제 11 호 Driving Through Roadblocks Deployed on Vehicle Electrification Roadmap
Kicker: OPINION
Driving Through Roadblocks Deployed on Vehicle Electrification Roadmap
Electric cars suddenly became a real deal within years
Do-Hyuk Kim, Cub Reporter
A decade ago, movies dreaming about near future always featured all electric vehicles everywhere. Alongside flying spacesuit and all-digital world, electric cars possessed their own position in post-2050 cliché. Despite this consistent existence in cinema, electric cars were considered product of tomorrow or incomplete form of substitutional vehicle in real life. Nissan Leaf, which was introduced in 2010, boasted mind-blowing range of up to 113 kilometers, and required 10 hours to fill up for that kind of pathetic range. Everyone thought pure electricity can’t make the car ‘work’, but that’s the story until now. Recently launched Hyundai’s IONIQ 5 claims-by Hyundai-429 kilometers of range and can fill up it’s juice to 100 percent in 40 minutes. Blimey, the technological advancement achieved by electric cars are truly astonishing. But there is still some problems which come from both electric car itself and social infrastructure. Abnormal climate already taking place on earth, importance of eradicating emission-related problems have become urgent than ever. Is there any way to rapidly increase electric car’s market share? Let’s find out.
Range of Electric Cars: Is That Really a Big Deal?
Most people who aren’t experienced electric cars are worried about their maximum range by a single charge. Electric cars with small battery come with range that sounds pitiful, but most popular ones come with reasonable maximum range of 400 kilometers. I know that unlike internal combustion powered cars which can fill up anytime when gauge reaches empty at any petrol station, electric cars can’t be used from absolutely no charge to full, since charging spots are limited, but most travel of ordinary people doesn’t extend more than 200 kilometers. That means driving an electric car with maximum range of 400 kilometers – which there are plenty even in Korea – you can come back home without a single charge. Of course, this is based on driving style that’s not exuberant and on warm day for battery to display its full performance, but it’s not a bad figure at all. Also, since Korea is a small nation, travelling distance in three figures means using motorway, and you can charge for ten or twenty minutes and you’re ready to come back home after reaching destination. Latest electric cars like Hyundai’s IONIQ 5, Mercedes-Benz’s EQA and Porsche’s Taycan all support super-fast charging showing up to 150 kilowatt of charging speed. This means you can charge from 20 percent to 80 percent in around 20 minutes. You can plug in your electric car at charging station in rest area and go to loo or fetch a cup of coffee and charging is already done.
Based on my electric car driving experience, charging speed is all that matters. Despite this fact, most people fear electric cars having short maximum range and experiencing inconvenience while waiting my car to fill up sufficiently. To repel fear derived from stereotypes of people, this fact should be more advertised. Ministry of Environment should point out this factor of electric cars do make sense today, but it’s not being done.
Biggest Obstacle of Purchasing Electric Car Is By Far the Price
Imagine you’re about to buy a new car, and what aspect of the vehicle you might consider most? I am definitely sure that pricing of the car determines whether you’re going to make a purchase or not. Actually, this attitude belongs to all products, but pricing of the car is more important for consumers since its price range is higher than any other industrial product beside house. Would you buy electric car for the sake of saving our planet paying double the price of the same car? Most people definitely won’t. Model with Internal Combustion Engine of Hyundai’s Kona’s price start from under twenty million won, while BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle) model of the same car costs more than twice that. This is due to the expensive price of the battery, which accounts for nearly half of the extremely high price of an electric car. To resolve this issue, each nations’ government is giving subsidies for electric car consumers to drive electric car’s market share, and it worked well until now. Government-provided subsidy charged on electric cars is dropping year by year, already declined under ten million won, and is soon going to reach few pence within years. Government’s policy is to support maximum number of buyers who order their new electric car, not drag new consumers into electric car world. This means electric car’s price will stay high for upcoming years, unlike EU where electric car sales are strong. Abnormal climate changes genuinely are sinking into entire earth’s population, and Korea suffered from strong local precipitation during entire summer this year. Reducing emissions’ importance is higher than ever. We really need to get radical and start changing in big numbers, so is there any solution to pump up electric car market share?
Can Electric Car Still Make Sense?
First solution I suppose is making non-electric cars inefficient to run. People normally consider car’s price as a key factor of purchasing a vehicle, but they also consider how much will it cost to run while owning the car. Electric cars benefit from this factor, since charging an electric car is much cheaper than filling up at the pump in petrol station. But since price gap between electric cars and internal combustion engine powered car is so big, and charging fee of an electric car has risen within years, it’s hard to justify spending extra cash on an electric car.
Current charging fee of electric car is 292 won per kilowatt-hour on rapid charger, and conventional electric cars nowdays have batteries bigger than 60 kilowatt-hour, so calculation tells electric cars costs around twenty-thousand won per 300 ~ 400 kilometers. This is near half of what petrol-powered conventional saloon car’s running costs. This is not enough to get return of massive price gap by saving running costs during car ownership. Simple solution to this is to impose much more tax on gas for ruining the environment. Gas prices currently consist a lot of tax, which is almost half of what we see in petrol stations.
Also, every car owner of Korea should pay annual tax depending on how big is the engine installed on their car, currently 200 won per cubic centimeter (cc). Bigger internal combustion engine means bigger emission figure, so imposing more tax per cubic centimeter make sense. My opinion is to elevate this tax rate to 500 won per cubic centimeter. This will result Hyundai’s Sonata 2.0 – which is considered as a standard vehicle in Korea – owners pay one million won every year owning it, skyrocketing from current four-hundred thousand won. Imposing more tax on these points will make each refuel and ownership itself way more burden than now how internal combustion powered car owners feel, and they would naturally switch to electric cars for easing the strain.
More tax will increase tax revenue of government for few years, so the central government can extend subsidy for an electric car purchase. Best of both worlds.
Electric Car Only Promotion Should Be On Its Way Faster
Second solution coming up is give electric car buyers more merit they can actually feel. Electric cars can use motorway for half the price of internal combustion engined cars do, which is until 2022. Korea’s electric car occupancy of the road is still below EU and China, so it’s premature to end it next year. Government should designate hard-to-reach target of electric car’s market share and constantly provide this benefit until Korea successfully reach the target.
Electric cars can also use public car parks for half the price, but that’s quite beneficial to residents of Seoul only. Residents living in major cities of other provinces are not compelled to use public car parks since they have loads of free space to leave their cars behind. My suggestion is that government force Ministry of Environment to quickly install charging stations in every single public car park, so electric car owners can conveniently charge up and get one parking space reserved. Then provide two hours of free parking for electric car owners who came for charging up their cars. This system will encourage both kinds of people who live in metropolitan area whom are obsessed from stressful parking to buy electric cars, and people living in outskirts of city or other provinces to enjoy free parking experience.
Similar benefits were once offered to hybrid-electric cars, and owners of them were satisfied by this small yet meticulous promotion of environment-friendly vehicles. Battery electric vehicles should also quickly receive support from government of saving these small expenditures to increase satisfaction of electric car ownership and to publicize it.
World is changing faster than what we have expected over the years, and developed nations such as United States and EU implementing strong policies to rapidly change into electric-car-infested world. Most car manufacturers already released their visions to swap their whole range of internal combustion engined cars into fully electrified battery electric vehicles until 2030 or 2035. It is now time for Korea to keep pace with those advanced countries to save our planet, and both government and our citizens should pay attention considering this issue seriously. Electric cars might give us some little amount of discomfort, but that’s not intolerable.Climate problems are changing our citizen’s lives and further influencing cosmopolitan culture, and most of them are hard to withstand. Tolerance of small inconveniences can make everyone smile at last.
