Electric Cars today (Part 1)

An electric car is, merely, an automobile that is driven by electricity.  An electric powered car has an electric motor and a controller for energising that electric motor.  The electricity is stored in its normal rechargeable power packs, which are re-energized by electric power. That the electric automobile is many years old may sound amazing, but electric powered cars predate automobiles with a an internal combustion engine. At first, the electric car was the  favorite, but at the time a battery did not exist that would permit a car to proceed with very much speed or over a long distance.  Having said that the electric car today still confronts the very same, basic challenges.

Electric cars are once again started coming to the top of the marketing talk and this time the technological know-how is far better and batteries are improving.  Electric motor vehicle, I am sure, will eventually serve as a viable alternative to conventional combustion-powered automobiles in the near future.  Quite how close up that "near future" is still wide open for debate.

Although electric car technology has vastly improved around the last two decades there are still two key sticking points blocking the wider use of electric cars:

1.    Battery technology, especially the capacity and recharging routine.
2.    Cost of purchase.

This article is an effort to address the first of these issues in a simple, easily understood fashion.

Battery Technology

Batteries store electric energy in a chemical form, inside a closed-energy system.
They can be re-charged and re-used as a power source in equipment or in our case; to power vehicles.

The technology of battery power has moved on from Lead Acid to Lithium Ion with its built
in benefits of Flexibility and higher voltage. There is an added benefit which is that they can be produced in a wide variety of shapes and sizes such that construction is easier
into an irregular volume that might be found in a car. The final benefit is that
they have no memory and no planned cycling is necessary to prolong the battery's life.
Manufacturers are relentlessly boosting lithium-ion technology with new and superior chemical permutations. The disadvantages include the cost and availability of
Lithium and hence the batteries themselves, and also the life span of such batteries.

A new exciting development in battery technological innovation is the use of Carbon Nanotubes. These are sub microscopic structures. They are just billionths of a metre in diameter. Carbon Nanotubes resemble honeycombs. Scientists have been evaluating the attributes of these for some years and have found that Nanotube material can exhibit the property of a capacitor with extremely high energy density. Quite how long it will take for this to be converted into an available (and cheap) battery which can be utilised in an electric car is anybody's guess.

The second related question concerning batteries is just how do we recharge them?

Because of the short range - less than 100 miles with current technology - and lack of recharging facilities the use of electric cars is automatically restricted. I believe that electrics will serve a niche sector for local driving by a few individuals. It won't serve the needs for those with long travelling mileage or even local on-the-road workers.Whilst I might drive only 5 miles to work and back each day or 10 miles to the supermarket or the gym, visiting friends and family some distance away will be difficult. Moreover even if the expected range of my electric motor vehicle is 100 miles between recharges because of the lack of appropriate recharging points I would be hesitant to risk running out of energy before I could return home. As urbanization proceeds the electric car will be acceptable for city travel where distances are limited and where the range of an electronic car to be several times the day-to-day distance driven is achievable.

What is the solution? The technology to make an power car that could be recharged practically anywhere is undoubtedly here - it merely hasn't made it to the marketplace.  The proposition to create "charging stations" seems to have missed the point. We need to just plug it into your household outlet and leave it overnight.

An additional answer which might be feasible in the short term as a method is the battery that can be changed out at "electric filling stops" Pull in like we do at petrol gas stops and the station attendant easily swaps out your battery pack for a recharged one. This could be the solution for long distance road travel although not ideal.

One final point to be considered is that this electricity is not free - it must be produced somewhere and at some cost. We will need additional power generation and wind, solar or other sustainable methods will be needed. Many want nuclear but although this is a very safe form of energy, it suffers from a number of drawbacks - but that is another topic for another day.