Electric Vehicle

In this world where environmental-friendly technologies are pursued to reduce carbon footprints, electric vehicle (EV) came into solutions to substitute combustion engine vehicle that uses fossil fuel. Regulation to support EV in countries and this revolutionary trend affects the increase in needs of EV. It is predicted that by 2025, EV sales will increase to 10 million, and by 2040, it will rise to 56 million. For Indonesia, changing transportation option into non-fossil fuel power energy would also benefit in reducing the import of gasoline, hence strengthening the Indonesia international trade balance.

EV has many advantages compared to internal combustion engines vehicles (ICE).  Firstly, EV possessed high operating energy efficiency. It is calculated that a battery EV could convert 90% of the fuel to operate, while the reminding energy dissipate into heat. While ICE could only convert the energy less than 50% to operate, most of the energy is transformed to heat. Secondly, as seen from the manufacture perspective, EV components could be simplified. For example, a BMW M3 (ICE) and Tesla Model 3 (EV) are compared. The EV has 50 moving parts and engine weight of 31.8 kg while the ICE has 1200 moving parts with an engine weighted 6 times heavier. So, it requires less components and lighter engine for EV.

However, the EV “fuel” could not be compressed as packed as gasoline. Electricity are stored in battery. Current limitation of this technology makes the EV technology requires a lot amount of battery. It could use around 7000 battery cells for one EV. This also cause the cost structure of the EV is heavily weighted to 50% from the battery cost. Research and development are needed to make battery more efficient in cost and in operation.