The Electric Car

Although most think the electric car has seemingly been a recent atempt to improve the automobile, it has infact been a concept since the beginning of cars. Technology hasn't been able to produce an electric car that has made enough sense economically to mass produce, untill now. Companies began making hybrid cars that were built to although still revolve around their gas powered engines were also able to use a battery in order to improve gas consumption. There are many problems however with the new fully electric cars: What is the easiest way to charge the cars? how long will the batteries last? Will they have the same functionability as gas powered cars? Many companies believe that the technology is still not yet available to produce the fully equiped electric cars however Chevrolet is releasing its Volt late next year and believes that it will be succesfull. Another big problem is with the audio systems, air conditioners, how much battery power will be needed for a car to function properly? At an auto show many automakers were comical with the introduction of hours-to-recharge on a cars dashboard. The Volt will take close to 23 hours for just 150 miles of driving.

If this market is ever going to take off I believe that they need to find a much faster form of recharging these cars. The automobile industry took off becasue of the flexibility it gave people with such a low downtime. All people had to do was fill up with gas, taking maybe 5-10 minutes of their days and were then able to drive upwards of 500 miles. Now, these new cars need a full day to travel less tahn 1/3 of that distance? The sales of these cars will never come close to that of regular cars untill they can fix this problem. Another big problem with these cars is that once a normal car has retired it can be almost 100% recycled and reused in other cars or other industries. When a battery powered car is recycled the battery is filled with toxic waste that can't be easily dealt with. Automakers must find solutions to these problems before they should try to release their products. I do think however that once these problems are fixed that these cars will be the thing of the future. Especially with the focus on staying green with the turn of the century, these cars will help us preserve our natural resources in the land. With all the new technology we have destroyed our earth and many eco friendly people will see buying these cars as a first step to helping save the rest of our beautiful earth.

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Source Citation:
Moran, Tim. "Dealing with realities of an electric-car fleet.(Automobiles)(GREENTECH)." The New York Times. 158. 54566 (Jan 25, 2009): 7(L). Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Deerfield High School. 8 Feb. 2010 .