With the issues of global warming raising more and more alerts, the focus is shifting towards how polluting and damaging our normal cars running on gas are. This gives rise to a new normal – the electric cars. The market is seeing more and more brands taking the electrical plunge.
An electric car is not just a car that runs on electricity instead of normal gasoline. So if you felt that if you buy an electric car, you would go to a charging station instead of a gas pump to refuel it and that would be about it; you wouldn’t be wrong, but you wouldn’t be covering all the facts either. There’s a lot more to electric cars than that.
Electric cars run on electric energy that is stored inside batteries and used to propel electric batteries with a lot and lot of wiring inside. And the best thing is that the cost incurred per mile for an electric car is considerably less than a car running on gas!
A normal car could be running at 10-15% efficiency while an electric car could offer a mind-blowing 60% fuel efficiency. Normal cars lose a lot of heat whenever the cars break but that doesn’t happen with electric cars as they play on regenerative breaking where the heat generated in breaking gets utilized to generate electricity as well, to be stored for use later.
Electric cars should not be confused with hybrid cars, as they are not always the same. Some electric cars could be hybrid cars but not all hybrid cars are electric cars. Hybrid cars are those cars that are able to run on more than one fuel. For example, the Toyota Prius works on gas while also on an electric motor in a way that none of the fuel singularly carries too much load and there is a fine balance.
Maintenance-wise electric cars score lower than normal cars. Due to the simplicity of the electric cars, there is no oil and fluid to regularly change, balance to check or small moving parts to replace. This also makes it a lot less noisy and smoother. As technology develops, batteries for the electric cars are being developed to be more user-friendly, ensuring they get charged faster and last longer. More and more refuelling stations are opening up. However, the single biggest maintenance expense one could incur on an electric car would be battery replacement which is inevitable and has to be done, once the battery runs out its lifetime.
Currently, roughly 25 different models of high class electric passenger cars and utility vans are under production across the world. Nissan Leaf is one the highest selling and most popular electric cars. With electric cars it’s important to stay a little extra cautious around water though. Electric cars also need to be monitored for the heating, as excessive heating could cause thermal runaway, cell rupture and may be even catching fire. However, technology develops and tries to plug in more and more loopholes, we have electric cars even coming up for road racing.
For an environmentally responsible customer with not a very excessive long distance driving usage, electric cars are a great option. The important thing is they should be located in a way that they have access to cheap and easy electricity long enough to get the car charged. One should also consider all possible costs involved to calculate a total cost of ownership. And the nitty-gritty of course, it’s not just the fuel that is different here after all.
Image Courtesy: Steve Jurvetson
This entry was posted in: Electric Cars
Tagged: electric car, electric car guide, hybrid cars
