The Small Car Advantage

TEXT SIZE : A | A | A

In recent times, the passenger car industry has been agog with high-decibel launches of plug-in hybrids and electric cars. Motor shows across the globe have featured them. The collaboration between Reva Electric Car Company and General Motors for an electric version of compact car Spark has grabbed global media attention. Overall, there is heightened interest in emerging propulsion technologies. In all this hype, how will the Indian car market evolve? What will you drive in the next decade?

Reduction in greenhouse gas emission has been the cornerstone for development of new propulsion systems. The European Union (EU) has stipulated a fleet average emission of 130 gm of carbon dioxide (CO2) per km of travel from new light-duty vehicles registered from 2015 and after. This figure shrinks to 95 gm by 2020. With similar stringent norms likely to be legislated across most developed markets, sustaining a continuously decreasing fleet average emission levels is becoming imperative for car manufacturers.  

It is commonly accepted that there is a limit to which tailpipe CO2 emissions can be minimised by fine-tuning the internal combustion engine (ICE) alone. Alternative motive force is required to achieve zero tailpipe emissions. This is threatening the absolute hegemony of ICE-powered cars and the next decade may see the technology struggle to survive.

For long, major car makers remained divided in their approach to find an alternative to ICE. After having spent heavily on evaluating options such as fuel cells, compressed air, hybrid and full-electric vehicles, the industry finally seems to have arrived at a consensus that battery-powered propulsion is the way forward. Recent developments indicate that it is possible to produce high-energy density lithium ion (li-ion) batteries. With the concerns on charging infrastructure also getting addressed by new business models such as First Place, alternative propulsion system appears to be round the corner.

Does this signal the end of the road for ICE-powered cars? Will all new cars registered in EU in 2015 be battery powered to varying extent? It appears unlikely. While hybrid/electric cars will enter the market, their rate of introduction may be slow. This is because concurrent innovations in ICE and related vehicular technologies have been delivering encouraging results. Low emission levels have been achieved at substantially lower cost.

Analyses of empirical data on CO2 emission from new cars registered in the UK confirm this. In 2008, nearly 16 per cent of all new ICE-powered cars registered in the UK conformed to the 2015 emission requirements. Despite significant variations in overall emission levels among similar-sized ICE engines, certain variants had emission levels lower than 130 gm per km suggesting that it is possible to achieve much lower emission levels with the existing propulsion system. While these developments may not be enough to ensure that all cars of varying footprints meet 2015 norms, it is becoming evident that a range of cars will qualify. In fact, further successes in ongoing initiatives such as dieselisation, turbo-charging, downsizing and light weighting can make this range even compliant to 2020 norms.