Electric and autonomous vehicles will play a big role in future transport, according to the likes of Nissan. It's drivers that will be irrelevant.A Nissan Leaf electric vehicle providing electricity to power a model home. The Yokohama-based company says it is studying the idea with seven thousand households in Japan, as part of a project called Nissan Energy Homes.
That is just one of the ideas Nissan is mulling over as it, like other car makers, ponders what mobility will look like in the future. Car makers see EV adoption as a ready way to shift pollution out of cities, but Leonido Pulido III, the assistant secretary for the Department of Energy from the Philippines, cautions against a one-size-fits-all solution. Different cities within the region"have to retain their own styles", he says.
Yet, cities across the region are taking concrete steps towards electrification. The Philippines is establishing a single plug system to standardise EV charging there, and later this year Malaysia will become the first country in Southeast Asia to produce the lithium ion batteries that EVs need. Sydney has set a zero-emissions target for 2050.
Klaus Frolich, the BMW board member in charge of engineering, says the batteries could actually be quite valuable in old EVs, in contrast to normal cars, which are nearly worthless when scrapped. The technology in its current form is too expensive, he says."The sensors cost too much to be viably accepted by mass consumers", he explains. Instead, he expects fleet operators such as taxi and bus companies to adopt them first, as they can amortise the cost over a few years. That being so, Nissan is working on robo-taxis and driverless delivery vehicles.