Changing—and charging—the future
Imagine owning a pure-electric vehicle. Aside from the knowledge that your vehicle is emitting no emissions (aside from the ones being generated by the electric utility), you are immune from fuel price increases. That’s the good part. The disadvantages are high purchase cost and limited range. For a car with an internal combustion engine (ICE) burning gasoline, diesel, or LPG, range is not a concern, because fuel stations are everywhere. But for an electric vehicle, there are no recharging stations that are accessible away from your home or work. If you’ve ever experienced running out of battery charge on your mobile phone when you need it most, imagine the inconvenience and even danger of going low-batt on your car. It’s a dilemma that has earned its own term: range anxiety.
Because of this current lack of accessible recharging points, electric cars face a catch-22: No one will buy electric cars if there’s no infrastructure to support them, and no one will put up the infrastructure if there are no customers. This year, the Singapore government has taken the first step to jump-start the future for electric cars by putting up the infrastructure for electric charging, with Bosch Asia Pacific as the selected supplier. The first phase of the electric-car charging project will see 63 stations in various parts of the city. There are currently about a dozen stations in operation, and by year end, there will be 40 working. It is one of the first such projects in Asia, and the first in the Asean region.
The first customers will be government institutions such as the Singapore Land Transport Authority and Agency and Ministry of Trade and Industry. “The stations are merely the most visible part of the project,” explains Anuj Jain, managing director of Bosch Asia Pacific. “Supporting them is (Bosch’s) E-Mobility platform, which manages the back end of the system—from billing to management of the charging sites. E-Mobility allows system users to locate an available charging point using a computer or handheld device.”
Thomas Schmidt, senior director, E-Mobility Services, Bosch Asia Pacific, demonstrated the station located at their office parking lot. The vehicle we recharged and then drove around the parking lot was a Smart electric vehicle. The diminutive two-seater has a top speed of 120 km/h and a range of more than 140 km. It is silent, compact and emits no pollution—the perfect city car.
Using the charging station follows the familiar procedure of refueling your car. First, you identify your account by tapping your debit card on the station reader. This releases the cable and allows you to plug it into your car. You can then leave the car in its parking slot for the four to six hours it will take for the typical recharge. As the station is connected to the Internet, it will inform you via SMS when charging is done, or if someone has unplugged your car. The station’s security protocol prevents another user from stealing your charge—it will not feed power to another vehicle if the plug has been pulled off without the proper authorization. As for someone tampering with the vehicle itself or driving it off, that is beyond the scope of the charging system. “The typical car socket [equivalent to the fuel filler of an ICE car] is designed to be openly accessible in this way, so this we cannot modify,” explained Schmidt. Each charging station allows two vehicles to plug in simultaneously. The monthly flat rate fee is $180 Singapore (about P6,060), which sounds perfectly reasonable given the fuel prices in Singapore (P68.07 for one liter of 92-octane gasoline).
The Bosch system is a Level-3 charger, which uses high voltage, thus requiring more stringent safety measures. These make it effectively impossible for users to be electrocuted when plugging in, even in the rain. The connector and cord have no power when not connected. Once plugged in, the vehicle sends a pilot signal to the station, and only then is power supplied. Vehicles are also designed so it cannot drive away when plugged in, and even if it somehow does, the station will shut off power before the cable breaks away.
Schmidt goes on to explain that during the first phase of the project, they are working with Daimler (manufacturer of the Smart EV), Mitsubishi with its i-MIEV, Nissan and Renault. “The system is designed to be open and not limited to any particular brand of vehicle.” The system software also allows other companies such as public utilities and parking garage operators to integrate their business processes, even though they may be potential competitors.
The Singapore government’s role also extends to making sure that the charging stations conform to local building codes. It will also waive its infamous Certificate of Entitlement, in effect a permit to buy a vehicle, which substantially increases the prices of cars. Without the COE cost, electric cars will be more attractive to purchase.
The project will run until 2016, by which time it is projected that there will be around 90 cars running using the charging infrastructure. Ninety cars is a drop in the bucket of Singapore’s 925,000 vehicles. Still, the project represents an important first step to practical ownership of electric vehicles. Bosch foresees that by 2020, nearly 3 percent of newly produced vehicles will have electric drives (including plug-in hybrids). To that end, it is currently spending 400 million euros per year, and employing 800 engineers.
Electric cars are still in their infancy, an irony given that when the horseless carriage was being developed, electric propulsion was one of the forerunners along with internal combustion. Now that they are making a comeback as zero- (or at least remote-) emissions vehicles, they need the support of governments to make them more practical to own and operate. Electric vehicles do enjoy a potential advantage, as electric power is readily available in every city. Government has to be the great enabler, cutting red tape and giving incentives for owners, and tapping private companies to make recharging accessible and convenient.
