Change on the road for all our cars

HOW'S this for a prediction?

An Oxford University academic reckons that within 10 to 15 years no one will be producing cars that use an internal combustion engine as their power source.

Malcolm McCullough is an associate professor at the esteemed college of higher learning and he told a symposium on electric cars held in Wellington recently that he reckons all cars will be electric-powered within that timeframe.

By electric, he means battery-powered. His argument is based on the theory that the price of batteries is coming down much quicker than anticipated.

We won't go into the hefty detail but Prof McCullough says, by industry reckoning, once the price of a battery gets below US$150 per kilowatt hour then it is cheaper to make electric cars than petrol-driven ones. Importantly, that threshold is on track to be reached within a couple of years.

If he's right, then don't expect to see our roads filled with battery-power cars overnight; at the moment there isn't the manufacturing capacity to meet current demand. But a sea change in the motoring industry is coming.

Ministry of Transport figures for the end of March show there were only 1304 light electric vehicles in New Zealand which is less than 0.25 per cent of total light vehicle registrations. But carmakers are hitting the "go fast" pedal in terms of building these vehicles.

At the moment a key to this growth is the lithium that makes up the batteries and more sources have been found. Meanwhile, new technologies are coming through which use more plentiful raw materials than lithium. The move toward cleaner, electric-powered vehicles marches inexorably on, so Prof McCullough's predictions cannot be dismissed. He may be a little premature in the timeframes but he is right about the future of the internal combustion engine. Its life clock is ticking.