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TRANSPORT-BRAZIL: Recharge Your Batteries Here

Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 6 2009 (IPS) - Brazil has long been committed to developing alternatives to fossil fuels to power its vehicle fleet, to the extent that 90 percent of new cars sold in the country are flex-fuel, running on ethanol or gasoline in any proportion. Now the government is embarking on another technological field: electric vehicles.

The first roadside electric vehicle charging station in South America, installed in the Barra de Tijuca neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, was hailed as the first step in that direction. Sponsored by the state oil giant Petrobras, it is located in a traditional service station also selling gasoline, gas and ethanol, a biofuel derived from sugarcane.

Edimar Machado, the head of Petrobras’ distribution division which manages the service station network, told IPS that the location was chosen because the neighbourhood has the highest number of electric motorcycles in circulation.

The battery charging point will serve a mainly symbolic purpose at first, “awakening environmental awareness by showing people that it is possible to use energy without harming the environment,” he said.

The next phase depends on how quickly the market for electric vehicles expands to make the project commercially viable, and will consist of creating charging points all over the country. Ideally, according to Machado, they should be spaced about 30 kilometres apart.

The charging stations will solve the problem of the limited distance an electric vehicle can be driven on its battery, which is one of the main drawbacks to the competitiveness and wider popularity of electric cars. For example, the battery on an electric motorcycle gives it a range of about 40 kilometres when fully loaded.

Fully recharging the battery takes four hours, so a charging station could be used to partially recharge it. All that is needed is to plug the battery in to the power outlet.

In Machado’s view, the best option would be for the charging stations to exchange fully charged batteries for depleted ones, at the same cost as a full recharge, or about five dollars.

The charging point captures solar energy by means of an array of 28 photovoltaic panels that generate 184 volts of direct current, which is transformed into triphasic alternating current. Output is at 110 or 220 volts.

On cloudy days, when solar power is not enough, the charging point can use electricity from the grid system.

Machado stressed that the battery recharging point has two advantages from the environmental point of view. The first is that electric vehicles do not contribute to global warming because they do not emit carbon dioxide, and they are very quiet.

Secondly, electrical energy for the charging point is supplied by solar power. “This energy has no destructive impact on nature and produces no polluting waste products,” he said.

The recharging station is expected to have a useful life of 35 years, a period over which it will generate sufficient energy to drive an electric car one million kilometres, according to Petrobras.

Paulo Fernandez, head of the Zeppini Group which makes electric motorcycles, mentioned another advantage of the recharging station: since it draws on solar energy on the spot, it eliminates any additional economic or environmental costs of energy transmission.

Increasing mobility by having recharging points across the city in the near future would make electric vehicles a practical large-scale means of transport, he said.

At present only 180 Zeppini electric motorcycles are on the road in Rio de Janeiro, out of a total of 1,500 nationwide, as well as two dozen electric or hybrid cars. But the Brazilian Electric Vehicle Association (ABVE) says the market is growing by about 50 percent a year.

Limited numbers of electric vehicles are currently manufactured in Brazil. The focus is on motorcycles, motors for bicycles, and motors for loading equipment or for short-range passenger transport.

The Italian carmaker Fiat, which has a major factory in Brazil, has an initial batch of 26 electric cars on the roads, said Machado, and other automobile companies are experimenting with hybrid technology.

Hybrid electric vehicles have an auxiliary internal combustion engine, which generates electricity and recharges the battery for the electric motor.

The Brazilian government wants to develop a national electric car, through the Science and Technology Ministry.

Recently, Science and Technology Minister Sergio Rezende announced that the government is linking up with researchers and members of the business community to make this possible.

According to Rezende, experts in the Brazilian electrochemical industry could contribute to developing improved batteries for electric vehicles.

Lithium ion batteries have been found to be efficient in other countries, but Brazil’s reserves of the metal are too scanty for producing them, Rezende said.

The government of left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has declared that it is not aiming at creating a state company to produce the electric vehicle, but that it is seeking partners within the National Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association (ANFAVEA).

Some electric cars developed elsewhere in the world have a range of 400 kilometres and can attain speeds of up to 180 kilometres per hour, Rezende said.

“Nowadays we have a very well informed business sector that is increasingly aware of the need for innovation and technology in order to stay competitive. We will do this (make the electric car) with the private sector,” he said at the launch of the project.

Electric motors are manufactured in Brazil, so that aspect of the national electric car project is assured, Rezende said. And research and development could be carried out at academic centres like the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the University of Sao Paulo, as well as at Petrobras itself.

Some critics point out that a real expansion of this type of vehicle will increase demand for electricity considerably, causing a correspondingly greater environmental impact from the sources that generate it.

ABVE’s response is that electric vehicles will consume barely three to five percent of the country’s total energy in 2030, and in exchange, car fuel consumption will be reduced by 10 percent.

Development of this technology, according to the ABVE, which held a seminar on the topic in Rio de Janeiro in late June, will not create any difficulties in supplying local electricity needs, given the planned expansion of the electric power supply in the medium and long term future.