Infrastructure for Electromobility-available options, Sustainability and the Future

Abstract: Electric Vehicles (EVs) are regarded as promising vehicles for the future, and has been greatly focused on by automotive manufacturers across the world to solve the massive greenhouse gas emission from the transportation sector. Unfortunately, because of the challenges of limited batteries capacity, high purchase cost, lack of charging infrastructure and lack of supporting government policies in developing countries, the technology uptake has been limited. Hence, the scope of this thesis work is focused on the infrastructure of the electromobile to dictate its available options, sustainability and future. This research study adopts the review of related studies to evaluate the significance of the infrastructure as well as statistical analysis via review of respondents to administered questionnaires and chi-square test of association between one or two variables to draw inferences and conclusion. The study identifies and gives a thorough description of the available electro mobility infrastructure, options such as static charging system (charging at stationary) and charging while the electro mobile is in motion as a results of contact charging and inductive charging, respectively. Further review identifies Plug-in hybrid technology and alternative electro mobility low carbon fuels such as Hydrogen, Biogas, Biodiesel etc. to battery powered electric vehicles (BEVs) in order to reduce or eliminate the need for enhancing battery capacity. Considering the analysis of the results obtained from the responses to questionnaire, it is observed that the main goals of countries to permanently eliminate environmental impact from fossil fuel as energy source are focusing on adopting electro mobility vehicles in private, commercial passenger and commercial heavy goods vehicles, etc. Assessing the economic viability of the proposed infrastructure scheme, it is observed that the electro mobile infrastructure investment only requires not more than $ 1,000,000, and maximum year of investment recovery is within 6 – 10 years.As a policy, the available options, sustainability and the future of electromobility depends on infrastructure investors, employees, as well as operators. From the Chi-square test of association, it is observed that respondents reveal that there is a significant relationship between (1) charging system and effectiveness of Infrastructure, (2)feasible technology and cost to develop public infrastructure, (3)battery swap recommendation and cost to develop public infrastructure, and (4) charging station and infrastructure to put in place.Hence, from the results obtained from the respondents, there is feasibility and futuristic opportunity in electromobile infrastructure.