The most critical factor limiting the adoption of advanced energy storage systems in today’s automotive industry – primarily for hybrid and electric vehicles,  is the cost-performance balance. The economics of the electric vehicle are simply not attractive to the majority of the mass market, with large, heavy expensive batteries providing only limited all electric range.

As technology develops the economics will have to change, and new business models are being sought to bring lifetime costs down to a level close to conventional vehicles today. Whether or not this can be influenced by taxation, incentives, gasoline prices or other measures remains to be seen. Even then the economics may still be an issue, while a high initial investment in batteries may be acceptable to the initial buyer, during the useful life of the vehicle (10-15 years) the batteries are likely to need to be replaced at least once. At current battery prices this would be uneconomic after just the 7th or 8th year of life (the batteries would cost more than the vehicle is worth), so the vehicle would need to be scrapped prematurely. This may mean the overall CO2 lifecycle of the vehicle is actually more than a conventional vehicle with a much longer life. It also means that residual values would be much lower for EVs.

KGP’s report follows on from a number of single client projects in this area, which is probably the hottest topic today, and attracting massive sums of investment.  KGP has also developed a database of hybrid and electric vehicle specifications in conjunction with SupplierBusiness, which is available direct from www.supplierbusiness.com.  The database covers the energy storage system, as well as the suppliers of other components, including power electronics and motors, as well as base vehicle performance specifications.