MINUTES after taking the wheel of car, I suddenly understood what “range anxiety” is all about. Though I had dismissed it as a media-stoked affliction of newbie drivers of electric cars, there was something quite powerful in seeing the car’s travel range plummeting on the electronic dashboard. It set mental alarm bells ringing about whether or not I’d make it to my destination.
Starting out with a range of 144 kilometres, the figure instantly dropped to 112 km when I switched the aircon on – look, it was a hot day, OK? – and driving fast on the highway dented the range’s rate-of-decay still further.
Switching off the aircon and driving in a sluggish “eco mode” to make the most of the Leaf’s regenerative braking system went some way towards restoring my range. But it was clear that electric vehicle (EV) drivers are going to need as much help as they can get managing range anxiety – at least until lithium-ion batteries help a car travel further than the current upper limit of about 160 km, and charging posts become as common as street lamps. Neither is likely any time soon.
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To the rescue, says the EV industry, comes a number of smartphone apps that will communicate with your car, helping you squeeze the most range from your EV – from charging it remotely to ensuring your seat is pre-warmed on a cold morning.
Apps are already communicating with conventional cars. David Harold of Imagination Technologies, a UK-based designer of microchips for in-car entertainment systems, says technology firms see the car as the “fourth screen” into which they can sell digital content after the TV, computer and cellphone.
In-car technology providers like , Michigan, are giving car-makers such as General Motors the ability to use smartphones to unlock their cars, start them and even check their tyre pressures via Bluetooth-equipped sensors. Ford and BMW are also offering ways to sync music and contacts stored on smartphones with the in-car entertainment system. Ford even has a Twitter interface in development for its centre-console screen.
But there is a major difference between combustion-engine cars and EVs that will affect the type of apps available for each. “Electric cars are always on. They don’t need a running engine to produce electricity but can tap the power from their batteries to do things at any time,” says Tobias Hahn, a spokesman for BMW in Munich, Germany.
And that difference lends EVs a huge advantage: you can communicate with the car when you are nowhere near it and get it to perform novel functions. Many of these are designed to reassure users that the car is, or will be, fully charged, assuaging range anxiety.
The first smartphone-controlled function that drivers of EVs are getting from the likes of Nissan, Renault, Ford and Citroën is the ability to initiate charging of their cars. Before I tested the Nissan Leaf, I downloaded the firm’s iPhone app, Carwings (pictured, above right). This lets you send a message to the car to start its 6-to-8-hour charging program – allowing you to choose the time of night when electricity tariffs are lowest.
“You can see the car’s level of charge on the phone screen at any time,” says David Jackson, Nissan’s EV project manager. “It will also text you if someone has unplugged the charger.”
The next level of EV smartphone functionality is called “pre-conditioning”, which allows the user to remotely heat or cool the car’s cabin to their required driving temperature before they get in. “The biggest power draw with heating or air conditioning is getting the car up or down to the right temperature in the first place,” says Jackson. “So if we do that while it’s still hooked up to the mains we can extend the range.” Renault estimates this improves range by about 6 per cent.
BMW has a further take on pre-conditioning: in addition to cabin temperature, its and i3 electric cars pre-warm the battery itself under smartphone control. “A lithium-ion battery needs to run in a certain temperature range or the energy density drops, so we use a liquid cooling and heating system for the battery pack to get it into the right temperature range while it is still plugged into the mains,” says Hahn. Again, range is boosted.
At Renault UK, Andy Heiron, head of EV programmes, has one big hope for an app on his range-anxiety-reducing wish list. “Our vision is of an app that lets you drive from A to C, stopping at town B on the way to use a charging post that you have pre-booked.”
It might sound simple, but such an app would involve meshing satnav data with live information about charging post availability, but also a booking system, a payment system, a car ID system – all squeezed cheaply onto a smartphone. Heiron wants the UK’s to help local authorities set up live databases of available charging stations in their area.
Many more EV app ideas will emerge – BMW is investing $100 million in advanced car apps, for instance – but there is a potential downside: cellphones are trackable, so the units being built into our cars to communicate with apps on our phones will render our cars trackable, too. So that drivers don’t swap range anxiety for tracking angst, car-makers will have to secure any data they collect from car apps. Heiron insists that Renault only wants car-performance data and is not interested in whether you drive to places that you would rather keep private. Your partner might be, though.
Do the right thing – or we kill the car
Motorists won’t have the monopoly on in-car apps: a kill-switch app controlled by Renault will stop some misbehaving drivers in their tracks.
Most EV makers will be selling their cars for about £30,000. But to spur the nascent EV market, Renault will sell its Fluence car for £20,000 while leasing its lithium-ion battery pack (priced at £10,000) to buyers. As Renault maintains ownership of the battery, it wants to track its condition to check that drivers are not overusing a fast charger – which takes a battery to 80 per cent charge in 20 minutes, but which can harm battery chemistry.
So an app on the Fluence’s built-in cellphone beams battery data to Renault. It will tell Renault if there is a problem with the battery that needs fixing. But if the lessee is abusing the battery, or stops paying the lease, the app is triggered to stop the battery charging at the next attempt. “We’re then in a stand-off position,” says Renault’s Andy Heiron. “You’ve got our battery, but you can no longer use it.”
