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Alternative Fuels for Motor Vehicles

Electricity

The second, longer term, alternative fuel follows on neatly from the use of Hydrogen Fuel Cells. Whereas Fuel Cells create electricity "on the go" using electricity directly may be less wasteful.

Economically, the hydrogen process converting hydrogen to electricity using fuel cells costs at least four times as much as electricity from the grid. In fact, electricity would be much more efficiently used if it were sent directly to the appliances instead. If the original electricity could be directly supplied by wires, as much as 90% could be used in applications.

To quote from Ulf Bossel again:

“The two key issues of a secure and sustainable energy future are harvesting energy from renewable sources and finding the highest energy efficiency from source to service,” he says. “Electricity from renewable sources will play the dominant role.”

“In a sustainable energy future, electricity will become the prime energy carrier. We now have to focus our research on electricity storage, electric cars and the modernization of the existing electricity infrastructure.”

The problems

Despite the opportunities presented by Electric Powered Cars, their image does leave something to be desired. Often called "Milk Floats" or "Golf Buggys", the perceived image has been of a small (very small), slow (very slow) vehicle which is not much use for "genuine" motoring.

Whilst this might well have been true in the past, things are changing for instance:

  • Nissan Altra EV The new sate-of-the-art model has been built to prove electric vehicles can be equally as practical as everyday runarounds. It is as big as a proper car - about the same size as a very tall Primera estate - with four seats and a spacious boot, has a top speed of 75 mph and a 14 seconds 0-60 mph time. Its range is still rather more limited than the average petrol car at around 120 miles, but when it costs only '£1.50' to fill up who's complaining? Not available in the UK.

  • Solectria Sunrise, 4-passenger prototype electric vehicle (EV) sedan, traveled from Boston to New York City on a single charge at normal highway speeds.Not available in the UK.

  • RAV4 EV - Toyota sold about 300 RAV4 EVs in 2002, but the company pulled the plug on the electric cars, saying customers didn't want them. (Toyota) However around 800 Rav4 EVs are still on the road today after Toyota were shamed into reversing their decision by a public outcry. Toyota, did, however, dismantle and crush many hundreds of fully functional RAVs before this citizen advocacy embarrassed Toyota into stopping.

  • General Motors EV1 - GM would not sell the EV1 to anyone. It would only lease it. When the leases were over, GM took back the EV1s and destroyed them. Why didn't GM just leave the vehicles on the road?

If you are interested in knowing more about GM and the EV1 check out a film called "Who Killed the Electric Car?" here

Conspiracy thoerists obviously had a field day with this.

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The future?

OK - there are problems with the electric vehicle. The main one being the battery capacity and it's charge cycle. Imagine that you only use your car for short (less than 100mile) journeys, and you can go home and plug the car into the mains at night. Is ther a problem with this? Probably no.

However let's pretend you are going to drive to Scotland from London. Will the battery charge cope with the distance? No. How long will it take to re-charge the battery? Too long.

Those two instances encapsulate the problems which hinder the future use of electricity as the fuel for motors of tomorrow. We need desperately to invest in battery technology to solve these problems.

Why do I think electric Power is the way forward?

  • The infrastructure is available now - in fact it's accessible everywhere

  • It's clean - no emissions

  • It's cheap

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