There have been many electric vehicles produced in the last few years, that have tried but failed to address the transportation needs of the ordinary man. They have certainly addressed the needs of niche markets, or served well as a secondary vehicle in urban environments, but they have so far failed to provide the flexibility, performance and convenience of the internal combustion engine.
The car as it is today can perform a multitude of tasks, irrespective of it’s size or performance. Certainly, some vehicles are more suited to some tasks than others, but there are few situations that any household’s car can’t somehow make do. You would certainly be more comfortable on the motorway in a large saloon, or find it easier to get around town in a supermini, but neither situation prevents the use of either car.
Electric cars, on the other-hand, are limited by performance, range and size, not to mention the time restrictions on recharging the vehicle. You might not be very comfortable driving from London to Glasgow in a Smart, but it would manage it. Try the same in a G-Wiz, and you’d be lucky to get to the M25, but does the G-Wiz offer anything in town that the Smart doesn’t?
We have got used to the internal combustion engine. We have got used to it’s performance, it’s range and the ability to “recharge” it in a matter of a couple of minutes at a petrol pump. Until electric vehicles can get close to matching these criteria, they will always be derided, by petrol heads, as poor alternatives for the green brigade.
Even if, as shown by the Tesla and the like, we can get performance similar to current ICE vehicles, the range simply isn’t there; and an 8hour charge time makes any significant journey impossible.
To get around these limitations, what is needed is standardisation. Standardisation between the vehicle manufacturers and the fuel companies. Standardisation of the power-cell form-factor. If all electric vehicles were to share the same power cell configuration, then it could solve a number of failings of the electric vehicle. Primarily, one of recharging. Rather than spending hours, or even 1/2 an hour waiting for your car to recharge, you could stop at your local “petrol” station, and have your cell swapped out for a fully charged one.
This also goes part way to addressing the issue of range. If you can only go 100 miles on a charge, it’s still a long way from that offered by an ICE powered car, but at least you know you’ll be able to get a fully charged cell along the way. Furthermore, by ensuring cells meet a standard shape and size, it would be conceivable that improved power cell technologies could be providede to existing vehciles by upgrading the cell; something you can’t easily do with current electric vehicles. Firsteps in the swapping arena can be seen with this batter swapping system from “Better Place” who have demonstrated a machine to swap power cells out in around a minute.
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/05/14/better_place/
Capstone Turbine are débuting their CMT-380 hybrid car at the Los Angeles Auto Show this week. It uses their 30 Kw C30 Microturbine as a generator to recharge Lithium ioin batteries when they run out of power, and houses the whole lot in the not-unattractive GTM Supercar from FactoryFive, which is normally sold as a kit. The combination of electric motor, batteries and turbine gives the car a total range of 500 miles (between battery and bio-diesel), and some pretty respectable performance figures to boot: 0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds, 150 mph top speed not to mention the incredibly low emissions.
