If there’s a vehicle that is red-hot in our globally warming world, it’s the plug-in hybrid.
The best-known hybrid, Toyota’s Prius, is now 10 years old and has sold more than 800Â 000 units worldwide. It is available in South Africa, where about 20 vehicles are sold on average each month.
Hybrids, so-called because they have both an electrical and conventional fuel engine, are big business now and any number of manufacturers in the United States and Europe are offering hybrid options. Every Volkswagen sold in Europe next year will come with a hybrid option. Honda intends offering a hybrid in South Africa next year.
Hybrids are not the most fuel- efficient cars on the market. There are smaller, lighter cars that give more kilometres per litre but, comparing like with like, they typically offer fuel-efficiency savings of about 30% over their non-hybrid rivals.
Tax support of about $3Â 000 a vehicle in the US has helped sales, but hybrids still constitute only about one of every 160 cars sold. In South Africa the proportion is even less: 1Â 800 passenger cars are sold for every one Prius.
But imagine what the picture would be if hybrids, using 30% less fuel, made up half of our vehicle park.
We consume more than 500Â 000 barrels of oil a day. A 15% saving would equal about 80Â 000 barrels a day, the same size of the Mfutha coal-to-liquids plant Sasol is planning in Limpopo.
Sasol and government both seem a little coy about disclosing the cost of the plant and government support required, but the Financial Mail speculated that the cost was between $6-billion and $8-billion.
Hybrids are gaining currency internationally as concerns about climate change take centre stage and oil prices remain high. Crude was trading at $97 a barrel this week, threatening to hit $100.
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote recently of the adoption of hybrids by taxi fleet operators in New York, producing cleaner air and big savings. There are moves afoot in some states to make it mandatory for all public or private fleet vehicles to use hybrid technology.
In South Africa we have a motor industry development plan (MIDP) that is doing little or nothing to encourage energy efficiency. Witness the paltry sales of hybrid cars here.
The major beneficiaries, according to an analysis by Canadian trade expert Frank Flatters, are the motor manufacturers, who got R55-billion in rebates between 1996 and 2003. Flatters said MIDP investors get $270-million in benefits for every $100-million invested.
The Prius sells in the US for $22Â 000, about R143Â 000. The entry-level price for a Prius in South Africa is R269Â 000. This is not high-priced by local standards and one gets a lot of car for one’s money, including two motors, an eight-year guarantee and features such as on-board navigation, but if the car were priced at R143 000 a lot more hybrids would be sold here.
Toyota’s Brian Eades says markets such as the US and Europe incentivise hybrids through lower taxes. They offer exemptions from congestion charges and vehicle occupancy surcharges to encourage sales.
Eades says Toyota approached the ministry of environmental affairs and tourism to introduce similar incentives in South Africa, but was “not very successful”.
Environmentalist Mark Botha of the Botanical Society says the fact that the MIDP is under review represents an opportunity for the industry to be restructured to encourage energy efficiency. He says the country should implement policies that encourage the adoption of plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Plug-in hybrids are new generation hybrids that offer additional flexibility in that they can be used as electric-only vehicles. They can be plugged in and charged from an electricity socket at home.
When experts plot and model an energy-efficiency future in the transport sector, they invariably use plug-in hybrids for their analysis because these vehicles offer the greatest efficiency.
Conventional internal combustion engines tend to operate at just 25% in terms of their maximum energy efficiency, while electric engines are up to 90% energy efficient.
Hybrid vehicles show good efficiencies in traffic when they are using their electric motors, but are relatively inefficient when on the open road, using their conventional engine.
On the face of it, it would appear mad to consider encouraging electric vehicles in South Africa, given that we have apparently run out of electricity, but plug-ins can drastically improve the energy efficiency of the national grid by making better use of available infrastructure, mainly through the use of cheap, night-time energy when there is more than sufficient spare capacity.
Worldwide, experts are studying the transport sector because it is a major contributor to the build-up of greenhouse gases. The best analyses use a well-to-wheels analysis when comparing the efficiencies of rival transport options. This means the total energy cycle is considered in calculating costs and emissions.
A study by the US-based Electric Power Research Institute, which compares cars running on a variety of power sources, finds that conventional vehicles using petrol emit more greenhouse gases than any other.
Hybrids and plug-in hybrids emit less greenhouse gases, while plug-in hybrids using renewable energy as their source emit just one-third of that of the conventional vehicle.
Electric cars are much cheaper to run. Trials by Eskom in Johannesburg have shown that it cost just R5 to run an electric Honda Civic for 100kms, about a tenth of the cost of running a fuel-powered car.
Motor manufacturers Toyota, General Motors and Ford have signalled their intention to make plug-in hybrids. Toyota’s Eades says he expects it will take two to three years before the plug-ins are available in the country.
He says there has been a slow take-up of the Prius because it is a new technology in this market.
Despite numerous attempts to get comment from several officials at the department of trade and industry, it did not emerge from behind its high tariff wall to answer questions or offer comment for this story.
Hybrids (1); Ctl (0)
It would be less costly to encourage plug-in hybrids than to subsidise new coal-to-liquids (CTL) plants, says a study by researchers in the United States.
The CEIC (Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Centre) working paper says the House committee on energy and commerce is considering subsiding the production of fuel from CTL projects.
“But encouraging plug-in hybrids is a less costly policy that also reduce oil imports and does more to lower greenhouse gas emission,” says the paper by Paulina Jaramillo and Constantine Samaras.
Their analysis takes a life cycle approach that includes all stages of the cycle from production to use. It includes environmental impact options such as where carbon capture technologies are used to reduce the greenhouse gas impact.
The analysis shows that at best CTL could obtain a very small reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. “Plug-in hybrids look more promising as a pathway for reduction of greenhouse gases. Plug-in hybrids would lead to a greenhouse gas reduction of almost 25%.”
The authors say their analysis excludes emissions from battery manufacture, but “even when emissions from current battery production are included, plug-in hybrids result in substantially lower emissions than CTL pathways”.
A Sasol spokesperson said the company appreciates the potential of electric vehicles with regard to climate change, but added: “We do not see this as a total solution for a number of reasons.
“First, while the electric vehicle in itself is a favourable option, the current means of generating electricity is not a clean energy as the associated emissions are merely generated upstream of the end application.
“Alternative means of generating electricity in the form of hydro-electricity or nuclear energy could be challenged with emerging concerns with regard to the environment.
“Second, the world, and especially the developing South African economy, increasingly needs diversity in terms of supply of terms of energy and an indiscriminate move towards electricity as a single source could expose these economies to potential energy shortages or instabilities.
“Third, the grid infrastructure needed to supply electricity in the absence of crude or synthetic-derived fuels would require a virtual doubling in size of the world electricity supply capacity.
“Last, the technology and materials needed to realise the full-scale commercialisation of electric vehicles would also have to overcome steep challenges. The batteries needed for electric vehicle operation, for example, require the use of specialised metals, which are both limited in availability, as well as difficult to handle and dispose of.”
Greening the MIDP
Optimal Energy, a Cape-based company that aims to produce electric cars in South Africa, has estimated that if every car in the country was an electric car, only 7% more electrical energy would be needed.
Optimal Energy’s Kobus Meiring says the company is busy formulating a green policy for government vehicle procurement. “Greening the MIDP would complement this very well.”
He says the MIDP needs a serious re-think. “One of the major criticisms of the MIDP is that the real beneficiaries are not South Africans and South African companies, but instead the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and first-tier suppliers.
Meiring says the OEMs and first- and second-tier suppliers benefit in a number of ways — cheap labour, inflated local car prices and government subsidies for exports.
Frank Flatters, a Canadian expert who has studied (and criticised) the MIDP for being too generous to the motor majors, says he hopes the new-look industry will be consumer and taxpayer friendly.
He says: “If we want to be green we need to distinguish between subsidising, regulating or taxing production of different kinds of motor vehicles and parts and doing the same for consumption of these things.
“Subsiding producers of ‘green’ vehicles or parts through high import duties or direct subsidies, for instance, will simply lead to the substitution of high cost domestic ‘green’ products for lower cost international ones, with no change in overall use of these things.
“This will not make South Africa or the world more green, but it will raise the overall costs of green things. We don’t need a green MIDP for the motor industry. Rather, we need a green tax, subsidy and regulatory regime for buyers and users of motor vehicles.”
Flatters says the record of the MIDP so far has been far from green. “It subsidised and saddled consumers with the use of polluting and energy-inefficient, ancient technologies long after the rest of the world had moved on. More recently it subsidised investment in a Hummer plant.”