E-Mobility – The Future Will Be Here

The long history of E-Mobility

The year is 1900 and not only the Eiffel Tower is attracting attention at the Paris World Exhibition, but also an all-wheel-drive electric car from Ferdinand Porsche.

Wait, let's go back for a moment.

Yes, you read correctly, the first Porsche, the so-called ‘Lohner Porsche’, was electrically powered. The 410-kilogram lead battery managed around 50 kilometres at a top speed of 50 km/h. Quite impressive by the standards of its time. We sometimes forget it, yet the origins of the electric car go back further than the invention of the combustion engine. Fifty years before Bertha Benz's legendary ‘long-distance journey’ in the Benz Patent Motor Car, successful experiments with electric drives for vehicles had already been carried out in the 1830s and the first German electric car was the Flocken Elektrowagen in 1888.

By the beginning of the 20th century, electrically powered cars far outnumbered fuel-powered cars. However, it was not until around 1910 that the internal combustion engine began to establish itself due to its greater range and the favourable fuel prices at the time.

Back to the future

So when electric cars started to – as you could say – really pick up speed again in the 1990s, because of the oil crisis and increased environmental awareness, it would actually have been better to call it the renaissance of electric mobility. It really took off in 2006 with the Tesla Roadster, the first series-produced electric car that was suitable for the motorway and had a range of 350 km. Tesla has been the gold standard for electric cars ever since, but others are catching up, especially in Europe and China. Even Apple has its sights set on the e-mobility market. So, will we be seeing the iCar anytime soon?

We are living in, dare I say it, electrifying times.

These days, electric cars have pretty much found their way into every market segment. You can get a versatile urban vehicle for a small budget, like the Hongguang Mini EV from Chinese manufacturer Wulin, limousines such as the Mercedes-Benz EQS, or station wagons like the BMW i5 Touring. Especially with the newer models, range is no longer a problem, with most of them managing 500 km or more. For those who prefer a sportier option, the Porsche Taycan Turbo S, for example, is a good choice. The list of Tesla hunters is prominently filled. The Volkswagen Group aims to introduce around 70 new electric models over the next few years, Mercedes-Benz plans on converting its entire fleet to electric drive, and Honda, for example, aims to sell 100% electric cars by 2040.

Thus materials such as aluminium and carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CRFP) will become more popular for car bodies, and the proportion of electrified components in a car will increase. There will also be an increase in intelligent driving and even driverless cars, as is already the case in several cities in China.

So, what does the future have in store?

So far, so good. The rise of the electric car is inevitable, and the climate will thank us for it. In a study, the German Mechanical and Plant Engineering Association (VDMA) found that by 2030, 56 percent of all cars will have hybrid drives, and 22 percent will be fully electric. However, it is likely to take much longer than 2030 to achieve the stated political goal of putting ten million electric cars on Germany's roads. We can assume that combustion and hybrid cars will remain the standard for the next two decades. Consequently, the demand for metal cutting will remain high and may even increase in the short term.

Hybrid engines in particular are very demanding for the metal industry because even more components need to be machined than in a pure combustion engine. The exact opposite applies however to the purely electric motor, where, depending on the model, only 16 parts need to be machined, and these are almost all made of aluminium. Metal cutting is mainly required for the stator housing here. The housing parts and the motor brackets are primarily produced by drilling and milling, usually with PCD tools.

All in all, this means that the potential for value creation in the metal-cutting sector will decrease. Nevertheless, electric motors also pose new challenges for the tool industry.

As fewer components need to be machined, the requirements for precision become even higher, with even the smallest inaccuracies having devastating consequences. Here, special tools and the highest level of machining quality are in very high demand. This is a double-edged sword: there is no question that the switch to e-mobility will require less metal cutting in the long term after an increase in demand in the short term, but there will also be new materials that need to be machined.

And, ultimately, we are looking to the future, and the future always brings opportunities and new possibilities. So perhaps, in the end, e-mobility will be the same for the metal cutting industry as it is for the automotive industry: a driving force for a better future.