One of the reasons some people do not want an electric car is that they can take a while to charge up. Things have improved with fast chargers that can supply around 80% of full charge in under half an hour, but that may still not be enough. There are issues with trying to put too much charge into a battery too quickly. It seems lithium spikes can form which compromise the integrity. The latest research actually heats the battery up whilst being charged to prevent this. They are talking about 900A chargers which seems like a lot, but that is what it would take.
Getting new technology into production can take a while, so it may be a few years before we can buy cars with this facility and have the charging infrastructure to use it.
Image from Wikipedia. Probably not the car most people are looking for.
I am hoping to go electric next year and we are looking to lease as technology is changing fast. We may be able to upgrade after a couple of years. The batteries are still the most expensive part, but you would hope that will change. There were stories recently of Nissan Leaf owners being quoted €30,000 for a replacement battery! I would hope that is not the regular price as a used car is not worth that much.
On the topic of electric cars, you will often hear people say they are not green as they generally use power from fossil fuel power stations. Well they do use it efficiently. Creating fuel for a petrol car also involves a lot of electrical power for refining plus whatever else is involved in getting it from the ground to the filling station. According to these figures an electric car can still emit less CO2 when powered by electricity from oil and of course it can also use wind, solar or hydroelectric power.
I have had people saying I should go for a hybrid, but almost all of our driving is short range and those cars have the maximum of complexity with more things to go wrong as well as having all the same consumables as a regular petrol/gas car, e.g. oil, spark plugs, filters. No car can be totally green, but I see electric cars as the future of motoring and I want to live in the future. Meanwhile our 15 year old Honda will still be used.
Drive green!
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