In a world of new energy options, Hyundai has a foot in both electric and hydrogen camps. We get the inside word on Hyundai’s vision of what’s next for Australia.
This interview appeared in part of our documentary, Drive: Electric – Getting Australians ready for electric cars, which is available to watch on our site or on 9Now.
New energy doesn’t just mean electricity, with hydrogen also a viable solution for some parts of the market. To learn more about what the future feels like for Australia, we speak with Scott Nargar, Senior Manager of Future Mobility and Government Affairs at Hyundai Australia.
Drive: From a manufacturer’s perspective, what is the most exciting part of a consumer interest in new energy vehicles?
Scott Nargar: As Senior Manager of Future Mobility, it’s my job to prepare the market for the technology that’s coming.
I think the most exciting part is seeing the change in people’s attitudes towards zero-emissions vehicles and knowing that about 60 to 65 per cent of people will consider an EV for their next vehicle, which is really incredible.
D: At the same time, what is the biggest challenge for a manufacturer?
SN: The biggest challenge for a manufacturer is getting stock of the vehicles, which is going to be a challenge for a little while longer, but we’ll continue to work with the factories around the world to get the supply.
D: Electric vehicles as they currently exist, are better suited to markets where there are shorter distances between high-density population centres. Are electric vehicles right for Australia?
SN: Yes, electric vehicles will work in Australia because the range of cars is getting better.
The charging stations are really fast. You look at the 350kW, 800-volt stations and the car behind us, the Ioniq 5, and all of our new Genesis [models] and Ioniq 6 can all do charging at that speed as well as the Porsche Taycan [270kW].
D: What does Australia need to do to support charging infrastructure better?
SN: As a country, we need to actually look at where the stations need to be, look at those clusters of stations. We’ve patted ourselves on the back for putting one station in, but I think we need to put 5, 10, 20 stations in the same location. That’s how you build a proper network. You have to have redundancy on site.
D: Is adapting existing infrastructure (fuel stations, car dealers etc) the answer?
SN: There are 7000 petrol stations across Australia, all of them in fairly convenient locations, that’s why they exist in the first place. And knowing that you can get fresh food there, and use the conveniences there, is a great place for going and filling up. But so is the shopping centre, so is McDonald’s or KFC or any of your fast food chains. They’re all potential service stations of the future, along with grocery stores.
D: Are other new energy fuels like hydrogen better suited to Australia?
SN: Hydrogen is definitely part of the future.
We established the first hydrogen station in the Southern Hemisphere here in 2014. It gets replaced in quarter-one next year, when we introduce the first vehicle, so we definitely see hydrogen as part of the solution for larger vehicles, but also in trucks, buses, trams, trains, ferries and commercial shipping.
It is the heavier mass of a vehicle, whether it be on the road, rail or marine or even aircraft, where hydrogen is going to be better to propel that mass.
The way to think about it is EVs replaced petrol today, and hydrogen fuel cell replaces diesel.
D: From a brand perspective, what can Hyundai and the wider automotive family in the group do, to better support consumers? Is the plan from the parent company united across its brands?
SN: Accessing stock is a global challenge at the moment. We’re working hard to overcome that.
We know we’ve got the customer base here, the Ioniq 5 that’s behind us, sells out really quickly, and it is really a challenge to keep customers happy that can’t get the vehicle. So we’ll continue to work with factories around the world and as we introduce more factories in this region, they’ll start producing for countries in the region.
Indonesia has just opened. They’re producing for the southern Asian markets. That frees up more supply out of our home factory in Korea.
D: Do you feel that Australia has embraced a change to electric and other new-energy vehicles?
SN: We’re about ten years behind the rest of the world, and when I say that, I mean the modern ‘first-world’ markets.
The emerging markets are probably doing pretty good as well, but we can do better, and infrastructure is really core to that.
D: As a unique market, what does Australia need to do to align with the new energy / future fuel standards adopted by other countries?
SN: We can definitely look at what’s happened around the world.
If we use the US and Europe as an example, there have been some great programmes there and there have probably been some failures as well. So understanding what has worked and what hasn’t worked is going to help us evolve this market a lot faster.
D: Do you think Australia will be able to align within five years, or longer?
SN: I think it’s going to be a challenge.
I think we’ve got a fairly diverse range of vehicles here in Australia – one in four cars sold in Australia is a pick-up.
Where geographically and environmentally, we’re a lot different to Europe especially, and a lot different to the US.
When we look at the way we propel ourselves around the countryside, I think it’ll be a lot longer than five years, but we’re only starting to talk about it seriously now so no one’s expecting us to be there with the best of what’s happening in Europe within five years.
D: Pending a major step change in battery technology, what other future energy solutions do you think will work in Australia?
SN: The batteries are changing, the technology is evolving very quickly and with the current lithium-ion polymer batteries, we have a battery with the capability to be able to control its charging very well. So we control the lows, the highs, the hots or colds and that’s why we warrant the batteries far longer than we warrant the cars.
As we move forward into solid-state batteries and the technology that Hyundai has invested in some countries, we are going see another evolution. But that technology is a little way away yet so we’ll continue to work with what we’ve got and continue the R&D to make the battery technology a lot faster and hold more energy and be able to charge a lot quicker.
D: Cost is considered to be a major barrier to EV adoption. Are new-energy drivelines forcing cars to move more upmarket?
SN: If we look at the safety technology that’s required in cars today, you need to have a lot of active and passive safety technology to meet a five-star ANCAP [rating]. So cars are no longer that $20,000 drive-away like they were with the i30 and the Corolla and the Cruze and all those other ones. So I think we’ve moved past that time.
When you start to add in larger expensive batteries, the cars are going to be more expensive as they are today.
The kilowatt hour per cost of the battery is still fairly high at the moment, but as we get more infrastructure on the ground and we see more cars built, we’re using more of the same components across more drive trains, both small and medium passenger cars, across all of the Hyundai Motor Group brands, we’re going to see that technology hopefully come down and be more affordable.
D: Because of our unique geographic layout and transport requirements, could Australia break the mould and become a leader in new-energy solutions that benefit longer-distance needs?
SN: Yeah, I think there’s a great value-add here.
A lot of the components for batteries you spoke about, with lithium, iron, cobalt, copper, they’re all here in Australia.
There are some great mining resources companies and some great technology companies that want to build batteries here.
We will continue to work with our supply chains and we know that a lot of other manufacturers use the same suppliers that build our batteries, will look at the opportunity to value add before the material heads overseas.
D: With key Hyundai markets pushing for ‘zero emission’ fleets, what is the future for non-EV vehicles in the Hyundai global library?
SN: We look at the cars that sit around us in the showroom today.
They use 100 per cent Australian steel, but we send that steel over as a rock and it comes back as a completed car. How do we value add here and create jobs here for local manufacturing and local engineering to get jobs created here in our country?
D: Will Hyundai become an electric-only brand?
SN: We’re starting to see this, not so much across our chain, but across a number of manufacturers, and I suppose some of the European manufacturers are impacted by it right now, which is why they are pushing quite hard in Australia.
Their choice of internal combustion engines is starting to decline and we’re going to see, various vehicles here, like the Santa Fe, will come as a hybrid just because the European markets don’t want diesel anymore.
So we’re going to evolve as the market evolves and it’s really driven by the different requirements for other markets, so large volume markets like Europe and the US.
Hyundai will be a zero-emission brand, we’ve got a date on that of 2045. We’ll work towards looking at those goals for 2040 and 2035, if and when they’re set by the government to ensure that we have the right mix of vehicles here to meet those requirements.
D: Porsche development in synthetic fuel. Hydrogen. What else is on the table?
SN: For Hyundai, the focus is on zero emissions, so true zero emission being electric vehicles and hydrogen and fuel cells.
So we’ll continue to evolve our range of vehicles, our drivetrain offerings to true zero emission. We’ll work on that across both road, rail, marine and air, so we’ve got to focus on using our E-GMP platform for passenger vehicles, and looking at dedicated fuel cell platforms for our passenger vehicles, but also our commercial vehicles.
D: Some would say Hydrogen is more suited to larger commercial vehicle use than public fleets? is this what you see, or is Hydrogen being underestimated?
SN: It has been underestimated.
Look at the opportunity here in Australia. We import 92 per cent of our fuel so we are the country that is most at risk from a fuel security perspective. We are a net exporter of energy. We don’t rely on energy imported into Australia to run our grids, but for our transport networks, we’re completely dependent on overseas countries and supply chains to get the fuel here.
So we’ve got countries lined up for Australia’s hydrogen, so Korea, Japan, India, Malaysia, right throughout this region, but also Germany.
Why aren’t we looking at our own transport networks first? Why aren’t we fortifying our own transport fleet to networks with our own energy?
D: Will the infrastructure to support Hydrogen be as easy to roll out as chargers?
SN: It’s a greater challenge, there’s no doubt about that.
We’re building a new hydrogen station here in our building that is to be commissioned in quarter-one (2023). So we work very hard with the regulators, with our partners, both government and industry and financiers, to ensure that the infrastructure that goes in is the very best infrastructure.
There’s a benefit of being 10 years behind the US and Europe and that is, we can take all the best learnings and get the technology when it’s at its most mature, but also in the most cost-effective manner to deploy that technology. So we’ll continue to work on that.
D: What does the future of motoring look like in Australia? The govt has made mandates by 2025? What does this mean, is it achievable?
SN: It is achievable, but we need to do it in a very staged manner.
We don’t want to leave anyone behind, and I think it’s going to be challenging to ensure that people who can least afford a new car today, can afford a new zero-emission car with all the latest safety features.
And there’s no doubt that everyone in Australia should be driving the safest cars and the greenest cars, so we need to work very hard that the right measures are in place and the right policies are in place to ensure that no one is left behind.
And I think rushing to get to a target that is too soon is a risk to that.
I think the mix of vehicles is going to change considerably. You’re starting to see now, especially in the ACT and spending a lot of time there engaging with our leaders, the uptake of EVs, especially Tesla is very, very high. They’ve got the highest uptake of EVs per capita but unfortunately in that case they’ve got the lowest deployment of EV stations per capita. So there are some challenges.
We’re going to see a diverse mix. We look here now at the trucks coming past and the buses coming past. We expect that a lot of the state government buses throughout Australia are gonna be hydrogen and be zero-emission, so not only are they emitting no noise or emitting no pollution to the atmosphere, they’re actually cleaning the atmosphere as they drive around.
So there are some extra benefits of heavy vehicles moving to hydrogen fuel cell.
D: What is the most important consideration for consumers in terms of electric or alternate fuel cars in Australia?
SN: Don’t oversize a car because you think you need a battery of 500 kilometres. Fleets especially make the mistake of going, yep, everything needs to be 500 kilometres size battery.
We have, in our Kona EV for example, two sizes of batteries, but some of those fleets are doing less than 30 to 40 kilometres per vehicle per day. So there is no need to buy that more expensive vehicle with a larger battery. So, understand what your driving habits are.
And yes, people do drive to Queensland, although most people fly because it’s cheap, and there is a great network of charging stations here now, but just really understand what your needs are and what technology is suited for your everyday need today so you don’t over capitalise.
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You can watch the full Drive: Electric documentary here or on 9Now.
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