EV Efficiency Whitepaper
Driving Out Range Anxiety:
The Role of Thermal Efficiency in Improving Electric Vehicle Adoption
The Government has an ambition to ensure that almost every car and van in the UK is a zero-emission vehicle by 2050 and to make the UK a world-leader in electric vehicle (EV) and battery technology. In response, the Committee on Climate Change has suggested that if the UK is to remain on a ‘least cost’ pathway to the 2050 target, 60 per cent of all new cars and vans sold should be electric by 2030 – with all new cars and vans emissions-free by 2035.
Progress towards this is already being achieved by the falling costs of low carbon technologies, making the purchase of electric vehicles much more achievable for the general consumer. In spite of this, barriers to EV adoption – such as ‘range anxiety’ – are very real.
With huge investments being made across the automotive industry to develop more energy dense and lower cost battery technologies, this whitepaper explains how significant improvements can be made by increasing the energy efficiency of the vehicle, without the need for major advancements in new technology. It discusses how thermal efficiency has been recognised as the key contributor to increasing energy efficiency and how HORIBA MIRA develops thermally efficient vehicle systems through sophisticated virtual simulation techniques, correlated to real-world conditions using physical test facilities.
