Better Gas Mileage

Often people are surprised by the fact that the earliest powered vehicles were actually driven by electricity, not oil based fuels, and that the idea of electric vehicles today is anything but a new idea. In fact, it was back in the 1830s that a man named Robert Anderson created an electric carriage, whilst over in the Netherlands at the same time similar projects were also underway. These early electric vehicles managed to achieve speeds of just over 65 miles per hour, which would be considered fairly impressive even by today’s standards, but was far in excess of the achievements of the gas powered vehicles of that era.

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.

Often it is forgotten or ignored that there is another side to the use of electric vehicles to be kinder to the environment. It’s not all about the smoke and fumes that will be saved, but also the noise factor. Electric cars are almost silent, the only sound from within the sporty models being a vague impression of having a hairdryer in the boot. Noise pollution is a forgotten attribute of gas powered cars, but imagine a world of near silence. Some people have expressed concerns that with nippy little cars silently dashing about that children and the elderly may find it difficult to anticipate or seen these coming, and that road calming measures or extra noise making speaker need to be fitted.

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 new initiative called Project Better Place, and this is a focus on electric vehicles in such a grand way that it is the ultimate intention to rid Israel of its need and reliance on oil by completely abandoning the gas powered vehicles within just ten years. With half a million charging points, the country is well equipped to support electric vehicles, and with most electric cars able to achieve a 200 kilometre journey on a single charge, Israel is an ideal place to launch the scheme since this distance allows you to travel from any part of the country to any other location in Israel. The model being suggested is similar to the one used by mobile phone companies, with cars being given away free, and consumers paying for the re-charging costs through a number of alternative schemes - either by buying into a scheme that allows unlimited mileage over a certain period of time, or by using a pay-as-you-charge alternative.

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.

Many people are worried that, rather than saving fossil fuel from being burned, we are in danger of either using even more, or simply shifting emphasis and focus from the world outside our front doors to the distant and easily ignored world of the power plants. Electric cars still need to be re-charged, and this power needs to come from somewhere. With most of our electricity being generated from the burning of fossil fuels, there’s no long term advantage. This argument is not true however, and with power plants increasingly trying to source energy from renewable means, and with electric cars using the energy produced in a much more efficient way, the overall consumption of fossil fuel will be dramatically reduced.

Imagine a future where we can all drive around in almost virtual silence, with no fumes, no smoke, and even if we get stuck in traffic jams or sit stationery at lights, we don’t have to worry about burning fuel unnecessarily. Some people have expressed concern that in this seemingly idyllic future the power companies would fail because at night, when we all plugged in our cars to recharge, we’d overload the grid. In fact, at night this is when the grid is used far less, and estimates have been made that if we all switched to electric cars, the power grid would be able to work at almost half the capacity it does now. Perhaps we can envisage a future where we come home, plug our car into the fuel cells charged through the day by the solar panels on our roof, and sleep with a clean, and green, conscience.

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