Pretoria - After moving millions of cars and trucks across the world for well over a century, the end is (almost) nigh for the internal combustion engine.
This was the bold prediction from Unisa researcher Professor Godwell Nhamo, who said new developments in electric car technology - especially the lithium ion battery - could be game-changers that rendered the internal combustion engine an obsolete technology “in the not so distant future”.
The professor, who heads the Exxaro chair in business and climate change at Unisa’s Institute for Corporate Citizenship, said the internal combustion engine was once a “game changer” that served to displace the steam engine and animal-drawn carriages.
Likewise the lithium-ion battery could serve as a tipping point, especially in a world confronted by climate change and rising emissions of greenhouse gases.
In a recent paper published by the Wessex Institute of Technology, Nhamo said the US and China were making significant investments in electric vehicle development.
The US had invested more than $2 billion in grants for 30 factories to develop lithium-ion batteries, motors and other components for electric vehicles.
Four years ago President Barack Obama proclaimed his ambition to see a million electric vehicles on US roads by this year 2015.
Some of the early leaders in this new market were the Nissan Leaf, the Chevy Volt and the Renault Zoe.
BARRIERS
Although battery-car sales still lagged way behind conventional petrol and diesel power vehicles, sales of the Nissan Leaf had now passed the 100 000 mark.
Yet there were still barriers for these new vehicles, including a reluctance by many consumers to take up new and unproven technologies.
There were also concerns about their travelling range, the lack of charging infrastructure and higher purchase price compared to conventional vehicles.
Cost was probably the main factor limiting uptake, he said.
However, Nhamo cited studies suggesting that battery electric vehicles could be cheaper than conventional ones somewhere between 2020 and 2030 if battery costs continued to drop and oil prices continued to rise.
He quoted Nissan South Africa managing director Mike Whitfield as saying that while R446 000 might seem costly for a new Nissan Leaf, its purchase price compared favourably with those of other vehicles when measured against the savings in fuel and maintenance costs over a six-year period.
Nhamo suggested that buy-in from superpowers would be crucial and rising oil prices could speed up the momentum for change, but he did not appear to address the potential impacts of the growing exploitation of shale gas in the US and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, he concluded that the entry of each new carmaker into the green car race would increasingly serve as “mini tipping points towards the death of the internal combustion engine”.
His article “ Green Growth: A game changer ushering in the death of the internal combustion engine”, was published in a recent issue of the Wessex Institute of Technology’s Transactions on Ecology and the Environment.
The Mercury