Alice Smith

Cars are synonymous with petrol and the internal combustion engine. And the burning of fossil fuels is synonymous with climate change. The second association can't be broken, but what about the first? Surprisingly, electric powered cars beat the first car to run on petrol to the start line by half a century.

A very basic carriage powered by electricity was invented in the 1830s by Robert Anderson from Scotland. Small-scale, electric powered model vehicles were made even earlier. It wasn't until half a century later, in 1885, that the German engineer Karl Benz (he of Mercedes Benz) built a car that ran on petrol. Yet, petrol was the fuel that came to dominate the following century as, in rich countries at least, the private motor car was steered into being the dominant mode of transport.

That doesn't mean other things weren't tried. Over the years restless inventors and entrepreneurs dabbled with a wide variety of fuels. Even before the first electric car, engineers experimented successfully with steam power, less successfully with hydrogen, and coal gas used in a primitive internal combustion engine.

After the Second World War, engineers at the car maker Rover developed the world's first gas turbine propelled car -- called Jet 1. It never went into production however, because the engines were too big and one version, the Rover T3, managed only 13mpg.

Sometimes alternatives to petrol have made significant in-roads. Brazil's production of sugarcane, a legacy of Portuguese colonialism, provided the foundation for a big shift to the biofuel, ethanol, in the 70s although the experiment began as early as the late 20s. But it was the first OPEC oil-shock of 1973 that dramatically accelerated the uptake of ethanol. In Brazil sugarcane was cheap and the distillery industry had spare capacity. It became government policy to phase-out the manufacture of cars running on petrol. As the decision took effect the result was dramatic. In 1979 only 0.5 percent of cars made ran on ethanol; just seven years later, by 1986, the figure was over 70 percent and remains so today.

Fluctuating prices for both oil and sugar in the intervening years gave ethanol-fuelled vehicles a bumpy ride. But after a dip in the late 1990s and early part of the new millennium, a mixture of concerns, ranging from energy security to the environment and advantageous tax arrangements, saw their triumphant return. The initial primary motive for developing ethanol was energy security, but there were environmental benefits. When lead was still common in petrol, there was none in ethanol, which also lacked petrol's sulphur content and other pollutants. There were lower carbon emissions across ethanol's overall fuel cycle, although this isn't universally the case for biofuels in general and is very sensitive to the type of land, how it is managed and what grew there before. More recently, of course, liquid biofuels have become embroiled in controversy to do with the competition between land for growing food for people, and land for growing feedstocks for fuel for vehicles.

This page of Brazil's history is now synonymous with the 70s oil shocks. Many remember watching news footage of seemingly exotic Brazilian Volkswagen Beetles that ran, crazily, on nothing but sugar. Today, no car is made in Brazil that runs only on petrol. It demonstrates that large scale re-engineering to a new fuel for vehicles can be done, and quickly.

But how many are aware of the wilder leaps of imagination some people have made in order to make sure that the wheels on the car keep going round and round?

Some of them might make you want to go green, and I don't mean in an environmental sense. Used nappies anyone, or human fat? Weird but true, these and other raw materials ranging from chocolate to coffee grounds and sawdust, have all been the subject of inventors and innovators exploring alternative fuels to petrol. How so? All these things have ingredients that can be treated to release their energy, and that energy used for propulsion in vehicles.

A company in Canada is building a special plant that will turn all the parts of a used nappy -- fibre, plastic and human contribution -- into either usable gas, oil or char. Elsewhere, researchers from the University of Warwick in the UK have developed a Formula 3 racing car that uses one-third biofuel made from chocolate residues. What this demonstrates is that pretty much any organic matter can be treated in such a way as to release energy. The challenge is whether it can be done economically, practically and at a scale that makes it useful. Perhaps the oddest and most squeamish innovation of all involves the cosmetic surgeon in Beverly Hills who saved the human fat from 7,000 liposuctions and turned it into fuel for his, and his partners' cars. In a world in which the number of overweight people roughly equals those who are malnourished, this approach at least shows a responsible attitude towards not wasting a raw material. It is a little harder, however, to imagine a new national fuel strategy and infrastructure growing from his bold example.

In terms of the ease of developing an alternative vehicle fuel to petrol, with matching infrastructure that is practical, flexible, cost-effective and user-friendly, the most obvious choice remains electricity. If that happens, at scale, the petrol powered internal combustion engine will prove to be a long interlude between electric power, past and future.

Given that the electric car predates the petrol car by so long, why isn't it further advanced today, given decades of environmental awareness, energy price volatility and concerns about security of supply linked to the geopolitics of oil? There is also the geological inevitability to consider concerning the global peak, plateau and long-term decline of oil production. Even the most conservative estimates put this point at no more than a couple of decades away, with most estimates suggesting it is far more imminent, or that we are living through the moment already.

The technology and intent for the mass production of electric vehicles has been around at least since 1990 when General Motors announced plans at the Los Angeles Auto Show to turn the Impact concept car into the EV1 production vehicle. Its complex failure probably lost the world two decades in the development of more environmentally-friendly personal transport. What went wrong?

The argument that consumers weren't ready for cars with a range of 100 to 200 kilometres didn't really stand up to the fact that the average American driving commute was only around 50 kilometres, easily within range. Groups like the Western States Petroleum Association representing the oil industry, lobbied successfully against development of the electric charging infrastructure needed to support electric cars. Others believed that hydrogen fuel cell technology would supercede the technology. Legislators in California who had pushed ahead with creating the conditions for the electric car made U-turns in response to pressure, and ultimately GM changed its mind. According to the LA Times, in March 2009, GM's outgoing CEO, Rick Wagner, said his greatest error was ending manufacture of the EV1, and letting go of the company's early advantage in electric and hybrid vehicle development.

Certainly, for a time, the tide in the industry did not flow in an environmental direction. In the US, overall vehicle fuel economy was lower in the year 2000 than it was in 1980. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 'Two decades of fuel-saving technologies that could have helped curb CO2 went instead into increasing vehicle weight and performance.'

Fashions in production, the rise and marketing of the SUV, all led to consumer choices drowning out the potential for greener driving. But, even if things had been different and overall vehicle fuel efficiency had improved, in terms of total greenhouse gas emissions, the sheer size and growth of the global, petrol fuelled vehicle fleet, would have drowned out any gains in fuel efficiency. As has been said, 'Our environment does not respond to miles per gallon, it responds to gallons.'

The real challenge is to get fossil fuels out of the fuel tanks of cars. This is the potential of the electric car. But it is not straightforward, and stops short of the full environmental challenge for the car industry.


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