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Batteries Included - The Future Of Green Silence

Written by Joyce M. Stuart

Saturday, 19 July 2008

The idea of electric cars has not been developed recently, and in fact successful electric vehicles were being developed and manufactured back in the 1830s, with projects in the Netherlands, and in Scotland, achieving great success, with vehicles reaching speeds of up to 65 miles per hour. Mostly popular with ladies, the typical town vehicle was clean, quiet, needed no cranking to get started, and cruised at a comfortable 20 miles an hour. The gas powered cars were being outsold quite dramatically.

Perceptions of electric vehicles today tend to lurch from rickety old golf carts to the slightly absurd milk flats, but the truth is that electric cars today can easily out perform their gas powered counterparts. Not only can they outperform them, but they can do so at a fraction of the cost to both the consumer, and more importantly, the environment. For example, the new Tesla Roadster can leave the Ferrari Spider standing at the lights whilst gliding effortlessly past the Mercedes SL550, whilst costing about a cent per mile in the process. With a top speed of about 130 miles per hour and with a three hour charge sustaining a full 250 mile trip, this is anything but a milk float.

It isn't just the fact that these electric vehicles produce lower gas emissions, they also produce far less noise pollution too - an often forgotten element of our gas powered vehicles. Some people who have lid comfortably into the driving seat of a sport electric car are shocked by the lack of noise, vibration and raw growl - and it has jokingly been suggested that speakers be installed in some of these models to simulate the growl of a familiar engine. On the flip side of the coin, some people have expressed concern that with almost silent cars nipping around town, there may be an increase in the number of children and elderly people injured on the roads, since the familiar clues of oncoming traffic will no longer be available.

Besides the greener conscience that road users will have through purchasing an electric vehicle, there are many other benefits and incentives on offer which help to make the whole idea of ditching a gas powered car a much easier decision. For example, if you were to purchase the popular little G-Wiz at under 5,000, you will receive a number of benefits in the UK alone. There are now over two hundred fuelling stations across the UK - so maintaining it is much easier than before, and if you drive round London you'll benefit from free parking, itself worth 5,00 a year! There's also no road tax to pay, and the car sits happily in the lowest insurance category, so is a far cheaper option all round.

On a much larger scale, one country has taken the gigantic step forward and proposed a strategy to entirely eliminate their need for oil to support their road traffic within ten years. Israel has recently unveiled its Project Better Place which is a long term plan to replace oil based gas guzzling vehicles with electric ones, with an estimated completion date of within ten years. The country already has half a million stations which support the re-charging of electric vehicles, and with the average distance capable of being travelled between charges more than ample to enable a vehicle to travel between any two points within the country without the need to stop, it is both an ambitious project but one which looks as though it could very well set a high standard for the rest of the world. The plans include introducing electric vehicle distribution in a similar way to mobile phones, with companies giving the cars away free whilst users simply pay for the cost to use or charge the car, doing so either on contract with unlimited usage, or on a pay-as-you-drive basis.

As with any major change to long established consumer habits, there has to be enough demand to make the whole idea of replacing gas powered vehicles with electric ones, otherwise the finance is simply not going to be sufficient to enable change on any real scale. Most people are now aware that milk floats are not the be all and end all to such vehicles, and with films such as Minority Report showing Tom cruise tearing up the road in a sporty little electric Lexus, many people are starting to see that there are multiple advantages to the idea of switching over, and that there is no need whatever to sacrifice style for efficiency or even for the environment.

Many people have raised concerns regarding the apparent green option which electric vehicles represent, citing the fact that they still need to be charged, and that this electricity comes from power companies burning fossil fuels. This is not entirely true, as there are an increasing number of companies and facilities generating green energy, either partly or in full. However, even if the power does come from burning fossil fuels, there is still an advantage, since it's all about the conversion ratio of fuel to energy. Burning fossil fuel in a car is highly inefficient, whereas using fossil fuel to generate electricity which is used for electric vehicles is a far more efficient use of that energy, and therefore will result in far less fossil fuel being required.

Imagine a future where we can all drive around in almost virtual silence, with no fumes, no smoke, and even if we get stuck in traffic jams or sit stationery at lights, we don't have to worry about burning fuel unnecessarily. Some people have expressed concern that in this seemingly idyllic future the power companies would fail because at night, when we all plugged in our cars to recharge, we'd overload the grid. In fact, at night this is when the grid is used far less, and estimates have been made that if we all switched to electric cars, the power grid would be able to work at almost half the capacity it does now. Perhaps we can envisage a future where we come home, plug our car into the fuel cells charged through the day by the solar panels on our roof, and sleep with a clean, and green, conscience.

The Article Author:

With modern technology on every corner, more of us are searching for the colour green. From electric cars to hybrid cars our planet now has a conscience. The environment is in everybodies thoughts, the rainforests, wildlife and nature..green is the colour.

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