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MOTORINDIA
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January 2012
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viable. Major launches of both are impending. (www.
IDTechEx.com/EVcars)
Forecasts for on-road hybrid and pure electric cars
with modern batteries see them at 10-20 per cent of glo-
bal production in 2022, but lead acid will be displaced
earlier from much of the rest because of that preference
for lithium-ion based stop-start. True, there is an inel-
egant interim stage where hotel facilities in some mi-
crohybrids and some full hybrids are performed by a
separate lead acid battery.
Industrial and commercial vehicles get something
better. The lead acid batteries in a forklift seem cheap
until you realise that they may have one set cooling, an-
other charging, and another in use and, even when they
do not, life is painfully short. Today the pressure is to
reduce manual intervention and that,
and
performance, is why lithium-
ion batteries are coming
in for indoor pure electric
industrial vehicles as well
as outdoor forklifts and
earthmovers, where hy-
brids are best and lead acid
completely unacceptable in
a hybrid powertrain. Indeed
today, even a nickel metal hy-
dride battery tends to be unacceptable in
new hybrid powertrains on grounds of lanthanum ra-
tioning, poor self-leakage and poor energy density lead-
ing to inadequate pure electric range.
Lithium-ion batteries in e-bikes
Almost all electric two-wheelers have lead acid bat-
teries today, but look closer, and you realise that is be-
cause nearly all of them are bicycles in China. Lead acid
is almost entirely shunned for other countries because of
its heavy weight and poor life and performance. Worse,
in China an increasing number of cities are banning or
severely restricting electric bikes, the reasons includ-
ing accidents, causing congestion and lead pollution. It
has proved impossible to control the disposal of lead
acid batteries from over 100 million electric bikes in
use, whatever the law says in China. (For more infor-
mation read Light Electric Vehicles 2011-2021 www.
IDTechEx.com/LEV.)
As if that were not enough, even in China, bikes are
moving from mainly battery-assisted pedalling to bikes
with a throttle – so-called e-bikes – a high proportion of
which are scooters, meaning your feet are on a platform.
With a trend to these larger two-wheelers, lead acid can-
not keep up with performance demands. Almost all of
the use of lead acid batteries in the 31 million two-wheel
electric vehicles being sold this year is hostage to an in-
creasingly irritated Chinese bureaucrat’s pen, and if you
think that is wild-eyed scaremongering consider what
has just happened with Chinese lead battery production.
China wants to leapfrog in technology, and there is
no leapfrogging on offer with lead acid batteries. Just
hideous pollution injuries from smelting, making and
disposing of lead batteries in China. The Chinese Gov-
ernment has therefore cut lead acid battery manufacture
to 42 per cent of what it was in 2010. Earlier, the US had
seen the number of enterprises making lead acid batter-
ies drop from 133 in the 1970s
to 33 today. But in China it
was not due to market forc-
es but to a government de-
cision. Pollution is a major
driver here. Few of the 1,930
inspected
manufacturers
will remain. The many un-
licensed sites will be sought
and destroyed.
Now Xia Qing, Chief En-
gineer and former Vice Presi-
d e n t
of China Research Academy of
Environmental Sciences, says, “low cost high pollution
times have gone away.” (www.IDTechEx.com/evAsia)
Outside China, the ever tougher emission laws impact
everything from tugboats to aircraft, and half measures
like microhybrids with occasional retention of a lead
acid battery are increasingly inadequate in addressing
those vehicle requirements. Consumer demands for ve-
hicle performance are also ever more strident, resulting
in five-year warranties, better fuel economy, longer all
electric range and more, none of which helps lead acid
to cling on.
Impending use of fuel cells
Fuel cell cars are to be in production shortly. Their
consumer proposition will be no range anxiety, five
minute refuelling and saving the planet. But even more
compelling is the business case for using these, as yet
expensive, devices in fleets of forklifts, taxis, buses
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