While BMW and Mercedes-Benz have both delivered battery-electric cars to market, they are both putting their big bets on hydrogen fuel cells as the long-range automotive power source of the future, rather than big batteries.
All three are committed to both hydrogen fuel cell and battery electric cars, it seems, but where Audi is prioritising battery-electric cars for the immediate future, its rivals are not completely convinced and their development priorities differ significantly.
"The capacity of the lithium-ion cells are constantly rising and the prices are constantly degrading," says Audi's head of electronics development, Ricky Hudi. "By around 2020 to 2022, you will drive 600km-700km with the battery alone, with a reasonable price. It will be economically logical - that will be a big influence - and there are still dramatic improvements with lithium-ion, and Samsung and LG are the best at it today. We don't see it slowing down soon," he said.
The claim comes on the back of the Volkswagen Group insisting it is on the cusp of a major breakthrough in battery-electric range. Audi has plans for a pure electric version of its all-new Q7 SUV and hopes to spread that technology to the rest of its MLB Evo platform buddies, including the next A6 and A7, the Q5 replacement and the next A4.
While Audi is developing hydrogen fuel cell electric cars in parallel to its batteryelectric programme, it will point to its immediate future with a stand-alone battery-electric concept car at next month's Frankfurt Motor Show. But its rivals are not completely convinced that lithium-ion batteries hold the key to the future, even as European emissions laws tighten so much in 2020 that they virtually mandate at least some electrically powered cars in every model range.
"We stay committed to fuel cells," Mercedes-Benz board member in charge of development, Thomas Weber, explained. "Nobody knows if the hype on the battery-electric vehicle side will pay off. It's not clear. The range isn't clear. The future isn't clear.
"The cars are quite good. The weak point is, where can I charge my car?"
In most countries, a similar argument could be mounted against hydrogen refuelling, though Weber insists demand will force fuel suppliers to upgrade their infrastructure. Germany has around 50 hydrogen filling stations today and plans to have 400 by 2023, ostensibly to help its car makers meet EU emissions targets. In other parts of the world, there are 40 in California, with plans for 100 by 2020, and Japan has 100 today, but plans 800 by 2025. This is still nowhere near the convenience of a traditional petrol station, even in a decade.
Weber is also listening intently to his own electronics engineering boffin, Herbert Kohler, who used an interview with Engine Technology International magazine to hose down battery-electric optimism.
"Lithium-ion batteries are indeed getting better and better, because that's what everybody is pushing and so that's what you keep hearing. But I would not confirm that unconditionally," he insisted.
"A boom in range suggests double the charging capacity but that will not happen with the lithium-ion technology. We're not looking at a 100% improvement, it's going to be 20% or 30% better than three or five years ago, but that's all. We predicted exactly that years ago. At the same time we said charging capacity would be the limiting factor. The situation is that we will have a restricted capacity of the cell by the lithium-ion cell technology itself," said Kohler.
Some senior engineers and marketers are suggesting that current battery ranges are sufficient, with the biggest issue related to charging. Handling dirty, wet or heavy power cables up to four times a day is not appealing, particularly for premium and luxury car owners, and inductive charging is not yet a commercial reality, though it is coming.
"There is really a lot of progress with charging, but that depends on the power of the charger," Kohler said. "Compared to the 3kW or 4kW charging with eight to 10 hours, we achieved a big reduction in charging time with our 22kW on-board charger.
"The question is how many kiloWatts you can pump in (to the battery) in a short period of time. There is a kind of natural boundary, otherwise you will destroy the lithium-ion cells themselves. We can't ignore the laws of physics, but we like to challenge them."
While Tesla draws media kudos for delivering continual increases in range and speed, the company has not yet made an annual profit. Essentially it delivers a big battery with a car around it. Mainstream car makers, with a broader spread of shareholders to answer to, cannot deliver loss-making products, even if they are technically advanced machines.
"With the current B-Class electric drive, we already have our fifth generation of battery-electric vehicles in customer hands," Kohler said. "Don't forget, our electrified powertrain portfolio is much more differentiated and if I may add, much more profitable - with highly efficient combustion engines and plug-in hybrids."
The battery-electric B-Class might run on a powertrain pulled directly from Tesla (which Daimler once owned 20% of), but BMW has an entire new model series dedicated to electric drive, with the price leader being the battery-electric i3 city car.
BMW, though, is coy on revealing i3 sales numbers, having backed down from its initial target of 30,000 a year and instead focusing its communications on markets where the car sells strongly via government incentives (Norway, The Netherlands) and avoiding mention of countries where it struggles (particularly and embarrassingly, Germany).
But, BMW's board member in charge of development, Klaus Fröhlich, says its struggle to gain an electric beachhead is no surprise internally. "I knew for electrification that it would take five generations (at three years per generation) before we would get to where we need to be.
"The technical systems are clear. Cell development in the batteries is very rapid. Energy density is what they talk about but the Amperes flowing in and out is the key," Fröhlich said.
BMW is not betting the farm on battery electrics, though, and its strategy to close in on 2021 emissions targets is to use battery-electric power for smaller cars and hydrogen fuel cells for larger cars, with plugin hybrids filling gaps.
"In the past we were asked in interviews what we were doing and were we late in our development. But you don't always put your development into production and we have been working with fuel cells for 30 years," he said.
His vice-president of powertrain research, Matthias Klietz, said that while battery-electric cars would remain part of the BMW lineup, they had been internally recategorised to suit the work they did best.
"A hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle is going to be used for long driving. It can save a lot of power," Klietz said. "We have categorised it as for a large vehicle, because it will work best if it's doing long distances - more than 18,000km a year.
"A battery-electric vehicle will be a small vehicle with low to medium range and vehicles with plug-in hybrid or range-extender internal combustion engines will stretch range more. They will be medium to long range cars."
But Benz's Weber sounded another note of caution, warning that anybody who focuses too much on the issue could fall behind.
"I believe the next big thing will not happen around the powertrain - it will be around autonomous and connectivity. But everything we can do on the conventional side will help to reduce the cost of electrified vehicles.
"It's wise not to focus on everything around CO2 reduction in internal-combustion engines. I believe that it's dangerous to focus too long on too much with these conventional things. One of the newcomers could focus on completely different things and could get ahead.
"The prioritisation of investment is the question and the key is to use what we know and to do it as fast as we can," he insisted.
Source: Business Day
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