As electric vehicles are becoming more popular and people all around the world are trying to find answers to numerous questions they have about electric vehicles. Some are of the opinion that even when you use an electric vehicle, you are polluting the environment because the electricity needed to recharge the vehicle’s battery comes from a power station where a polluting fuel is burnt to produce electricity.
For the sake of argument, it is true that electric vehicles too contribute to pollution but compared to vehicles which use petroleum products, pollution by electric vehicles is negligible. Electric vehicles, like the Tesla Roadster, use only a tenth of the energy used by petrol driven vehicles.
It is also very interesting to learn how electric vehicles function on less energy. Most electric vehicles have a system called regenerative breaking system built into them which charges the vehicles’ battery whenever the driver applies break or when the vehicles slows down. Unlike traditional vehicles, there are very few rotating parts in electric vehicles and this feature, in turn, reduces friction.
Less friction means less energy use. A considerable amount of the energy produced by ordinary vehicles in their engine is wasted in the form of heat. An electric vehicle, on the other hand, doesn’t burn fuel and there is no heat produced and wasted.
The good news for electric vehicle enthusiasts is that they now don’t have to depend solely on electricity supplied by the power plants to charge their vehicle batteries. The batteries can now be recharged with electricity produced by solar panels. In the very near future, electric vehicles will be running on energy provided by the sun free of cost.
Some people have the misconception that electric vehicles are slower than their counterparts. But if you compare both the versions of vehicles, you will find that electric vehicles are not behind petroleum driven vehicles in terms of speed. Tesla Roadster is a very good example to prove this point. Of course, there are slow moving and fast running vehicles in both the categories.
An electric vehicle can gain great speed right from the moment its motor is switched on. This is an added plus point for an electric vehicle. If there is anything which people don’t like about an electric vehicle, it is its cost.
Another believe among the masses is that electric vehicles are costlier than ordinary ones. Here again, there are electric vehicles which are cheaper than other vehicles which burn diesel/petrol.
The cost depends on the vehicle’s features. Let us now look at the cost of driving an electric vehicle. Since an electric vehicle runs on electricity stored in its battery, it has no running cost. Electric car owners are allowed to recharge their car batteries free of cost at many public places and parking areas.
Even if you are charging your batteries at your home, the cost of driving your electric car will be just one tenth of what it would cost you to drive a petrol powered car.
New batteries which are capable of storing more electricity are under development and once they hit the market, the cost of driving an electric car will become still lower. The initial high cost of an electric car will be compensated for in the long run by the cheap fuel it uses to run. If your battery has sufficient electricity, you can even sell it back to the power grid.
The distance some electric cars can run between every recharge of their battery is around 200 miles. Some cars have inbuilt generators to recharge their batteries. New models of battery which are being researched and developed are expected to increase the mileage of the electric cars by two or three fold. From whatever angle you look at electric cars, you will realize that they are worth owning.
The cost of petroleum products will be beyond the reach of most ordinary citizens very soon and the highways will be occupied mostly by electric cars in the near future.