Batteries Included - A Future Of Green Silence

by: JoyceM.Stuart
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To the surprise of many people, the concept of vehicles powered by electricity is not a new one. Although there has been much widespread publicity in recent years about the new age of greener and more environmentally friendly vehicles powered by electricity rather than gas, the first successful electric vehicles were actually being developed nearly two hundred years ago, back in the 1830s. Robert Anderson in Scotland created a successful electric carriage capable of speeds up to 65 miles per hour, and by the 1900s electric cars were more popular than gas powered ones, and were certainly quieter, cleaner and easier to start.

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 is easy to assume that the single most important advantage from using electric powered vehicles is the reduction of pollution to the environment through the burning of fossil fuels, but another advantage is the reduction of noise pollution, all too often forgotten. Our urban life reverberates to the hum and growl of hundreds of gas powered vehicles, and we have come to accept this. However, electric cars have the capability of eliminating almost all of the noise associated with cars, and this can only be an advantage. Some people have speculated that silent, or virtually silent vehicles may prove hazardous to those who may not be as aware of oncoming traffic when crossing roads, such as children or the elderly.

It isn't only the fact that those who buy and use electric powered vehicles can sleep easy at night knowing that they are doing their bit for the environment. To really be appealing to the average consumer it has to make financial sense as well as environmental sense, and in this regard electric vehicles can score very highly. For example, for a mere fraction of the cost of the average car you can purchase a G-Wiz, which sits snugly in the lowest bracket for road insurance, and is also exempt from road tax. With two hundred recharging stations across the UK, keeping it running is easy, and if you live in London there's a huge advantage because you are allowed to park for free, as well as being exempt from the congestion charges. This alone can represent a saving of over 5,000 per year, which is more than the cost of the car!

On a larger scale, Israel has launched a scheme called Project Better Place and it is the intention of this scheme to make Israel completely oil free within just ten years. With half a million re-charging points across the country, and with top distances for vehicles between charges reaching two hundred kilometres - easily enough to travel from any point of Israel to any other within the country, this is a practical reality. The model being put forward is not unlike that for mobile phones, with the suggestion that the vehicles are given away free, and that instead of paying for fuel and tax in the normal way, drivers can choose various plans, such as pay-as-you-go options for recharging costs, to buying credit for unlimited mileage for a certain period of time, and so on.

With electric cars being such a strikingly different choice, one of the biggest problems in the past has been consumer demand. Without the demand, there can be no real investment in supply, and the whole project stagnates. However, with examples of electric cars such as Tom Cruise's Lexus in Minority report, people are increasingly aware that moving to an electric vehicle is not to sacrifice either style or performance. In the US alone there are now almost eight million plug-in electric vehicles - most of which are recreational, and the demand from consumers is increasingly catching the attention of politicians.

An issue that those sceptics raise concerning electric vehicles is that although eh car itself might not be giving off fumes and harming the environment by burning up fossil fuels, the energy for the batteries has to come from somewhere, and this is likely to be through the main electricity grid, itself powered through the burning of fossil fuels, so that ultimately the whole scheme simply shifts the focus away from the end consumer and back to the big industries. In fact this argument is not entirely valid, since more and more power companies are turning to renewable sources of energy, and this is likely to continue. The other argument is that of the fuel consumption ratio. Gas powered cars burn the fossil fuel in a very wasteful way, whereas electric cars use energy in a much more efficient manner. In this way, the actual amount of energy used, and therefore the amount of fossil fuel burned, is far less.

Picture a future that is smoke free, with no stinky gasses being belched from the back of cars driving past your street, and with no concerns regarding the waste of fuel whilst you sit idly at traffic lights or in a road jam. Although concerns have been raised that if we all arrived home at tea time and plugged our cars in we'd overload the grid, that has been demonstrated to be untrue, since at night the grid is very underused, and if we all turned to electric vehicles, the amount of energy used would be far less overall. Perhaps we can even foresee a time when the solar panels on our roof allow us to store energy through the day to re-charge our batteries at night.

About the Author

With modern technology on every corner, more people are turning onto the colour green. From electric cars to hybrid cars the world now has a conscience. The our lifestyle is in everybodies thoughts, the rainforests, wildlife and nature..green is the colour.  

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