in a Tesla and plugs in? In some states, you’re already in trouble if everyone turns on the aircon. So add extra generation capacity and a smart grid to your list, so that cars can feed back into the system. Not to mention wide, green recharging infrastructure for a wide, brown land.

There are other changes, too. You might decide that ethical issues in battery production, such as child labour in cobalt mines, are the carmakers’ problem. Nothing to see here. But batteries take a lot more energy to produce than internal combustion engines and so EVs must be driven further for longer to come out ahead of conventional cars. Their second-hand values are a lottery. The business of leasing, finance and resale, essential to EV take-up, will need a complete rethink.

To make eco-sense, batteries also need a second life as stationary storage — potentially a neat fit with renewable energy. But even where EVs have made headway, there’s no established market for ex-EV batteries and even less for the complex task of recycling or disposal.

If you think you know the answer to all these issues, then it’s time for a cautionary tale.

Better Place, an Israeli private company founded more than a decade ago, raised millions to pursue a vision for networks of EV battery swap stations. To many, it looked like the answer to range anxiety and long recharging times. Australia was near the top of its rollout list.

Better Place incorrectly analysed the problem and came up with the wrong solution. Batteries require a temperature control system to operate efficiently and in most EVs these are a structural part of the car. They cannot be readily swapped, even if they are similar.

It would be a much bigger mistake to assume it’s straightforward to exchange our conventional cars for EVs.