In this day and age, wouldn’t you think it entirely possible to own a car that runs on electricity? Technology and related industries have come so far, yet electric cars aren’t yet very common.
Are the car manufacturers conspiring with the oil companies? Is that the reason we don’t have electric cars yet? There are those who believe that very thing to be true. Oil companies would have a lot to lose if we stopped using gas to operate our cars. In reality, they’d likely end up being the ones who supply the fuel for the power generation!
Well, there may or may not be such a conspiracy in the works, but there are a couple of more logical reasons why electric cars aren’t yet common in our society. First off, car manufacturers haven’t been presented with any compelling reason to put electric cars into mass production. Currently, there’s no effective support system in place for such a product. Since gas is so widely used by those of us driving vehicles, no such structure yet exists.
Secondly, developing a battery for an electric car that can handle the massive power for long durations is a major problem. Batteries also need to have a big enough range in order to be practical for drivers. You wouldn’t want your electric car’s battery to run out of juice while waiting in rush hour traffic on the way home, now would you?
Although creating a battery to meet such standards has been an obstacle, progress is being made. Other ways of storing energy are also being researched, such as flywheels. It’s necessary to develop an electric motor that is small and light enough in order to be practical. It’s equally necessary to develop a battery, or some method of storing energy, that is compact, rechargeable, and able to sustain long periods of usage without needing to be replaced.
Even while facing all of these challenges, electric cars do exist today. Some folks, most often hobbyists, are converting regular manufactured cars into electric vehicles. In many ways, this is the stepping stone of future development.
There are also a few manufacturers currently building electric cars. One you may be familiar with is the Tesla Roadster. The Tesla is a fully electric sports car. It can travel approximately one hundred miles on a full charge. Not only that, the Tesla Roadster has been tested to go from zero to sixty miles per hour in less than four seconds. That’s definitely a significant advance in electric car technology. If you haven’t seen what the Roadster looks like, take a minute and look up a picture, it’s well worth it!
By taking the investment required to recharge electric car batteries, and comparing that to miles per gallon, you would quickly see that most of today’s electric cars achieve what would be considerably over two hundred miles to the gallon. The Roadster gets the equivalent of one hundred and thirty five miles to the gallon.
Will we soon see electric cars zooming around the neighborhood, just like our every day common place gasoline vehicles? Only the future can tell – but with technological advances moving the way they are, you might be a proud owner of one soon.
