Forecast & Outlook: Electric vehicles (EVs) powered by the integration of batteries, hydrogen fuel cells and capacitors, represent an enormous opportunity for re-tooling America’s manufacturing base. The high end of the value chain in automobiles is no longer based on combustion engines or mechanical systems, and has shifted towards electric propulsion, composite materials, energy storage/conversion, and software systems.
We are not going to create jobs by merely extending the 20th century auto industry around mechanical engines. We will create jobs by creating new EV related industries. So the EV revolution is likely to be driven by changing how we build cars, not just how we fuel them!
EV Transition & America’s Manufacturing Base
General Motors has announced its plans to invest $246 million in a Baltimore (Maryland) Transmission plant that will begin building electric motors in 2013 for GM’s hybrid system. GM would become the first major U.S. automaker to design and manufacture electric motors, and it could help to reframe our transition to electric vehicles from expensive ‘tree-hugger’ cars designed to save the planet, to the future of high value American manufacturing designed to save the manufacturing base via:
- High performance wheel-based electric motors that provide improved torque, efficiency and a lower cost modular manufacturing platform for vehicle assembly (See Videos below)
- Light weight carbon composite bodies that reduce vehicle weight and open up possibilities for new vehicle design that move beyond metal frames to composite polymers (e.g. Boeing Dreamliner)
- ‘Drive by wire’ control systems that replace mechanical systems (braking/steering) with more reliable electro-mechanical systems
- Situational Awareness Systems - ‘connected car’ hardware-software systems that provide drivers with real-time sensing and decision-support, and collision avoidance.
- Advanced batteries and hydrogen fuel cells that serve to storage and convert fuel for powering electric vehicles (and other energy applications beyond transportation)
The EV ‘Perception’ Problem? Frame as Industrial Policy, not Environmental
Let’s not over-hype or underestimate this transition! We know that it will take decades for the EV transition to unfold. But the future is knocking at our doorstep and those economies that find the highest place on the EV value chain will be selling to billions of new customers, and be in a position to transfer their materials engineering and energy systems capacities across other industry sectors! The technology platforms have arrived and only needs to be cultivated and advanced by the most capable companies and workers (industrial and knowledge!)!
The faster American leadership can make this EV transition about our Industrial policy, and not just our environmental policy the faster we will reap the returns. Meanwhile, the misleading perception of electric vehicles is that of wimpy golf carts bought by ’tree huggers’ – instead of powerful 21st century industrial platforms driven by truckers [See Vision Motors] and built by blue collar labor. That perception must change before a massive retooling can occur. What we need are truckers with tattoos praising the industrial performance benefits of electric motors, and factory workers smiling because of their new jobs assembling drive-by-wire systems.
With a coordinated campaign, we might see a return of high value added manufacturing jobs as former ‘Rust Belts’ become ’Polymer Belts’, and the American auto sector can begin exporting its vehicles and technologies around the globe. [Forgive my American-centric tone but there is a jobs crisis at hand 
]
Updates:
via Treehugger: US DoE loans Nissan $1b for EV Plant in Tennessee
via Kenny IdaTechEX EV 2010-20 Report
Norway-based EV company will invest $40m for Indiana plant
Electric Motor Videos Below….
[Video] LA-based Vision Motors Demonstrating Power EV Fuel cell Truck
In Wheel Motor concept
Electric Mini with Wheel based Motors
Michelin HyLite Wheel Motor
Photo Credit: GM Press Release Image by John F Martin
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