Some of the very first automobiles back in the late 1800s and early 1900s were electric-powered, but ever since, the internal combustion engine has been the dominant means of propulsion.

The revival of electric cars began in the 1990s. This new generation of electric cars took two basic forms. One category can run on either gas or electricity. These are now commonly referred to as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs. The other runs entirely on electricity. Those are battery electric vehicles, or BEVs.

Today, the fervor for Tesla vehicles might make one think that electric vehicles have become more popular than they are. In 2019, only two to three percent of all new vehicles sold were electric, and that statistic depends on the source.

Most long-term projections expect electric vehicles to gradually grow from today’s market share of roughly 2.5 percent to perhaps as much as 45 percent or 50 percent by 2040, with most of the growth coming after 2030.

Egil Juliussen has been analyzing the automotive industry for a long time. He recently wrote a two-part series for EE Times presenting evidence that the EV market might move much faster than expected. He believes that within five years, electric vehicles are likely to meet several criteria that will make them fully competitive with those based on internal combustion engines. International editor Junko Yoshida called him up to talk about it.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: What are those criteria?

EGIL JULIUSEN: The first one is the price of the battery EV needs to be competitive with the combustion engine vehicles. And we think that’s going to happen when the battery reaches $100 per kilowatt hour. That’s roughly five years from now.

The second one is that you’ve got to have lots of models that cover all the use cases that the customer has. VW needs to have 20 or 30 models that are battery EV, from small cars to SUVs. GM needs to have it for their trucks. That’s on the way, and we think today there are relatively few models, but in five years, there are quite a lot of models that are planned. We think the COVID economy might slow it down a little bit, but there’s going to be a tremendous amount of models available. That covers then the user needs. So many more people then have a product they want to buy.

The third part is the operational cost. The battery EVs are actually already ahead of combustion engines. That’s the equivalent price of fuel, so the electricity cost versus gallons of gas. It’s going to range by region and surely by country. So in the US, it’s about 50 to 70 percent electricity equivalent to gasoline. So there they’re ahead already.

Then it has to do with the maintenance cost, since the battery is so much simpler. There are maybe tens of moving parts versus literally thousands of moving parts. So anything that’s moving eventually wears out. And there is basically no fuel in terms of cooling things and stuff like that. Brake fluid,* you name it. So there are fewer things that need to be replaced, and hence there are already roughly (again it’s going to vary a little bit) 50 to 70 percent better than what the combustion vehicle engines are.

[ * After this interview was recorded, Juliussen said he meant to say “cooling fluid.” – ed. ]

If you go to fuel cost in Europe, now you’re talking four to six times more expensive, and so there it’s even bigger.

The last one is the refueling time. And here the battery EVs are not going to match the combustion engine for a long time. But the fact that you essentially can have your own refueling station in your garage, it’s a major advantage. So that really means that people who have a garage are going to be the earlier people who are acquiring. There it takes 10 or 12 hours if you have 115 volt type to recharge. But that’s overnight; that’s not a problem. So that may make up the disadvantage of refueling for a long time. But eventually, you have to figure out how to put charging stations where people tend to spend an hour or so. Because when you have fast, high-performance battery charging, you can pretty much get 80% of it today probably in 30 to 40 minutes. Still a lot more than the five minutes. But it’s better. But if you’re in a shopping center or at a restaurant, then you can get that done.

The other point is that you aren’t going to charge it more than once a week or so, unless you drive a lot. If you just take the average driving distance, in the US it’s about 13,500 miles or so that you drive per year, you divide that out 250 miles and you get 54 times. But the range anxiety means people will charge more often. But as they learn how to do that, it’s not going to be such a big problem overall.

Then eventually all of this happens, and the battery EV thus becomes the major selling type of power train. Again, it’ll take time.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: But you are predicting that battery EV will no longer be a novel item, but it is going to be the common thing probably within five years’ time.

EGIL JULIUSEN: In five years, that doesn’t mean that battery outsells combustion engines. That means they’re competitive at basically everything. And that’s when the market really takes off.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Gotcha. So that’s really the beginning of the takeoff. Five years’ time, battery EVs start to make sense.

EGIL JULIUSEN: Yes. In every aspect except the refueling time.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: I just want to go back to the battery cost thing. You wrote that battery costs have dramatically declined already. Tell me how much it was before, 10 years ago, and how much it is now.

EGIL JULIUSEN: In 2010, it was essentially $1,000 per kilowatt hour. Today, 60 kilowatt hour is sort of… you’ve got to have that to be competitive. That’s $60,000. That was ridiculous. And of course at that time they didn’t have that much battery. Then by 2019 it had dropped to $156. The benchmark is $100 per kilowatt hour. Then you multiply that by the 60, now you have $6,000. And now you’re pretty close to what the power train with the transmission, all of that, what that is for a typical car.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: It’s a magic number.

EGIL JULIUSEN: It’s a magic number.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: $100 per kilowatt hour. It’s interesting. Every high tech market item, I remember I used to write about LCD. “When LCD becomes mainstream…” And that was I think like $100 per certain size of the screen. In this EV case, you’re talking about $100 per kilowatt hour. We’re getting close to that.

EGIL JULIUSEN: Yes.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Very good. In terms of the variety of EV models coming, are you actually hearing that from auto makers? Are they promising that?

EGIL JULIUSEN: Yes. They are promising that. If you look at what IHS market has, they essentially track every model that is being produced and being sold, and they go usually until about 2031 or ’32 timeframe. I would look at those, and somebody like VW… and they said publicly, too, they’ll have well over 20 models by 2025. GM is sort of in the same range. Pretty much all the major automotive companies. They’re all going towards battery vehicles. They do understand that now it’s the long-term winner. They may not have 20, but they’re going to have 10 or 15. And it’s going to increase over time. If you go to Europe, where they really want it because they’re much more into cutting down the CO2. So there it’s much higher. Norway is already 50% battery EV already in sales.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Wow! Really? Fifty percent?

EGIL JULIUSEN: Over 50%, yeah. There’s a separate reason for all of that, which might be worth a different column, just writing about the different perspectives by country. Because it varies quite a lot in what they’re doing and so on. So that might be worth another column.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Let’s set that aside. That’s an intriguing thing. Something like a battery EV, this is not really just about technology. It’s about how society embraces new technology, how society actually builds policy behind it. It’s interesting.

All right, good. Now let’s get back to the technology. One of the things that really got me excited when I read your part two on your battery EV story was this: You wrote about emerging technologies to improve battery EV. Specifically you talked about wireless charging and supercapacitors coming out. Wireless charging, I kind of get that. But tell me about supercapacitors. What the hell is this?

EGIL JULIUSEN: Well, it’s a large capacitor. The good news about capacitors is, you can charge them really fast because you just dump the current in there and all of a sudden it’s there. So the idea that it’s possible. And I don’t know if anybody is doing this, and it may be a pie in the sky. But idea is that you would have a supercapacitor as part of the battery system, and that would charge up really fast. Then while you’re no longer hooked up, then it would charge the battery. That’s the idea. But again, whether that’s going to happen or not, that’s unknown. But that’s the idea. I compared it to a cache memory in the computer industry, which is potentially the equivalent to that. And that supercapacitor could also be between the charging station and the electricity network. Because there it’s a problem of getting… You’ve got to pull a lot of current there, too. So having standby supercapacitor with extra power there that you then load into it when the car’s there, that could be done as well. But again, these might be pie in the sky, but you never know.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: But it’s an idea that’s kind of floating around that could help the charging dilemma.

EGIL JULIUSEN: And wireless charging, that’s pretty well established. The smartphones are doing that now, and many of the cars have that for the smartphones. Qualcomm actually was a major investor in that, but they sold their business to Witricity about a year ago I think, maybe a little bit more. So there are companies working on that. Wireless charging for cars is much more realistic. And it’s more convenient because you don’t have to go plug stuff in, you just park in a certain space and there it goes.

And also, it has one advantage. The wireless charging can be more efficient than plug-in, because it goes through all this power adapter and all this. That generates heat, so anytime you have heat, that means some of the electricity is being wasted. So the operational cost of wireless charging could be better than plug-in charging. But the infrastructure to put in is more costly. So that’s the issue. But I’m pretty sure the robotaxis, most of those are going to be battery EVs over time, they’re going to have their place where they use that, because it’s going to be more convenient for them.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Wow. Great. Let me come back to this supercapacitor thing. Are you aware of any companies who mentioned that they’re working on this?

EGIL JULIUSEN: No. I don’t think so. There’s an old technology, maybe 15 years ago, there was a company that actually tried to develop a similar concept. It was a spinning wheel. They got pretty far along, and then they abandoned it. It would be sort of a similar technology. You spin a wheel and it has a lot of energy, and then that drives the car. It’s not totally unheard of, having the concept of this. So a supercapacitor in some ways would be simpler. Again, I didn’t spend enough time to go into that. I thought it was intriguing enough to mention.

JUNKO YOSHIDA: Exactly. The pie in the sky story is always welcome. Okay, well thank you so much, Egil. It was fun talking to you as usual.

EGIL JULIUSEN: Okay. Thank you.

BRIAN SANTO: Juliussen estimates that once battery EVs become competitive with traditional cars, sales will slowly begin to grow. Recall that battery and hybrid vehicles had roughly a 2.5 percent market share in 2019. In his articles, Juliussen cites estimates that battery EVs – and this is just battery EVs – will have a 13 percent market share by 2030. Add in hybrids, and that number jumps to 21 percent.

We’ve got links to Juliussen’s two-part series on the podcast web page, or just do a web search for the headline “Battery EVs: Not If, But When and How Fast?”