“My yoga teacher thinks the Covid-19 pandemic is our savasana moment as a species, where we should take stock of everything,” says Imogen Pierce, head of experience strategy at Arrival, a London-based electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer. “I certainly think it’s been a bit of a carpet-under-the-feet event. Air quality has dramatically improved in our cities, and we need to build on that.”
The sale of diesel and petrol vehicles will be banned in the UK from 2035, perhaps earlier. But as city rulebooks are rewritten to accommodate social distancing on public transport, the call to reduce pollution – a known agitant of respiratory health factors that exacerbate the effects of Covid-19 – grows louder still.
EVs – the most obvious like-for-like solution to the personal transport problem – are nothing new. Tesla’s high-performance, long-range electric cars proved EVs as a commercially competitive concept in 2013, and CEO Elon Musk’s divisive opinions and leftfield ideas have given his company a ubiquitous media presence ever since. However, it’s the upfront cost of EVs that blights widespread adoption.
For Pierce, who cut her teeth as an aerodynamicist at Jaguar Land Rover before joining Arrival, the way to offset the significant cost of EV batteries is to make the overall design more efficient. “You don’t have the design intricacies of an ICE [internal combustion engine] car; you don’t need a big space for the engine, for example. So you’ve got so much more flexibility in the design, and it can be simpler. If you can halve the cost of the chassis and all the other bits, you can absorb the cost of the battery.”
The company, which develops “generation 2” EVs – built from scratch rather than based on an existing ICE car – recently secured an order from UPS for 10,000 vans. “In the past, they would buy a load of standard vans, then retrofit them to their needs. That all costs,” says Pierce.
By using microfactories that can output up to 10,000 vehicles a year, instead of a huge centralised production line, Arrival can locate production close to the customer, making the entire process more environmentally friendly. “When you’re shipping a van, you’re essentially shipping a large empty box, so localised manufacturing is important,” says Pierce.
At Riversimple, a Welsh hydrogen fuel cell car company, they’re tackling the barrier to EV ownership by doing away with purchasing altogether. “We only sell a service, not a car,” says Victoria Griffiths, head of service at the company. “This puts the onus on us to build a more sustainable, more robust car.” For 10,000 zero-on-road-emission miles a year in the company’s eye-catching two-seater Rasa, a customer will pay around £6,000, and that includes fuel, insurance and any maintenance costs.
The company hopes this philosophy will permeate upwards through their supply chain. “We don’t want to own the fuel cell; we want to lease it from the fuel cell manufacturer, to incentivise them to produce a better fuel cell”, says Griffiths, who previously ran an onshore wind turbine company and recently completed a master’s degree looking into the feasibility of hydrogen production by turbines. She adds that the platinum used in the fuel cell membrane may be expensive, but is also “almost 100% recyclable”.
The Rasa’s range of about 300 miles – on a par with the longer-range EVs on the market – is partly made possible by its lightweight carbon-fibre chassis, which offsets the extra weight of the powertrain. But this extra weight becomes more critical when those powertrains are airborne.
“You’re always fighting against weight in aviation projects, and that’s especially true of this one,” says Laura Wood, an electrical engineer at Rolls Royce, who works on the Accel electric flight project. “We’ve even got our pilot on a strict diet,” she adds.
The plane has a range of 200 miles, delivers 500 horsepower, and is expected to set an electric-powered flight speed record of 300mph in the near future. “When you talk to schoolchildren about speed and world records, eyes light up”, says Wood, who enjoys “inspiring the next generation of electrical engineers” when she’s not performing her verification and validation tasks – “making sure the system does what it’s supposed to do”.
Denmark’s Ellen – a fully electric ferry – already holds two world records: it’s the world’s largest electric ferry, and it travels seven times farther than any other. “Over these relatively short distances, fully electric solutions really are the future,” says Hanna Huppunen of Danfoss Editron, which developed the powertrain for the ship.
Ellen’s batteries comfortably propel up to 200 passengers and 30 cars between the islands of Ærø and Als – a round trip of 22 nautical miles – between charges. That range covers 80% of all Nordic and European ferry routes – a vast potential market for new Ellens – and also puts the UK’s pivotal Dover-Calais crossing (27 nautical miles) tantalisingly within reach. Is mass electrification of commercial maritime traffic, which has similar emissions to the aviation sector, a possibility?
Huppunen, who did an MSc in technology and electrical engineering, before working hands-on in electrical propulsion solutions for marine business, says it mostly comes down to cost. “Batteries are expensive compared with diesel engines. And their weight can cause problems for the ship’s balance. But who knows if one day we might have lighter batteries and smaller technology? That could change everything.”
Charging from the island’s wind turbines, to ensure a genuine zero-carbon footprint, Ellen spares the environment 2,000 tons of CO2 a year. And she has one more green trick up her sleeve: “There is a lot of sensitive nature along Ellen’s route, but she’s designed to create smaller waves that have less impact on the natural habitats,” says Huppunen. “And the noise pollution you’d normally get from the diesel engine – that’s gone too.”
Despite these advances in road, marine and air transport, the latest chapter in the transport sector remains one of potential. For Griffiths, who started out studying psychology at university and came to engineering via the charity sector, that’s the allure. “Green technology and engineering is new and rapidly evolving, and the roles that will shape the future have not yet been fully defined,” she says. “There is an opportunity for people with diverse skills and experience to build these new roles and craft a new status quo.”
