With the extensive range of electric cars available at the car shows, it's a sure thing they will soon be on our local roads.
The evidence is all around us, in petrol-electric hybrids and fuel-cell cars that run on hydrogen to generate electricity. Alternative-fuel cars will soon multiply on our roads.
They are a minority breed now, but they will multiply rapidly in coming years as carmakers adjust to a world without petroleum and technology which provides new solutions.
At every car show around the world there are more and more electric concept cars. They range from regular petrol-electric hybrids to plug-in hybrids, battery cars with some form of petrol range extension and the long-term solution for sustainable motoring — the affordable, mass-produced fuel-cell car.
Honda is promising a limited production run of fuel-cell cars this year that it will lease to regular motorists in Japan and the US.
Just over a month ago, in Motown, the world's carmakers did it again with a stunning display of alternative-fuel dream machines on the floor of the Detroit Motor Show. There were all sorts of electrically charged concepts cars, from baby city runabouts to giant trucks and four-wheel-drives.
The biggest sign of the rise of the electric car came when the world's two largest carmakers, GM and Toyota, gave their vision of the future.
Katsuaki Watanabe, of Toyota, promised his company is committed to sustainable mobility. Rick Wagoner, of General Motors, talked about ethanol as a short-term energy source and electric cars as the ultimate solution to the world's environmental and energy problems.
“We need to develop alternative sources of propulsion based on diverse sources of energy to meet the world's growing demand for our products,” Wagoner says.
And he quoted some frightening numbers, showing that more than 90 per cent of the world's energy needs are supplied by some form of petroleum, consumed at the rate of 1000 barrels a second and rising.
As a short-term solution, GM is pushing hybrids, then plug-in hybrids, which take their charge from the electricity grid.
American carmakers have been spooked by new government regulations mandating a 6.7litres for 100km average fuel economy across everything they make by 2012. European companies face tough new CO2 standards in the battle against global warming and air pollution.
But there is a sense of reality in what Watanabe and Wagoner say.
“The hard truth is that under the most optimistic scenarios, it will be some time — a decade or more — before these new technologies will have a measurable impact on overall oil demand,” Wagoner says.
The next big breakthrough will probably come from GM, which is working on an E-Flex system. That means plug-in hybrids, cars with on-board petrol engines to charge batteries and, eventually, fuel-cell power. The common theme is that they never use petrol power for motivation. They only ever move with electric power.
GM previewed the plan with its Volt hybrid last year. Now Denny Mooney, who left the top job at GM Holden to take a senior engineering post in Detroit, is promising a firm timetable.
“The Volt is coming in 2010,” Mooney says. “That is a definite.”
But there are problems, mostly with the car's lithium-ion battery pack. It now costs $10,000, has a limited life, is difficult to cool, and is being updated every few months.
“Eventually, we will have to push the button and lock the car in for production. We have new stuff coming all the time,” Mooney says.
And that is the problem with electrifying the car. There is always something new.
Hybrids were new, plug-in and two-mode hybrids are new now, and there is rapid development on fuel-cell systems. But no one denies that electric power is the future.
We are in the middle of the change, with no single clear direction for the future. That direction will become clearer within 10 years.
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