Electric Cars

This is a topic close to my heart. I love cars. I love motor vehicle of all types. I spent 16 years of my life knowing I was going to be a motorcycle mechanic. I love speed, acceleration. I love the smell of petrol. I love the smell of burning rubber.

I am a rev head, a petrol head. I'm a hoon. If I drive or ride anything fast, there's a chance I'll ride it fast. My wife sometimes reminds me that I'm driving like an Italian.

Mind you, I never put anyone's life at risk at all. I just drive like an Italian.

So, I was thinking about electric cars the other day and there were so many pros and cons. The obvious good bits are the acceleration and less moving parts. Not to mention the big appeals to me, the environmental impacts are far less.

However, this is where I run into issues, and I'll get to them in a minute or two. These are in fact the cons of why I disagree with electric cars.

The big appeal is that they are quite, smooth, with brilliant performance and excellent positive attributes that make it perfect for most people who drive daily to work and back.

Here are my biggest concerns about full electric cars:

1. Distance you can travel
I know this is something that is being addressed with better battery technology and more efficient electric motors. Not only that but also better ways of using power, or creating it from ideas like re-generative braking and solar panels on the roof. However, the best range they can muster from a full electric car doesn't get me to the most visited long distance locations I frequent every year. One of which doesn't even get me half way there.

I know they're working on range, and also the best alternatives to charge these cars, whether it be a quick charging station or battery swap centre. Either way, it's not finalised yet, however Telsa is currently selling their car. The Chevy Volt is a good step, just a pity it's not a fabulous step, and to be honest, if I were Chevy, I'd go and hide in a dark corner after some of the flack they copped for their dismal efforts on the Volt.

Someone told me once, to avoid the range issue, have a separate petrol car that can take you on long distance, or rent one. This might work, but it doesn't appeal. And generally people who own a car don't see the logic in having to rent one just to pile in the family and gear to head off into the woods or the bush for a couple of days. Sadly, the range of current electric cars won't even get me to my mates place an two hours away to see him like I do once every few months.

My current car is a pretty efficient, yet powerful Turbo Diesel Fiat Punto. I can get 900 kms (559 Miles) from 40 Litres (10.5 Gal) of diesel. I regularly get 650-700 kms just driving around town. so I fill up once every 10 or so days because I spend most days driving to see clients, averaging about 50-100 kms per day. While that's perfect for an electric car, what happens when I have to travel further? "Sorry I can't make it today, my car is re-chaging. It'll be done in about 4 hours."

2. Price of a re-charge
Cars like the Volt and Tesla's Roadster are touted as cheap to 'fill up'. While this may be true now due to electricity prices around the world being on the cheap side. A couple of issues spark up in my mind, more so than ever before, thanks to a recent electricity bill that arrived last week which showed my money owing at about 20% more than the last bill. A nice letter and pamphlet accompanying the bill told me the rates are going up.... again. YAY.

So, imagine when everyone comes home at night after work to top up their battery and finds that the electricity provider has decided to do one of two things, or better still, both raise the price of power and change the on-peak and off-peak times to best suit their bottom line and their share holders.

3. Load
Last summer, like most summers in Australia, it gets bloody hot. And as such, states like Victoria have blackouts in summer due to everyone's air-con being cranked to the limit. I don't blame them. However, if we're having electrical issues trying to supply people some kW to keep them cool when it's 40°C+ outside, you have to have some form of cooling system to support a lot of humans in one spot. In an office, you'll need to cool them off and keep in mind all those closed windows, all those people, all those computers running. Everything in the room is creating heat.

If you've ever walking into an office with the air-con not working you'll know what I mean. It's stuffy to say the least.

So, if a well developed country's electrical system can't cope with current conditions, are jacking up the price of their unreliable power and justify it by saying they're using the money to create better, cleaner and more efficient power stations. What use will having an electric car have when you come home on a hot summer afternoon, plug the car in, go inside, run the air-con to cool down your house then everything blacks out.

Guess what? You're walking to work tomorrow. Hmm, I guess that can't be that bad.

4. Convenience
So your friend invites you over for a birthday party. Or maybe family. You drive there in your shiny new Electric car. You get there, everyone thinks it's so cool. Then you ask if you can plug in so you can get home, you used all the charge to get there and now won't make it home.

Not cool.

Everyone leaves the party saying "I won't be buying one of those fancy Ee-Lectric cars". And chances are the image is tainted for a long time. Probably until there is no choice. Then you'll have to buy one. Hopefully by then they'll have solved the travel range issue and you can get out into your favourite camp site without worrying about setting up a solar panel and rigging it up to the batteries, voiding your warranty and possibly shorting out the car, almost killing yourself. Not a good look around the family.

I recently watched a video of Robert Llewellyn driving the Tesla Roadster and talking to Diarmuid O'Connell, Vice President of Business Development for Tesla Motors. None of these areas of concern were mentioned. And the biggest point made was that it would currently cost a few dollars a week to keep your car fully charged.

WOW! While that sounds amazing, and it may well be true for the next 12 months. Seeing as my electricity bill just went up 20% in a matter of 12 months from the last price hike, I'm left wondering how much it will cost to keep my electric car running once they are the norm, ie; every car on the road is electric. Will greed take first place in the environmental chase? Will it end up costing me the same in 'fuel' to top up my electric car as it currently does my petroleum car? I fear so.

So what can you do?

I guess we can harvest our own power and be less dependent or completely off the grid (ideal, but not realistic in suburbia). While installing Solar panels on our roofs are becoming normal and catching on these days. Almost trendy if you have them in your inner city dwelling. The wind power option is a bit of an issue. Ugly poles erected in your backyard, noisy home made wind turbines that piss everyone off with their whining motors salvaged from scrap and their recycled blades from a Cessna make for a brilliant image of going off the grid.

Don't take me the wrong way. I'd love to do this. But there are some things that aren't too accepted in life, and more specifically life in the suburbs where your neighbour can hear you fart.

What happens if you just use Solar? Well, this may work, however for almost all my life, I remember watching Beyond 2000 and seeing and hearing about cheaper solar cells that are more efficient than anything else. I'm 31 now, while Beyond 2000 is a distant memory, and the year itself has come and gone, there are no flying cars and there are certainly no affordable solar arrays that are small enough and efficient enough to power my entire home off the grid, including charging an electric car.

I wish there were, I wish I was saying otherwise. But as opposed to what my friends call me, "Negative", I've always said I'm "Alternative". I'm a realist. While a solar array and some windmills would be perfect for a little self sustained shack out in Whoopwhoop, where most people live in Australia, sadly it just wouldn't work. Unless you're from Whoopwhoop.

But apart from all this, back to the electric car. It may cost nothing to 'fill' up now, but what will it cost when it's the norm?

Sure, the purchase price will come down significantly, but I fear that while the cost of buying the electric car will become significantly cheaper in 5-10 years when 90% of what everyone drives is electric. I fear that the price of running it will become equal, if not more than what it currently cost you to run a petroleum powered car.

The 'industry' will see the lower cost of purchase as an offset for the higher price of servicing and fuelling the vehicle. I hope I'm wrong, but all I can think about is all the people that will be cashing in on this deal, and the end result is you paying still too much for transport. The prices will be artificially higher than normal, which will make it normal.

People who may not drive will be stung with a stupidly high rate on their power at home because it will be assumed that everyone drives an electric car, therefore your electricity rates must be higher. And they will.

I fear that greed will cause humanity to yet again, be left in the dark. You'll be told you're all moving forward, but in reality, you're staying put.

Computers get faster, cheaper, more accessible. Cars get faster, more expensive and less accessible. Solar panels haven't really got cheaper at all, at least not in Australia. So, they're not so accessible. Otherwise we'd all have them on our roof already. But the prices depict us breaking even with power costs at 10-20 years before solar panels we purchase pay themselves off.

What do you do to have your electric car and be able to afford to charge it too?

All I've talked about here is the cost of things. Being that most people will be able to afford a new electric car, but running and maintaining it may be a whole other story. What about the environmental impacts?

Well, you can't deny that even if the power you use to charge your electric car comes from coal, the impact is not that significant, according to studies. However, electric cars have moving parts in them too, you can't eliminate that. These parts will need grease or some form of lubricants. In the bearings, the differential, the steering, the drive shafts (unless the electric car has motors in the wheels themselves), but there will be a need for petroleum based products of some description to help keep the car moving.

There are synthetic oils and lubricants, so hopefully they're used liberally taking an ever lower reliance of fossil fuel and products based on crude oil.

These are all good things. But the running costs still concern me. I hope I'm wrong. I have little doubt that I will be though. Something tells me this is going to be the best and worst thing to revolutionise the automotive industry.