Electric Vehicles - The Next Big Thing (in 1998...)

Looking through some old files (yes, I still have a few – very few – bits of paper on file) this old newspaper clipping from 1998 reminded me of just how long I’ve been working with BEVs – over 21 years!

Those who know even a little about EVs know that they are anything but new – they represented a third of the market for the early years on the automobile, from 1888 to about 1910 (the other two-thirds being steam and gasoline/petrol..). Between 1910 and 2010 there were various EV projects…with the 1996 GM EV1 being the first very serious attempt of the modern era to launch a commercially viable passenger-car EV.

The Nissan Altra EV that features in the attached clipping is an interesting historical footnote from a couple of years later. Nissan – and this was still the pre-Alliance Nissan, remember – were already looking seriously at pure battery-powered EVs and built a few of these now-forgotten vehicles, based on a Japanese domestic-market only minivan called the R’nessa. It already had compact, permanent-magnet motors, reasonably sophisticated inverters and Lithium-Ion batteries, developed in collaboration with Sony. In short, it had a half-tonne of modified camcorder batteries slung underneath in a remarkable precursor to today’s sophisticated battery packs. By today’s standards it was laughably basic, with its clonky charging ‘spade’ in the nose of the vehicle, strange noises coming from everywhere and shonky plastics everywhere, but in 1998 it was still amazingly far-sighted, technically speaking…

So, how did I get involved in this project? I was a young engineer at Nissan’s Technical Centre in the UK, a lowly team leader in charge of the Electrical and Electronics Test team, when my bosses’ boss at the time – a certain Andy Palmer, now CEO of Aston-Martin – walked by my desk to say “Dave, you’re an electrical engineer. We have an electric car on its way from Japan. Do me a favour and demonstrate it to a few journalists, would you?”. Andy liked to spring surprises like that on his team – and he probably still does! I got on the ‘phone and on a thing called a “fax” (if you were born after 1980, Google it…) to get all possible technical information on the Altra EV that was winging its way from Japan to carry out a quick publicity tour of Europe. Cue a few interesting days co-piloting various bemused journalists – including Simon Arron of the “Daily Telegraph” (a very respectable British daily newspaper), who penned the attached piece. I got to accompany the car to The Netherlands, where we demonstrated the car running on ‘clean’ electricity generated by offshore wind turbines. I also got to do my first-ever TV interview for some long-forgotten cable TV channel, and experienced for the first time the strange difficulty of sounding natural while staring down the cold black cyclops eye of a video camera. I even got to baby-sit the car while it was filmed for an episode of BBC’s Top Gear, where the then ‘TG’ team predictably made fun of it in a typically British good-humoured but pointed way.

It’s a long time ago, but I still remember the journalists’ amazement at that now-familiar first EV-powertrain contact – “it’s so quiet!” and “wow – this thing accelerates!”. Of course the range was very poor, refinement was – well, there wasn’t any – and both ride and handling were seriously compromised by just bolting a very heavy battery pack into a vehicle designed to run on gasoline, then stiffening up the springs to keep the whole lot off the deck. But it was still pretty amazing – remember, this was 1998. Elon Musk had yet to create PayPal, never mind started to think about one day building an EV. Very few journalists had driven a GM EV1. EVs were golf carts and milk floats. This was really science-fiction.

And little did I dream that 10 years later, I would have the great good luck to lead the teams working on the first-generation Renault ZOE, and that 20 years later I would have the even greater luck to lead the BYTON team taking EVs into a new era of mobility.

OK, stopping there, as I am making myself feel old…