Electric Car Conversions – Basic Arguments
Now that the price of oil is unreasonably high, people are starting to really look into alternative fuels, myself included. Alternative methods of electricity generation such as wind, solar, tidal and wave energy are all well and good and can do a great job generating electricity for fixed resources. But what about a good mobile source of power? Something that would be able to replace gasoline or diesel fuel in cars and trucks? What kind of fuel would be good for that? Bio Diesel, ethanol, natural gas, propane or other organic fuels? All of these have to be burned to release their energy, plus they all have various toxic emissions of their own. Now, with all the concern over global warming and pollution issues they just don’t stack up. Not to mention we don’t have enough fertile land to keep up with growing demand for food, let alone adding a fuel source to the already strained farming industry. So what is the answer? Well I don’t claim electricity is the end all be all, however it is a solution and a rather decent one at that.
Lets look at the basic operation of an electric car. It has an electric drive, a controller and batteries (these are the macro component groups). Electric motors are very simple devices consisting of a drive shaft, electro magnets and the housing (again over simplified, but it makes the point). Compare that to an IC (internal combustion) engine which has so many parts that it wouldn’t make sense to list them all here. What am I getting at? Well, if you have heard of the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) principle, this falls right in line. What does that mean for the user? Frankly, less maintenance and less chance of issues. Now don’t get me wrong a car is still a car and there are many other working parts that can break down, but in the end, simpler is better.
Now what kind of emissions does an electric car have? Locally, none. What the heck do you mean locally none? Well, when an electric car is using the stored energy from its batteries, there is nothing in terms of emissions generated. The motor is using the stored energy to make it turn. However that electricity has to be generated somehow and our current generation technologies have emissions, IE coal fired plants, nuclear plants and nat gas peaking plants. So in an ideal world we would use renewable energy such as wind and solar to charge our electric cars and there were be no emissions whatsoever.
What other benefits would we achieve from Electric Car Conversions? well, cars would be virtually silent when stopped, and the only sound when in motion would be tire noise, wind noise and miscellaneous others like brake and steering noises. Wouldn’t that be nice? Sitting there in traffic (well the annoying part of sitting in traffic aside…) and not having to listen to other cars rumbling next to you? I think that would be a great benefit! Cutting down tremendously on noise pollution.