Automotive News Europe — 2024-04-03
Automotive Industry
Stellantis' CEO says EV battery weight needs to be cut in half over the next decade with new chemistries that don't require such a huge amount of raw materials.
Not everyone is convinced that electric vehicles are the mobility fix of the future. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares is among those who have doubts that zero-emissions models will work for everyone in every part of the world.
"We should move away from a dogmatic thinking where one size fits all," Tavares said Wednesday, 3 April 2024, at the automaker's Freedom of Mobility Forum. "I don't think this is going to work. What I would like to add is that the current EVs can be a solution for some of our societies."
Tavares said EV batteries will need a "very significant breakthrough in terms of chemistry" to cut their weight in half over the next decade. He said that the 1,000 pounds (about 500 kg) of raw materials currently needed to create a battery pack "doesn't look like a very reasonable outcome" from an environmental perspective.
"The industry, based on new chemistries, needs to achieve in the next decade a breakthrough in terms of power density of the cells, so that we reduce by at least 50 percent the weight and the raw material usage of EVs," Tavares said. "I think that that's on the way."
It doesn't make sense, he said, to put 1,000 additional pounds of raw materials in an EV to achieve a "decent" range of 250 miles (400 km). "That is going to be broken over the next decade by a new chemistry," he said, "which, by the way, hopefully, will solve the problem of the scarcity of lithium."
Lithium is a key element in most of today's batteries.
Electricity access
A critical roadblock to EVs in less developed nations is access to electricity in the first place.
Roberto Schaeffer, professor of energy economics at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, said around 800 m people don't have access to electricity, while "many more" don't have a stable power grid to rely on.
Schaeffer, who studies how society can reach net-zero emissions, said viewing EVs as a widespread option is a "global north perspective," which refers to regions such as Europe and North America. Overall, biofuels would work better than EVs, he said.
"Electric mobility is not the solution, at least in the next 20 or 30 years, when we really need to go to net zero," Schaeffer said at the forum, which was initiated by Stellantis and facilitated by a neutral third party. "We have to think about energy poverty. Transportation poverty is a real thing in the global south. We have to have in mind that there is no one size fits all when it comes to mobility."
Tavares also said he doesn't see hydrogen as a viable alternative technology for current mass mobility because of its "sky high" cost, even assuming that energy used to produce hydrogen is clean.
"I'm afraid that, for the time being, affordability is going to be a major showstopper for hydrogen," he said. "For the near future, it's [possibly] going to be a solution for fleets of big corporations, but certainly not for normal citizens."
Car sharing
Forum participants also discussed car sharing, public transportation and even nonmotorized mobility options to serve the planet's 8 bn people.
Stellantis has gotten into car sharing with Free2Move, which offers short-term rentals and vehicle subscriptions in Europe and US cities such as Austin, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Portland, Ore.; and Denver. It also bought Share Now, a European joint venture of Daimler and BMW, in 2022.
Tavares said free parking availability and reasonable insurance costs are important factors in making car sharing work widely. "At the end of the day, it will be absolutely possible, very, very quickly, to have a very sustainable, very cost-competitive car-sharing zero-emission service in the urban areas," he said.
Resistance
A transition to a world of clean mobility will require buy-in from citizens, but new data shows many aren't yet ready to adjust their transportation habits.
According to a YouGov survey conducted in Brazil, France, India, Morocco and the US, one in four people say they have not changed their transportation choices to limit their environmental impact and do not plan to do so.
This is especially true in the US, where almost 40% of those asked said they have no plan to change their transportation habits — especially people who are older or live in rural areas.
"Gen Z and millennials are by far those who are most prepared to make changes in their transportation choices to limit their impact on the environment," said Alexandre Devineau, YouGov's general manager of France. "Additionally, they are the demographic most likely to agree to stop using means of transportation where they are the only passenger."