How can we bring down the costs and increase the performance of electric vehicles?

Electric vehicles offer a low carbon, sustainable avenue for future transportation. But even after two decades of commercialization, the costs of electric vehicles are still (as of 2018) much higher than comparable conventional vehicles. What can be done to bring down the cost of electric vehicles significantly?

Tackling the challenge - Sub Topics

Given below are some of the themes and topics about which you can research to know more
about the various avenues available to solve the challenge

Optimal design of an electric vehicle - be it in terms of weight reduction or better aerodynamics or in terms of other parameters - could play an important role in making EVs cheaper and better in future. There are a number of dimensions on which such optimizations can be achieved.

Innovations to enhance the overall vehicle efficiency - measured in terms of distance travelled per unit of energy (say, Km/kWh) - will need a review of all aspects of electric vehicle design and consideration of all its components, not just the batteries alone.

Batteries constitute almost 40% of the total cost of an electric vehicle (early 2019). Thus, any significant reduction in battery costs can provide a significant reduction in the overall cost of the electric vehicle.

A higher energy efficiency for the electric vehicle battery implies longer distances travelled for the same energy utilization, and hence lower cost per unit distance travelled. Thus, high efficiency batteries can directly contribute to the reduction in the overall cost of ownership for the electric vehicle over its lifetime.

A battery with higher energy density implies a lower battery weight for the same amount of energy, which in turns results in a higher overall energy efficiency for the vehicle and hence lower running costs

The total cost of ownership refers to the cost of owning an electric vehicle over its lifetime. This includes not just the purchase cost, but also the running costs, the costs for maintenance and any other costs required for the vehicle over its lifetime. The total cost of ownership thus provides a more realistic picture of the cost of an electric vehicle.

Favourable government policies and incentives will have a significant role to play in making electric vehicles affordable as well as enhancing its overall utility through a larger network of electric vehicle charging stations etc. These incentives and policies could be in the form of financial subsidies, incentives in the form of preferential approvals, parking, lower vehicle taxes etc.

Electric mobility as a service is a concept by which electric vehicle use is made a service rather than requiring you to purchase an electric vehicle. By allowing you to rent or pay for the use of electric vehicle rather than purchase the vehicle, this concept essentially removes the upfront cost of the electric vehicle for an end user, thus removing a significant challenge to its use.

Electric cars cost 40-70% higher than their conventional equivalents (early 2019). This cost differential needs to be brought down significantly for the mass market to start purchasing electric cars in large numbers.

Electrifying buses contribute significantly to sustainable transportation through reduced pollution and reduced CO2 emissions. But electric buses could cost over twice that of equivalent conventional buses (early 2019). There is hence a need to significantly bring down the cost of electric buses for both governments and the private sector to start introducing electric buses in their fleets.

Except in a few countries such as China, electric bicycles are not very commonly used as of early 2019. This once again is mainly owing to the high cost of these vehicles and the long duration needed for battery charging. A significant cost reduction in e-bicycles can make them highly popular and increase their use substantially across the world.

Among two wheelers, scooters are the category getting electrified the fastest. Thus, striving to reduce the cost of electric scooters, be it through lower cost of batteries or through other means such as government incentives, can have a significant effect on the pace of adoption of electric two wheelers.

Among two wheelers, there has been a much higher degree of electrification for scooters than for motorcycles. This is because of the much higher horsepower required for motorcycles compared to that for scooters, resulting in a much larger battery and hence higher costs. Reducing the overall cost of electric motorcycles can enable millions of motorcycle riders worldwide shift to a more sustainable part of transport.

While batteries form the dominant cost component for electric vehicles, motors also contribute to the costs, though to a lesser extent. Reducing the cost of motors will hence have a favourable impact on the overall cost of electric vehicles. In parallel, higher efficiency motors will make the vehicles more efficient, thus indirectly contributing to a reduction in total cost of ownership of the vehicle over its lifetime.

As of 2019, it has been only small two wheelers and cars have been electrified, with heavier vehicles such as trucks seeing much less electrification of the drivetrain (one exception has been electrification of buses). Lower electrification of heavy vehicles is mainly owing to the high cost of batteries as these vehicles require considerably higher battery power than smaller vehicles such as cars or scooters. Efforts focussed on reducing the cost of electrification of heavy vehicles are needed, as heavy commercial vehicles are one of the segments contributing significantly to pollution and CO2 emissions from within the transport sector.

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