Electromobility, the beginning of an energy transition
The infrastructure and cost reduction of electric vehicles and their inputs: a challenge to overcome in the coming years.
With the urgent need to move towards the use of clean energy, which causes very little impact on the environment, electromobility has become one of the great solutions, but to achieve it in the coming years, the industry faces great challenges.
Sergio de la Vega, CEO of Citizens Resources, an energy innovation company, said that electromobility poses great challenges. There are mainly two issues to solve: meeting the necessary infrastructure and a support ecosystem which is currently inexistent, in addition to reducing battery costs. “The major transportation system, like all systems in the world, requires a specific infrastructure. For example, if I am going to buy a diesel vehicle to move goods from a dealership of any brand, my concerns are the price of the vehicle and how much the maintenance is going to cost, but I never have to worry about who is going to sell me the diesel, who is going to fix the vehicle if it breaks down. For electric vehicles, there is no such ecosystem of repair or body shops”, he explained.
Mr. de la Vega added that the entire value chain for internal combustion transportation already exists, but achieving it took more than 100 years. There are already more than 11,000 gas stations in Mexico, more than 50,000 shops, thousands of spare part stores, etc. which is not the case with electric mobility.
“The world has to develop all of this very quickly and this may be one of the causes preventing the growth of electric mobility as fast as it should. Many of us would like to see cities with zero emissions but it will still take a little time to achieve it as, for us to see that, we need to see more electric vehicles on the streets. And for that, we must solve the battery problem. We need to see the infrastructure in place, because nobody wants to buy a vehicle that cannot be repaired anywhere or with no charging,” said the expert.
Another issue to be addressed, he says, is the reduction in the cost of batteries. Although they drop year after year, their prices are still high. According to Sergio de la Vega, electromobility is an irreversible phenomenon. We are at the beginning of an energy transition that will be able to curb emissions that increase the greenhouse effect, but for this, financial, urban, technology and regulatory measures must be contemplated.
Sergio de la Vega explains that we are at the beginning of an energy transition: a fundamental change in the way we generate and use energy.
“What is happening today is that we are starting to replace everything that came before: natural gas, oil, coal… Electricity will be the primary source of energy and we are going to start using it, not in the form of fuel but in the form of power.
“Today, although we might think that the world is electrified because we get home and there is a switch, the reality is that out of the 100% of energy that is consumed every day on the planet, 30% is power and 70% it is internal combustion with transportation as the best example”, concluded de la Vega.