The Future of Cars?

What if the world was to run out of oil, or we were cut off from overseas supply? What if an alternative fuel was created out of corn? What other options do we have to power cars? Well these are some question car makers are thinking about when designing alternative powered vehicles today. The most common is a hybrid, we are all familiar with the most popular one, the Toyota Prius. A hybrid is a combination of two things. So the Prius has both a gasoline powered engine and an electric motor. The gasoline engine serves as a back up when the charge runs low in the battery. The charge can be restored by plugging the car into an electrical outlet and when the driver applies the brakes.

 

There are other hybrids today too, like the Chevrolet Volt, Ford Fusion Hybrid, and even a Cadillac Escalade Hybrid, just to name a few. What if the car where to be completely powered by an electric battery rather than half and half? Well, there are a good amount of choices today...

 

Some of these cars are getting very popular today. Despite some issues with Fisker Karmas malfunctioning (and there is nothing wrong with a Tesla despite the recent fire http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-model-s-fire/), these cars are good. The only real problem with owning any of the above vehicles is that they are 100% electric. I say that is a problem because their charge only lasts a limited amount of miles and will need to be recharged. Thus, we run into a problem, there is not an electric charging station every few miles like there are petrol stations and the recharging time is more than a half hour to a few hours. So, even if there were charging stations every few miles, anyone would expect to fill up and leave within a ten minuet time period. This is not enough juice for the battery to get you any farther than if you hadn’t stopped in the first place. To get around this problem, one would need to plan their route accordingly so that whatever destination they reached they could plug the car in or still have enough charge to get home for an overnight recharge. This solution is not unrealistic; however there might be situations where the owner would need to strategically figure out if he/she can go to and from the grocery store in addition to regular commuting. Although, statistics show that owners of an electric car already own another car that is used as the daily commuter car which means the electric car is not used every day.   

As long as one can afford to purchase and maintain an electric car it is a good investment. After purchasing the vehicle it would be a good investment to buy an at home charging station and I discovered that a replacement battery would need to be purchased after about 40,000 miles of usage. The only pollution they produce comes from the factories that build the cars, batteries, and where ever you receive your source of electricity. The vehicle produces zero emissions, thus creating pollution elsewhere rather then on the street. Is that good or bad? Shouldn’t the factories be powered by the sun or wind? That would be the ultimate dream of an environmentally friendly commuter. And hopefully the goal of automotive companies wishing to be emission free.