I know that there are already electric charging stations being established in the U.S., but my question is, how practical is this going to be? Battery technology isn’t advanced enough to allow a big charge that is practical enough to get around. I mean, electric cars are more of a novelty item instead of a true answer to the alternative fuel question. It seems like a good idea right now, but I believe there is a more practical, more efficient and cost effective way of powering our nation’s cars.
Do you think bio-fuels are the answer? It is a fuel after all and can replace the already-conventional petroleum methods of fueling. We might then be able to graduate into hydrogen fuel down the line. I think this would be more practical and would penetrate the market a lot easier than electric. I think EV’s would seem like primitive technology in 40 years tops.
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You think electric cars come without a price in pollution? So if everybody had an electric car and we all get home at 5PM and we all plug the car in what do the powerplants do? Pour the coal or fuel to the generators to produce enough electricity for the sudden demand we all placed on the electric grid. Gee whiz….more pollution! The simple answer is to continue to make the internal combustion engine more clean and efficient. If an alternative fuel was available that produced the energy gasoline does at the price of gasoline we’d be swimming in the stuff but that fuel doesn’t exist…including bio fuels. Everyone keeps imagining these alternative energy sources but no one’s come up with a practical alternative to the good old gasoline engine. Once it happens it will be great…but we need to quit wasting money on stuff already shown to not work and discover that which does.
Hi there,
Good question, I think they will eventually dominate the market (in 100 years time) and slowly build up till then, recently the first EV luxury cars have started to enter the market and I really think this is the start of something. But consumers are typically late adopters to new technology so I think ti will take a while.
Don’t forget cars can also be run on other natural fuels such as fats, but eventually the demand for these fuels will be more than the availability.
So I do think EV is the future, don’t forget of course you can Convert 2 EV with most cars anyway! Check out http://www.naturalenergydirectory.com/convert-2-ev-review if your interested.
Thanks,
Sam
There will be a place for bio fuels on the market, however they continue to use an engine that is approximately 15% efficient at the wheels. Bio fuels cannot be produced without the same resources that could produce food stocks with the same kind of effort. Bio fuels may continue to require petrochemicals for fertilizer. Fresh water may eventually be too scarce a resource to for bio fuel production. And finally it is a natural phenomena that dictates that plants retain 10% of the solar energy they receive. Solar photovoltaic cells are now commercially available at over 24% efficiency and solar thermal can be 60 to 80% efficient.
A hydrogen vehicle at best uses fuel cell technology to drive an otherwise electric car. The production of fuel cells and hydrogen is presently not economical and not an efficient use of energy. Whatever source is used to produce hydrogen could drive a pure electric vehicle with twice the efficiency.
The electric car is not perfect. But it is far more efficient than the petrol engine.1 There is a separate issue of the efficiency and pollution of our electrical grid. This must be cleaned up in any event. As it is cleaned we will also benefit with electric vehicles. Our present battery technology is not sufficient to achieve our goals for vehicle range. We must switch to a different battery chemistry like lithium air or lithium/water or shift entirely to direct wireless energy transfer to the vehicle. This has already been achieved with electrified roadways (2) and it is also the cheapest course of action we could take.3
Cable T, you are an idiot. if people buy solar panels for their homes they wouldn’t need to be suckling on the teet of the electric company. also, new solar technologies are being developed for increased efficiency and gathering solar energy in space then transfering it down to earth in the form of some kind of wave that can be converted into electricity
It sure as heck aint going to be fossil fuels, not in the long term future.
Electricity is a more efficient way to package the energy produced by renewable sources, than bio fuels are. That is because the extraction method (internal combustion engine) is 40% efficient at it’s best, then a mechanical transmission (required with an IC engine) cuts another 10 to 25% out of that energy.
With batteries that can charge in 5 to 10 minutes, for a 100 mile range, from literally wherever you happen to be, road side, home, work, restaurant, store…What’s wrong with that?