Hydrogen Cell Cars and Electric Cars

By Hammad Majeed, NTNU [writer], Usman (NTNU), Lizhen (NTNU), Shahla Gondal, NTNU, Naveed Asif, NTNU, and Idan Liebes
at NorRen summer school 2014

Energy plays a key role in world economy. International energy agency (IEA, 2010a) believes that, if the policies and plans by various governments with respect to energy usage will be implemented than the world primary energy demands will increase by 36% in between 2010 and 2035.

Transportation plays a vital role in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, as 33 % of the energy demands come from this sector (Eurostat, 2011).  In order to reduce CO2 emissions and to meet the challenge a strategy for energy efficiency plus renewable energy along with CCS should be implemented. Hydrogen and electric vehicles are one of the key points towards clean environment and to accomplish energy demands.

Social Aspects of Hydrogen Cell vs Electric Cars

This blog doesn’t deals with technical evaluation of these cars instead it depicts people thinking about these technologies. An online survey with in Norway was done along with person to person interaction in Asker city center (Norway) in order to extract information on realistic basis to understand what are the future potential of these technologies, how people will adopt it in to their daily lives, how much they want to spend on these types of cars, whether they have knowhow about these technologies are not.

Total of 86 people were asked about their opinions in the form of questionnaire. The results are explained in graphical method as;

Figure 1: People profile on the basis of gender and age and No. of cars they own

Figure 2: How much they want to spend per month in terms of fueling/tax

Figure 3: Daily usage in terms of kilometers

Figure 4: Maximum one sitting travel in last year

Figure 5: Public awareness about technology

Figure 6: Market projection about vehicles

Conclusions

The main theme of this work was to extract statistics whether people have information about these technologies and if governmental incentives are provided to manufactures and to end users whether they will invest a huge amount of money for their new cars as these technologies are expensive, to help in building green environment.

It is evident form these graphical explanations that that public perspective about these clean environment technologies are very constructive. About 58 % of the people have daily mileage of around 20-50 Km, so there is a huge potential for these clean cars. People are very much aware about both technologies and market projection depicts that around 50 % of people can invest in 100,000-250,000 Kr for their new car. This will provide the road to fulfill energy loads of current era with transition to a cleaner, domestic and more secure energy future.

IEA, International Energy Agency, 2010a. “World energy outlook”, Executive summary

http://www. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu , stats from “May 2011”