Electric car "runs over" to telematics

2020-09-16 14:58

Russia is preparing for sales of the first domestic electric car. Telematics experts predict: how replacing the internal combustion engine with an electric motor may affect the satellite transportation monitoring industry.

At the end of the challenging year 2020, the plant in Togliatti will switch to mass production of the first domestic electric car Zetta. Now the plant is undergoing trial assembly. Initially, the transport was conceived as a car for people with disabilities, but then the project was transformed into something more. According to the developers, Zetta will consist of 99% of Russian components, and only batteries are planned to be ordered in China. In the basic version with front-wheel drive, the electric car will be able to drive up to 180 kilometers without recharging. "Medium" version is designed for 500 kilometers of mileage. The luxury modification of the electric car will be equipped with all-wheel drive, and its range will also be 500 kilometers. Such a model will cost 950 thousand rubles. The basic version will cost 2 times cheaper. It is planned to produce 15 thousand electric cars in the first year, and half of the lot will be exported.

According to the analytical agency Avtostat, there were 52.9 million cars in Russia as of January 1, 2020. Therefore, 5-10 thousand electric cars on domestic roads are unlikely to revolutionize the "transition of power" from internal combustion engines to electric motors. However, Europe has already been hit by the electric transportation wave, which will sooner or later reach Russia as well. In the foreseeable future, there will come a time when there will be no need to control fuel consumption, as none of the drivers will "drain" ampere/hours. Especially if the majority of cars will switch to the unmanned driving mode. What will become of such a high-tech industry as satellite transportation monitoring? Experts of telematic solutions answered the questions of the Analytical Department of MONTRANS Group of Companies.

Alexey Smiatskikh, CEO of SpaceTeam:
"I believe that in the horizon of 50-70 years, there will be no complete replacement of internal combustion engine cars with electric cars. There will still be a number of regions of the world with underdeveloped infrastructure where cars with traditional engines will be used. Among other things, I can hardly imagine the conversion of military vehicles and special equipment for emergency services to electric power. Today, fuel control is not a key parameter of monitoring systems for a number of industries. For example, for cabs and other public transportation, it is much more important to monitor the condition of the driver, key components and units - that is, those parameters that directly affect traffic safety and the quality of services. For freight transportation - yes, fuel control is one of the main factors, but we should not forget about road safety. Obviously, in the case of electric vehicles, it will be necessary to monitor other parameters of operation: remaining charge, remaining mileage, to provide the driver with convenient information about free nearest charging points, etc. For commercial vehicles, basic data from built-in monitoring systems is usually not enough for our customers. For example, in some cases it is necessary to monitor the temperature in the body, in other cases - the operation of attachments. In addition, a number of tasks are related to monitoring the driver: his condition, driving style, work and rest regime".

Evgeny Erokhin, CEO of Arusnavi Electronics:
"Europe's transition to electric vehicles is a matter of the next few years. In Norway, for example, the government has set an ambitious goal: to completely abandon gasoline engines by 2025. There, every third car already runs on electricity only. In Germany, there are so-called "blue zones", where cars with internal combustion engines are not allowed to enter. The transportation of special services will also become electric in the foreseeable future. This will happen as soon as batteries with a high capacity and a range of up to 1,000 kilometers are available on the market. For example, I currently own a Tesla automobile. On one charge you can drive up to 450 kilometers, which is quite enough for the city. The full life of the device is 500 thousand kilometers, which is comparable to the range of an internal combustion engine. New generation batteries will be able to travel up to one and a half million kilometers.

As for the field of satellite-based vehicle monitoring, fuel control is still the key element of telemetry for many of our customers. Everyone wants to save on fuel and lubricants, and they are less willing to connect other options. When the world goes electric, the need for fuel monitoring will be eliminated. Monitoring companies will have to retrain themselves to monitor other parameters. For example, such as driving style.

Leonid Strukov, Director of Project Management Department of Transport Information Systems: "In the near future, electric cars could replace cars with internal combustion engines. But this will happen in economically developed regions of the planet. For this to happen, we still need to develop a system for electric heating of the passenger compartment in northern latitudes. In my opinion, today fuel consumption control is not the main parameter of telemetry. With the advent of electric vehicles, such a concept as "Fuel Balance" will finally acquire the only correct meaning - accounting and allocation of production costs, rather than searching for cheats. But electric cars have a few significant downsides. These are the disposal of spent batteries and high nodal energy dependence. In the event of a generating capacity outage, entire regions could be left without transportation and paralyzed. As for the telematics of electric vehicles, trends in the development of monitoring systems do not depend on the type of traction of a modern car".

Peter Shkumatov, coordinator of the Sinie Vederki movement: "In the future, electric cars will absolutely replace traditional cars. There are several reasons for this. The main one is that oil and gas reserves are limited. According to British Petroleum's annual reports, there are 40-45 years of proven oil reserves left. But the problem is that those 40-45 years were also 10 years ago. The oil that is explored now and appears in the reports is difficult to extract. These projects require very serious investments and at current oil prices it is not economically viable. In reality, oil that is easy or relatively easy to extract is about 25 years away and there is no chance that new fields will be discovered that can support humanity's consumption of 100 million barrels per day.

The process of electromobilization, which has a distinctly political connotation, has become a response to the fact that the planet is really running out of oil and there is nothing we can do about it. Electric cars are the main way to preserve freedom of movement and in general the usual civilizational way of life in conditions of hydrocarbon shortage. That is why electric cars will completely replace cars with internal combustion engines in the next 30 years.

Fuel control is no longer a key element of monitoring. Today, systems detect theft (draining) or underfilling of fuel, but gradually this trend will go away and in the next 10 years this problem will disappear. But the industry of satellite-based transportation monitoring will grow at an incredible rate. According to my estimates, it will grow 10 times in the next 10-15 years. Why? Because you have to charge a tax on electric vehicles, in essence, for the maintenance of the road network. This cannot be included in the cost of electricity, as the cost of electricity for a household consumer will increase by an average of 1.5 times or even more. Therefore, each electric car will be equipped with a special box, like the PLATON system, which will count kilometers and bill for road travel. Accordingly, the production of such devices and the services that will support the service will grow.

When it comes to taxation, it will obviously be a monopoly of the state, the same PLATON. But in private cases, of which there will be many, commercial solutions will have to be used. Transportation telematics will be full-fledged monitoring. Not just coordinates, but a full set of telemetry data. Insurance companies will also calculate insurance on the basis of these parameters. On the basis of these data, various consignment notes, electronic trip tickets will be issued, admission to certain zones will be checked. And even fines will be issued.

The rapid growth in the spread of electric vehicles is hindered by two main problems: slow charging and a small range. As for charging, there are already great solutions from shopping malls, when the owners equip charging terminals in the underground parking lot. You wander around the mall, buy something and you get a discount on electricity or it will be free at all. But on the highways it is not clear - what to do? You can't stand waiting for hours. Perhaps it will be solved with the help of charging stations with a capacity of 110-200 kW. They charge the car in 15 minutes up to 80% of charge. But how to bring this power to the "fields"? Probably, it will be investments in infrastructure by the state, otherwise these costs will never be recouped. As for range, back in 2018, small batches of solid-state lithium batteries began to be produced, which, with the same dimensions as conventional batteries, give a range of 1,200 kilometers. This is already twice the standard mileage on a full tank of gasoline of a typical passenger car.

Factory electric vehicles are equipped with a basic monitoring system, but this will not be enough to monitor professional transportation. Commercial logistics needs a full set of telematics parameters. But there will be the issue of keeping that data secure. The fact that now Tesla sends all the tracks and all the information about the trip and the driver to some unknown place, I think this will be stopped in the coming years. Such electric cars will simply be banned. Data access will become a key issue in the next couple of years.

As for customizing factory software solutions and monitoring systems for electric vehicles, most manufacturers will discourage this. They understand that the data that the car generates while driving, they will then be able to sell to insurers, the state, and other commercial organizations. They monetize every kilometer of road. So, the firmware will be broken and the data will be extracted. I think after a while, a law will come out that will oblige car manufacturers to make an open API for connecting other systems. Otherwise, it will essentially be a monopoly. But automakers will not give up without a fight.

The era of internal combustion engine cars will absolutely end in 2050. But, since we have an average cycle of 20 years in the automotive industry, the process of dying out of the internal combustion engine market will begin in 2030. Most likely, the sale of such cars will be banned worldwide by 2040, and programs will be launched to recycle internal combustion engine cars when buying an electric car. If in Moscow such a ban comes into effect in 2035, the reduction in the network of gas stations by 2040 will be about 25%. By 2045, half of the gas stations selling gasoline and diesel fuel will remain. By 2050, a maximum of 20% of the number of current gas stations will remain. And this is an objective process, mankind is really moving away from oil. And it's not even about ecology and harmful emissions, but the fact that oil is running out".

Dmitry Zhuravlev, Managing Partner of MONTRANS Group of Companies: "Demand begets supply. To assess the shift to electric vehicles, we need to look at factors such as the ratio of convenience and practicality to cost and ownership time. The key factor: convenience in generating and transmitting electricity over any distance. Electricity is not hindered by borders and sanctions. It can be bought cheaply without building nuclear power plants. Therefore, taking into account Europe's transition to electric cars in the near future, it will be necessary to pull wires, not pipes. Petrochemical plants will remain only to produce plastics.

There is now a race to develop batteries. Very soon, car forums will discuss not octane numbers and injection angle, but battery capacity and charging speed. Undoubtedly, as the number of electric cars grows, the number of possible battery applications for this type of transportation will increase. For example, instead of a spare can of gasoline, a power bank "to reach the gas station" will be popular. As with fuel, electricity will be hard currency on the road. Accounting for these costs will also require measurement and control systems. Basic electric vehicle systems are designed to inform the driver, whereas business executives need more extensive information on transportation energy efficiency, safe driving by drivers or already operators (in the case of unmanned vehicles). Therefore, the transportation monitoring industry is actively shifting to "mixed" fleets of vehicles. In the next 20 years, the oil and electric "lobbies" will be measuring technologies. We also expect active growth of hybrid vehicles and engines during this transition phase. In particular, heavy vehicles and special equipment will use electric motors to operate mechanisms and rotate wheels, but electricity for them will be generated by the same diesel electric generators. The era of oil is coming to an end. The only question is that with the increasing efficiency of batteries, the race will move from the road to airspace, as drones are much more interesting in terms of freedom of movement than cars."