Definición y fortalecimiento de la arquitectura regional de conservación ex situ

• Undervaluation of safety effects on urban roads

The intelligent safety systems required for the automated highway also have an effect on the safety on urban roads. This however is not quantified and not included in this study and leads to an undervaluation of the benefits.

• Underestimation of noise abatement measures

Because methods and input data for nature and quiet zones are not available, the savings only include effects on human health and well-being; this clearly leads to an underestimation of the benefits (Nijland et al., 2003).

• Battery price and life-time uncertain

The battery price is identified as an important uncertainty. Pro et al. (2005) assume for an optimistic scenario (‘high’) there would be only one battery required for the vehicle lifetime and for the ‘low’ scenario the battery needs to be replaced once. Using the same assumption would mean a doubling of the battery costs.

• Social inclusion and second-hand cars

Lucas (2006) highlights two UK studies in which there is a high expectation that technology will solve most of the environmental risk associated with car-based travel. She notes that this appears to avoid consideration that new cars cost much more money and so are usually out of the price range of most low-income households. According to Lucas (2006) this means that fleet replacement will be slower than it ideally could be and that some of the environmental benefits that could be realised will be undermined by the growth of second-hand car

ownership from this sector. By implementing strict rules or banning those second-hand cars, this problem could be solved. The higher price however can cause social inclusion. On the other hand, travel expenses for mobility will be lower due to the higher efficiency of BEVs and this could compensate for the higher car costs.

• Restriction of freedom not valued

Implementing an international design speed reduction, could lead to resistance. Less drastic speed reductions are already proposed by the European Parliament (Davies, 2007) at this

moment, with resistance of big car manufacturers as a result1_{. Also for car users, a speed}

reduction means a restriction of freedom and a loss of welfare. This is hard to monetise, but could play a significant role in decision-making. On the other hand, a speed reduction does not only realise wider action radius for the battery electric vehicle. It also has positive effects on for example energy usage and traffic safety.

• Lithium dependency

The possibility of using batteries depends much on the availability of lithium (Li). Recently there were some questions about the future availability of lithium. Using the data available, the Li reserves/resources could supply fusion needs in the range of 250–600 years (Fasel & Tran, 2005). They also give encouraging results of both recent studies and experimental tests regarding extraction of Li from the seawater have been obtained. They say the latter becomes an attractive method and Li could, thus be considered as an “unlimited” source of energy. • Uncertainty about the valuation of CO2

The wide cost range for emission reductions is caused by the uncertainty of the valuation of CO2. The bandwidth could even be wider when the total bandwidth found in the literature

was used. The valuation (56 euro per tonne) used in the CE study (Vermeulen et al., 2004), are based on prevention costs method and are correlated with the 1997 Kyoto protocol targets. With higher European (IPCC, 2007) greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, higher avoiding costs can be expected. Another method is based on risk assessment and valuation of impacts. Due to uncertainties on the impacts, the valuation of a reduced tonne CO2 in studies using this method varies from 14 to 280 euro per tonne, where 70 euro is used

as a mean value (UBA, 2007; Infras/FiFo, 2007; Krewitt et al., 2006; Downing et al., 2005). Stern et al (2006) use 63 euro (85 dollar) as social costs for a tonne carbon today. For 2050, these costs are only expected to rise. With this in mind, a bandwidth of 56 – 150 euro per tonne is used for this study. The bandwidth in literature however, is even wider.

• Fuel price

Based on the WLO an oil price of 32 dollar per barrel is used for the year 2050. Currently, this oil price is around 80 dollar per barrel. In this study both values are used, however this does mean an important uncertainty.

4.3.5 Résumé

In the TT-scenario, the lost vehicle hours are reduced by 41%, noise nuisance is reduced to zero, fatalities are minimised with 15%, and emissions are reduced to zero. The automated highway system and the noise abatement measure are cost effective measures. The battery electric vehicle showed a negative cost benefit ratio.

1

Acea rejected Mr Davies's controversial proposals to limit the top speed of cars to 160 kilometres per hour and to ban vehicles that emit more than 240g/km of CO2 by 2015. These "come close to political symbolism", it said. The top speed of a car made little difference to its greenhouse emissions, Acea said. http://www.eceee.org/news/news_2007/2007-06-26/

Cost savings on fuel are huge benefits for the end user, and compensates well for the high costs on electricity. The remaining benefit is mainly because the government misses out more tax from fossil fuels than it receives taxes on electricity, due to the higher efficiency of the battery electric vehicle. Other striking characteristics are the high benefits for emission reduction and the high additional car costs. On top, fuel price, CO2 valuation and not valuing

restriction of freedom are considered important uncertainties.