Electric car energy has been misdirected

All the hype about alternatives has barely moved the needle on the types of cars we buy. Overwhelmingly, the world over, we are propelled from showrooms by internal combustion engines.

That isn't going to change in a hurry. Zealots for alternatives, especially those energised by battery-powered cars, overbid their prospects, and their predictions look ever more wildly out of synch with reality. Does anyone still believe that 10 per cent of new cars will be battery-powered by the end of the decade? Because that was one of the more conservative forecasts.

Of course this doesn't mean the technology has no merit — far from it — but it does mean that most of the energy put into electric cars has been misdirected. Battery power works best in light-commercial applications — small vans doing inner-city runs from a central base, for example. It's easy to imagine circumstances where such a fleet would actually make practical and, more importantly, economic sense.

Some electric vans are already on sale overseas, and Renault will trial its Kangoo ZE here later this year. It is happening. Slowly. There are plenty of other commercial and fleet applications where an alternative driveline would be a better solution than a diesel engine. Buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells are immeasurably more pleasant for passengers and bystanders than the noisy, fume-emitting dinosaurs that cough through our cities now.

Hybrid solutions, including unorthodox ones using compressed air, can work well for everything from heavy-duty freight haulers to the stop-start runs of garbage trucks. Again, how much more pleasant would our roads be?

It's not as though none of these things is happening — they are. Regulations have been tightened and hybrid trucks and fuel cell buses have been around for years, but in very small numbers. When it comes to emissions, the political and regulatory agenda has focused on mainstream cars.

It has had some success, as the graphic at the top of this page shows. The changes in Europe are paralleled elsewhere but not because we're stampeding into electrics and hybrids. It's mainly because we're buying smaller cars and the internal combustion engine has made huge gains in efficiency.

Hybrid-style tricks — such as energy recuperation from brakes, or idle-stop — have become everyday features of almost every new car. So, ironically, hybrid development has helped save the petrol engine. Electrically assisted petrol engines have even been fitted to the latest batch of supercars.

Most of the headline emissions reductions come down to other sorts of engineering: lightweight materials, sophisticated aerodynamics and turbocharging. Capacities and cylinder counts are dropping, so turbocharging now delivers driveability.

When it comes to pure electric vehicles, mainstream makers have tried to replicate the convenience of internal combustion engines. That's a losing game with the present state of battery technology, as sales numbers show.

Carmakers have gone there partly due to a misplaced sense of what the consumer will find acceptable but mainly because the emissions rules heavily favour alternative solutions. However, there is no reason why the consumer should bear the weight of all this emissions effort, or why makers should develop cars that no one wants. It makes more sense to focus on the rules, the engineering, and gains in the fleet and public transport worlds. The advantages would benefit everyone.