Electrification of 4-Wheel Sector

Abstract

This paper presents scopes and possibilities of electric vehicles if it is made to substitute fossil fueled 4 wheelers completely from its arena. The common consumers are still not onto electric vehicles due to various reasons like cost, charging facility and their power requirements. This work will show comparison of cost, energy efficiencies, emissions and pollution involved, maintenance and service requisites and last but not least the afterlife of both the vehicles. Like well to wheel analysis of conventional fuel vehicles, here, grid to wheels analysis will be used for electric vehicles taking Kerala as reference location for study. The selected location has several power generation sources like hydel, thermal and wind energy. Different scenarios are considered to conduct the grid to wheel analysis. Here, battery electric vehicles (BEV) will be considered as replacement which will be categorised as (i) Lead acid battery and (ii) Li-ion battery. Supercapacitors are also used with lithium ion batteries so as to obtain faster charging, discharging while acceleration and braking. In this paper, the amount of electric power that must be produced additionally for the infrastructure of BEV’s will be calculated. A general study tells that energy is lost in ic engines at a very higher rate than electric vehicles in the form of heat. EV’s have an efficiency of 77% when converting electric power from grid to wheels but combustion engines have efficiency of only 20-25% while converting chemical energy into mechanical energy. Interesting conclusions were also seen when emission and carbon footprints were compared. There are also some conclusions which reveal the difficulty of recycling the lithium-ion battery after its life. The processes aimed to recycle these batteries tend to produce extensive amounts of waste and emit greenhouse gases. But lead acid batteries are seen to be environment friendly as the majority of lead in this battery can be recycled. Different maintenance and services needed were discussed and compared with that of ICE vehicles. Many advantages and challenges were brought out while complete electrification in the 4 wheeler segment, and with the infrastructure growth, the target of zero emission vehicles can be obtained.

Keywords: Battery electric vehicle, internal combustion engine, emission, energy efficiency