Will cars become all electric or Hybrids? Will we no longer have gasoline powered sports cars? Is an all electric car market even feasible? Can the power grid handle charging all these cars? (sources Research Gate forum and https://www.iedconline.org/clientuploads/Downloads/edrp/IEDC_Electric_Vehicle_Industry.pdf)
Like any transformative new technology, Electric vehicles create a variety of challenges and opportunities. While the EV market is still at an extremely early stage of development it has come extremely far in a short period of time. Twenty years ago electric cars could not even dream of challenging the performance of a gasoline powered automobile but now car manufacturers such as Tesla have begone what might be considered in fifty or so years as the beginning of the end of the gasoline powered automobile with features such as self driving, incredibly fast initial acceleration (due to the fact that an electric car has no need for gears and has a one speed transmission there is very little power loss because of this) and of course, a climate change activist might gush over the fact that there are no emissions coming from the car. So what is stopping this takeover? well there are a few answers, Good electric vehicles are still incredibly expensive when compared to gasoline powered counterparts ( initial costs at least). Now while that may be a big issue there are still many conceivably small but it actuality for the buyer major issues such as a owner not having a driveway or garage due to living in the city and thus no place to charge their vehicle. Or perhaps a buyer is simply older and prefers something that they are used to. Given these concerns the government gives subsides to those buying EV’s to encourage those to do so which begs the question, can the power grid handle charging so many vehicles? Due to the fact that electric vehicles have never really been popular us Americans have never even given a thought to this topic, This summer in California the state which basically created the EPA which we talked about earlier, there was a power shortage due to the large amounts of power required to charge EV’s and hybrids and it being the summer so residents having an air conditioner on the entire day certainly didn’t help, so without a doubt our power grid needs some work. Which raises yet another question? how do we get all our power, surely it can’t all be from solar energy, wind farms and hydro electric plants (“clean Green” sources of energy) and yes that is true we will need to find a rather large renewable clean energy source to power this massive shift of the need for power if we are to eliminate the classic gasoline powered automobile and not produce the same amount of emission acquiring the power for the EV. No doubt these seem like a whole host of issues but I am sure the car industry will make the shift regardless eventually.
(stay tuned for next source in which I will be talking about sports cars, car safety throughout the years and if driving will ever be outlawed)
Good, Charles.