A technological showcase for the low-carbon industry, the LCV2013 event offered a glimpse of developments set to revolutionise road transport in the near future, as Alex Grant reports.

Organised by Cenex, the Loughborough-based centre for excellence in low-carbon vehicle technologies, the LCV2013 event showcases the latest innovations in environmentally-conscious motoring. The event brings stakeholders together to demonstrate new projects, forming relationships which will underpin the working lives of the future fleet.

Ultra-low carbon vehicles remain a niche in terms of sales volume, but popularity is growing and investment is following suit. The UK government has already put a roadmap in place to put British business at the spearhead.

Government strategy isn’t an indication of the immediate demise of the internal combustion engine, and that it didn’t set targets for the uptake of ultra-low carbon vehicles (ULEVs), according to Richard Bruce, director of the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV). But it does set out incentives to encourage growth of stakeholder interest and demand from consumers.

OLEV’s vision is long term. By 2040, it wants every new car sold in the UK to be an ultra-low-carbon vehicle, effectively decarbonising the parc by 2050. In the meantime, its work will be focused on growing the industry and raising awareness.

The target is consistent incentives to purchase and to run ULEVs, and work to communicate the benefits to drivers, while financing growth of the recharging infrastructure to support plug-in and hydrogen-powered vehicles. Evidence is already being collected which will inform where and how the £500m investment earmarked for 2015-2020 will be deployed.

Ford Focus: significant advantages in small detail

But with technology and infrastructure still growing, the near future will be dominated by improvements in conventional engine technology. Graham Hoare, director of global vehicle evaluation and verification at Ford Motor Company, believes significant advantages can be made by improving small details.

In its Focus platform, for example, Ford deploys six different fuel sources, ranging from petrol, diesel and ethanol engines to hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery-electric models. But with conventional engine technology still dominant, petrol and diesel units have been subject to rapid advances in efficiency, achieved by downsizing, turbocharging and optimizing combustion.

Hoare says these small details have allowed Ford to achieve between 35 and 40% efficiency for its internal combustion engines – a measure of how much of the energy used produces traction, with the rest lost as heat – and expects further improvements to boost this to 50% in the longer term. But he says Ford’s view is varying degrees of electrification are the most effective route to larger reductions.

Customers increasingly keen

on hybrid and electric

Customer resistance to hybrid and pure electric vehicles is fading. Cenex and the Technology Strategy Board recently carried out a study of 349 drivers, investigating how quickly they had adapted to the new technology. Of these, 92% said they had found their electric car was fun to drive, and 72% said that even with the limited range it fitted their daily needs – only using half of the battery’s capacity during a day. Drivers also reported preferring home recharging to needing regular trips to their nearest fuel station.

So projects are underway to make sure drivers are provided with adequate roadside charging. Alastair Hayfield, associate director, emerging technologies at data analyst IHS, says the next few years will see a progressive move from a public push, backed by government, to a private one, as manufacturers and private individuals invest in the technology.

Pay-as-you-go is the future

This presents certain obstacles. Hayfield believes pay-as-you-go charging, providing the ability to “roam” between independent charging networks and in turn allowing drivers to cover longer distances without requiring multiple memberships, will be vital to improve EV sales. He also advises that studies into the effects of the additional on the electrical grid will be required before volumes grow.

Cenex is playing a role, too. In addition to managing the Plugged-in Midlands scheme, which is rolling out charging points across a region spanning from Lincolnshire to Herefordshire, chief executive Robert Evans announced at LCV2013 that he would chairing the first trade association specifically for the companies involved in manufacturing or supplying charging equipment.

UK EVSE, as it is known, will be responsible for developing best practice and technical standards and operating charging networks. Some of the UK’s largest suppliers of charging equipment, including ABB, Chargemaster, Elektromotive, POD Point and Siemens, are among its founding members, and the association will play a major role in ensuring networks are inter-compatible.

Establishing a UK tech hub

In addition to boosting the uptake of environmentally-friendly vehicles, government support is aimed at establishing the UK as a hub of electric vehicle technology. The country is already home to a plethora of specialist component manufacturers, and the Technology Strategy Board used LCV2013 as a platform to announce the companies which will receive a combined £29m of funding to develop low-carbon vehicle technologies in the UK.

Among them is Jaguar Land Rover. Despite being owned by Indian company Tata, the manufacturer still carries out substantial R&D in the UK, and among its latest projects is a limited run of seven electrically-powered Defenders, utilising drivetrains developed by British companies. Under TSB and OLEV co-funding, Jaguar Land Rover will spend two years developing a trio of Evoque-based prototypes with a consortium of eight industry partners.

The Evoque_e programme will result in mild hybrid, plug-in hybrid and battery-electric drivetrains, featuring smaller, lighter and faster motors with fewer rare earth materials required for production. It will also be charged with investigating modular battery packs which can fit into existing vehicle platforms, and findings are set to inform future production models.

Also emerging, OLEV sees hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as a vital part of the UK vehicle mix. This utopian-sounding technology uses a reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, with water vapour as the only by-product. Hyundai’s first batch of series-manufactured, right-hand drive ix35 FCEVs will be delivered to fleet customers in the next few weeks, with numerous large OEMs set to follow within the next two years.

Infrastructure remains a large barrier here, but it’s potentially a quicker fix than for battery-electric models. Hydrogen tanks offer a much larger range than a battery, and take minutes rather than hours to fill, which means nationwide coverage requires fewer refuelling stations. OLEV has begun mapping out the first 65 sites across the UK.

But it’s a slow-burner. Toyota expects sales to reach tens of thousands globally by the 2020s, but the company is launching its first hydrogen fuel cell car in 2015. The carmaker’s ‘Mr Hydrogen’, Katsuhiko Hirose, told delegates that its launch would be limited to markets with a refuelling infrastructure, namely North America, Japan and Europe. In the meantime, it is reducing the size of the fuel cell stack and components, which working towards a 20 fold reduction in manufacturing costs.

In the UK, the infrastructure is being supported by UK H2Mobility, a co-operative project between the government, energy companies and carmakers. Phase 1 results were published at the start of the year, identifying a business case against conventionally-powered vehicles which showed a 75% CO2 reduction against a diesel engine by 2050. In December, Phase 2 will begin, putting the findings into practice and developing consumer-ready technology.

But as innovation continues in the UK, emerging technologies will become more prevalent on fleets – usually the first sector to adopt low-carbon vehicles en masse. Whichever alternative drivetrain prevails, the short-term brings unprecedented diversity for fleets.