Segundo caso: investigación y experimentación con plantas medicinales

• One of the key barriers to the uptake of EVs and PHEVs is the purchase cost of vehicles. The issue is the battery cost, which is the most significant influence on the overall vehicle price. Battery costs are currently high, and are largely determined by the cost of the electrode materials50 with a contribution from development, production and shipping.

• A number of national governments in Europe and both federal and state Governments in the USA have already introduced financial support packages to help stimulate the early uptake of EVs and PHEVs.

• In the April 2009 Budget, the UK Government has also announced that from 2011, financial incentives will be offered to people purchasing electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in this country. These incentives will range from £2,000 to £5,000, but at this point in time no further details of how the scheme will operate are available. These amounts are broadly in line with the support being offered in the US and other European states.

• The view from SMMT and its members is that up-front price support could be the level of support required to sell a certain number of units annually, or to sell a planned annual manufacturing capacity. They felt that although marginal cost is an indicator of what the potential price-support could be, the longer-term lower running costs implies that the up-front support required would be significantly less than this marginal cost over conventional vehicles. • Unless marginal capital costs reduce significantly in the next couple of years many consumers

and businesses may find it difficult to justify purchasing an EV or PHEV even taking account the Government’s financial support.

• An alternative structure for upfront price support is proposed in Scenario 3: o £10k for the first 25,000 vehicles sold

o £7.5k for the 25,000th to 50,000th vehicles sold o £5k for the 50,000 to 100,000 vehicles sold o £2.5k for the 100,000th to 150,000th vehicles sold

This tapered structure would aim to get EVs to mass manufacture (assumed to 100,000) units as quickly as possible and provide limited support thereafter to prevent demand suddenly falling away. Whilst it would cost between £850m and £900m depending on the administration costs it ought to ensure the initial ‘sales inertia’ is overcome. There is a risk associated with the £2k to £5k scheme proposed by Government that EVs and PHEVs may never gain a foothold in the market.

7.5 Actions to create a favourable investment climate in EV

and PHEV technologies

• There are a number of ways in which Government could create a favourable investment climate for EV and PHEV technologies:

o National Government policy statements;

50 _{Most current lithium-ion batteries use nickel cobalt aluminium cathodes, which are expensive, but offer good energy density performance.}

Restricted – Commercial Market Outlook to 2022 for Battery Electric

AEA/ED46299/Issue 1 and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Cars

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o Regulatory pressures;

o Government-backed R&D funding programmes;

o Government-backed demonstration and commercialisation programmes.

• The UK Government and/or the European Commission are taking action in all of these areas. Of particular interest is the New Automotive Innovation and Growth Team (NAIGT) set up by BERR. They recently made the following recommendations regarding low carbon vehicles, which is a consensus view of the automotive industry:

o Create a leadership team to develop future automotive strategy in the UK (Government/senior industry figures);

o Establish ‘Test Bed UK’ which is defined by the NAIGT as “a demonstrator to act as a powerful catalyst for change through demonstrating, experimenting and building the new low-carbon personal transportation system including its infrastructure51

”

o Release and maintain roadmaps and research agendas to focus funding spend and collaboration;

o Establish Government funding mechanism to support product development and industrialisation phase of R&D;

o Evaluate new emissions test procedures based on well-to-wheels methodology, and energy focused rather than current tank-to-wheel approach to quantifying CO2

emissions from vehicles52.

7.6 Scenarios for uptake of EVs and PHEVs

The scenarios are set out in detail in Section 6 of the report so there is little value in repeating them here. However, certain key themes can be taken from scenarios:

• Uptake of EVs and PHEVs will be very limited without upfront price support

• Uptake of PHEVs will occur faster than EVs due to their greater fuel flexibility and lower cost. • Even under the more optimistic scenarios EVs and PHEVs are unlikely to reach mass

production (defined at 100,000 units sold) until the early 2020’s.

• Achieving high levels of EV and PHEV uptake will require a high degree of cooperation between local and national Government. Softer, local measures such as access to bus lanes, free parking and the provision of a widespread charging infrastructure will be need alongside central Government initiatives such as upfront price support.

• The launch of advanced diesels will affect the uptake of EVs and PHEVs in the short to medium term.

• However, advanced diesels will only be able to reduce GHG emissions so far. The deepest cut in transport GHG emissions can only be achieved by EVs.

51_{http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file50539.pdf} 52_{http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file50300.pdf}

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Appendices

Appendix 1

Scenarios 1 to 4 – Full annual uptake rates (as a percentage of

new car sales in that year) for each technology considered by

the transport MACC

Scenario 1 – Severe Protracted Recession Small Cars

Medium Cars Large Cars Vans

Scenario 2 – Green Recovery Small Cars

Medium Cars Large Cars Vans

Scenario 3 – Green Recovery + Upfront Price Support Small Cars

Medium Cars Large Cars Vans

Scenario 4 – Green Recovery + Upfront Support + Strong Competition from Advanced Diesel Small Cars

Medium Cars Large Cars Vans

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