Previous Poll Results
Would you swap your fossil fuel powered family car for an all-electric alternative?
You answered:
Without hesitation
11.1%
Definitely not
13.6%
When range and infrastructure issues have been addressed
75.2%
Would you swap your fossil fuel powered family car for an all-electric alternative?
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Economic factors and range are the biggest issues. A decent small diesel well constructed should have a life 200,000 miles. Well tried and trusted technology. Over its lifetime the environmental damage of a diesel may well be less than an all electric equivalent as batteries are not required and the charging efficiency is eliminated.
internal combustion engine is unreplaceable,especially diesel,it’s highly reliable,can be overhaul after 200k miles and use as if new again,; 100% electric car need expensive,hard to find rare earth metals,with limited range and any breakdown along the road is really a big problem
The amount of green house gasses created to make the batteries we have now make a hummer look good over the life of the vehicle. They will have to do a lot of work to change that. The processing of the rare earth metals and mining is very unfriendly as is the problem with recycling the old batteries. At this time the most of the processing is being done in china or 3rd world countries where there are no rules. Any greenies out there that think this is a viable alternative for a cleaner world don’t know all the facts.
In addition to previous comments, don’t overlook the ‘refuelling on the road’ problem. Batteries can’t touch fuel pumps for speed and efficiency of refuelling. Moreover, new liquid fuels such as ethanol can also use existing distribution methods.
Lord Robens (then Chairman of the NCB) once said that electricity is only ‘Coal by wire’, and unless we find new, large, _and cost-effective_ sources of energy for electricity generation, this statement is just as true today. (Ask yourself why small-scale generation has had to be subsidised by an artificial Feed-In Tariff? – Because without it, it is simply uneconomic.
Everyone is missing the point. This has nothing to do with being green or greenhouse gasses but everything to do with the availabilty and affordablity of liquid fuel in the next 20 years. I think, if you aren’t aware of projected demand and supply, you might want to look into where the fuel is going to come from if OPEC don’t / can’t increase supply to meet a 40% increase in demand.
Electric cars are far more reliable than ICE cars so as soon as the range is 300 miles those that car afford them will buy. The rest will have cars sitting on the drive waiting for fuel to get cheaper.
We will need alternatives to liquid fuels a lot sooner than most people and the government care to admit.
Pure electric vehicles, as opposed to hybrids and extended-range electric vehicles, will only be a viable option for the majority of people when suitable rapid-charge batteries are available.
Once a battery can be recharged in the same time it takes to fill a fuel tank, and give a similar range, then and only then will pure-electric vehicles be worth considering.
The infrastructure for re-fuelling electric vehicle already exists – petrol stations. All that each of these garages needs are ‘pumps’ for electricity to complement the existing fossil fuel pumps.
Littering cities with electric charging points for the current crop of electric city cars will prove to be another expensive example of politicians misguided attempts to appease the eco extremists.
Anonymous | 5 Nov 2010 2:44 pm, wrote “Electric cars are far more reliable than ICE cars so as soon as the range is 300 miles those that can afford them will buy. The rest will have cars sitting on the drive waiting for fuel to get cheaper. ”
Well, fuel will get cheaper in that scenario as there is less demand. Result!
Quite a few years ago I heard of research into storing electricity in a super conductor coil. Having been out of the industry for some twenty years I am very much out of date. But it was suggested that power stored in a super coil could drive a car for several hundred miles. Has any more research been done on this?
Pay £25k for your electric car now and in 6 years you need to replace the batteries at a cost of £10k.
That means the secondhand value of the vehicle car is zero.
That is pretty poor depriciation. Who in their right mind makes that kind of investment in what is dubiously clean technology.
I think you people are all missing an important point. Transferring energy production from millions of independent generators (cars) to a centralized facility (the power company which usually burns fossil fuel) will do NOTHING to improve dependence on fossil fuels.
eco extremist ah,yes and that we should all be,considering the dwindling resources and destructive nature of business as usual. hub generators extend range indefinitly further eliminating the need to recharge.
From the articles and info available on Electric Cars and your comments its clear that a swap to electric will result in a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions for transport, based on at 60% efficiency of a gas fuel power station, losses in transmission and car efficiency. This is compared to the quoted 18 to 30% efficiency of your typical ICE car. As for battery cost a typical car owner spends in excess of £1500 per annum in fuel costs, multiplied by 6 years = £9000 not including increases, or just about the same cost of those new batteries.
So if your electric car costs 15p to fill up against the £65 my ICE car did today the economics make sense.
As for batteries my first cordless drill took 3 hours to charge and lasted 30 minutes, my new Li-Ion takes 30 mins to charge with a far higher mAHr rating. Put this progress with advances in motor technology and its a no brainer! Electric cars are a necessity not just a nicety.
I cannot believe people still use their perceived range limitation as a reason for not having an electric car. 80% of journeys made by 80% of the population are within the range of existing e-vehicle technology. As such they wouldn’t even have to re-charge every night.
Also the last time I checked, nuclear power stations don’t directly burn fossil fuel to generate electricity. Pity it’s taken 20 years to decide on building some more.