Electric Cars

There is a very in depth article in the Daily Mail today looking at the pollution caused by the production of these vehicles and their batteries. Also the likely environmental problems when they are eventually scrapped. As has been mentioned, there are also the questions about the production of extra electricity and grid capacity (plus more pollution). Can I be alone in always asking the questions `why` and `why now` when politicians suddenly make massive decisions like this and I just wonder the REAL reason(s) are for this panic measure. Mods note: see post #11 for link to the article

The major issue with electric vehicles today is that the very environment where we want them to make things better for us is the very place where they are the least effective. The engine or electric motor is completely stationary sat at the traffic lights and when the vehicle wishes to move there is a tremendous demand on the batteries to provide the initial movement, think of when you have to push a broken down car, as you first put your back into it it is very heavy for the first few feet then it becomes easier to push very rapidly at a walking pace, assuming your on flat ground. For an electrically powered car this translates into a demand of approximately 600 Amps for the initial few feet then the load on the batteries drops to around 50-60 Amps, if we then assume the vehicle is in heavy, stop-start London traffic the demands on the batteries are enormous and repeated every few feet down the busy roads. The optimal way to drive an electric vehicle is on an aircraft runway after the initial surge of power to get it moving the vehicle will tootle along all day with minimum power demand, but that isn't London traffic so the true range of the vehicle is dramatically different from what the manufacturers may state. Other issues that should be considered are, the first gallon of petrol you put in the fuel tank, in theory, should provide roughly the same power output as the one that takes the car to the scrap heap but electric batteries, after the initial charging cycles have been carried out will decline in the quality and quantity of power they can provide with every subsequent charge to the point where they need to be replaced usually after a couple of years at a very high cost. Batteries are very susceptible to temperature during charging and discharge which means on a cold night outside they will not take a full charge onboard and during a cold day the range of the vehicle will be severely reduced so if your daily commute to work is at the upper end of the vehicles range in the summer with the headlights, heater and wipers on you may wish to consider a bus pass for the dark winter nights. Because London housing, or any big city today expands upwards rather than horizontally you may wish to own an electric vehicle but how do you charge it from your fourth floor flat when your neighbours got home before you and grabbed the parking spot directly outside, that's assuming you want to drop a charging lead down four floors and across the pavement creating a safety hazard and inviting the local yobs to rip the lead out of your car for fun. There are many reasons to clean up our cities polluted streets but electric vehicles are not the answer. Why ravage the worlds poorer countries to dig out the material for batteries when we are already destroying it for the oils and lubricants that even electric vehicles need to make them work. The solution in my mind would be to take the burning of fossil fuels to a new level and work towards a truly efficient lean-burn engine that way we are only mining for one mineral instead of many.

Didn`t we use chicken manure during the war Sorry to be serious you do know your stuff and yet we have had milk floats and other vehicles that ran on batteries for years - I would have thought modern technology could have beaten that. Anyway where are we with hydrogen? (or something)