Why Electric?

Electric vehicles are a logical choice for transportation needs. Of course, it is just my humble, unscientific opinion, but there are facts that support that statement. Efficiency, distribution, and availability are all in favor of electric vehicles.

We have used the internal combustion engine (ICE) for over 100 years. Oil was nearly worthless when Henry Ford selected the ICE for his automobile, but due to his success, oil is now a hot commodity. The problem is, that the ICE is extremely inefficient at utilizing the energy from gasoline to propel you down the road. The best modern engines use only about 20% of the energy from gasoline to move the vehicle. Most of the rest of the fuel energy is turned into heat.

When you read some of the conversion blogs, you will be surprised at how much of your car is purposed to deal with the waste heat energy from burning gasoline. At $4 per gallon, and 60 miles per hour in a car that gets 20 miles per gallon, you will spend $12 to run for one hour. Only $2.40 will be used to propel your vehicle for that hour, the other $9.60 is used to heat your surroundings. Does that make you angry? It sure makes me mad. I would not normally take a $10 out every hour and light it on fire.

Electric vehicles are about 80% efficient at turning the electrical energy into drive force for the car. Depending on the method for electrical generation, the overall efficiency is at least 2X that of an ICE. These figures vary wildly throughout the Internet. Some say EVs are 90% overall efficient, some say that they are only 28%. I believe that it is somewhere in between and that it varies with the efficiency of the electricity production method.

So, it goes without saying that the ICE should be sunsetting soon. The other alternatives are not as readily available as electricity. Hydrogen vehicles are a great alternative, but there is no distribution network. Both Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles and Electric Vehicles use electricity, but instead of batteries, the Hydrogen vehicles use fuel cells to generate electricity on board.

Hybrids are stepping stones to full electric vehicles. First generation hybrid vehicles used electric motors to augment an ICE drive-train. Then ICEs were used to charge batteries and the electric motor is the drive motor. Next generation hybrids called Plug-in Electric Vehicles due soon from Toyota will have a larger battery footprint and can be plugged in to charge the batteries. Claims for these hybrids are that they can travel up to 40 miles on electric power alone.

Electric vehicles are not only our future, they are our past. They were created around 1832 and in the early 1900s, electric vehicles outsold gasoline powered cars and even held many land speed and distance records.

So, we need to catch up on about 100 years of advancement in energy storage and motor technology to make electric vehicles the only thing our children remember.