Improving Renewable Energy Source in Automotive Applications: Evaluation, Analysis, and Design

Introduction

The automobile is one of the most important vehicles in the world, and its invention has greatly affected people’s lives. Growing demand for automobiles has resulted in a large vehicle population. As of 2015, the total number of vehicles in use worldwide, including cars, trucks and buses, exceeded 1 billion. The number is expected to exceed 2 billion by 2030 (Gao, Hensley and Zielke 2014). The vigorous development of the automobile is providing an ever more convenient mode of transport that saves time, money and improves efficiency.

The automobile industry has become one of the pillar industries of the national economy, and accounts for a large proportion of the output value and sales revenue. As a comprehensive assembly industry, it produces in large quantities. In this way, huge numbers of jobs can be provided in order to help the government solve employment issues. Meanwhile, the technological development of the automotive industry has also been promoting the progress of human science and technology. For example, high-end technology developed for winning the Formula One competition has been successfully transferred to other modes of transportation such as passenger cars and high-speed railway. In addition, the development of the automotive industry has greatly improved the efficiency of human work by saving time. Therefore, the automobile industry provides the benefits from different perspectives and social and technological development is inseparable from the automotive industry.

However, the accelerated development of the global automotive industry has led to a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental pollution is increasing, accompanied by calls for more environmental protection. At the same time, the shortage of international energy supplies has led to the continuing rise of international crude oil prices. Energy saving and environmental protection are the pressing issues dominating the automobile industry around the world. Different countries have gradually paid attention to the field of new energy vehicles in their R & D and industrialization. As the world’s largest developing country and also one of the most important countries regarding energy production and consumption, China’s rapid economic development has led to increasing demand for energy and dependence on oil imports. Transportation energy consumption is gradually increasing. With the rapid growth of car ownership, this proportion will continue to rise. So in the long run, national energy security issues will be more serious. Energy consumption has brought serious environmental problems. In recent years, air pollution has become a serious problem. An increasing number of people are beginning to realize the impacts of air pollution and the automobile as the primary cause of air pollution in large cities. Therefore, energy security and environmental pollution have become the bottleneck restricting the sustainable development of one country’s economy. Under such pressure, the government attaches great importance to renewable energy in the automotive industry and gradually introduced a variety of programs and policies to encourage and promote the development of a new energy automotive industry, and its market penetration.

The promotion of renewable energy vehicles is designed to reduce environmental pollution and energy shortages. Investment in renewable energy sources in automotive applications can avoid damage to the environment due to the use of renewable energy as a driving force to reduce pollutant emissions. However, a large external cost exists in investing in renewable energy. As for automobile manufacturers, the development of renewable energy technologies not only has technical risk and requires large-scale business restructuring, but also needs enormous investment. That is to say, the producers bear a greater cost, but the benefits (environmental protection and energy conservation) can be shared by the whole of society. So this system imbalance means that manufacturers will not take the initiative to invest. In the initial stage, the market environment and mechanism is imperfect and the government needs to regulate resources and implement policies to guide the development of renewable energy use in the automobile industry.