The Electric Car

Well, the EV1 was actually the 3^rd time that an electric car made it on the market. History tells us that the electric car, in fact, preceded the internal combustion engine car, being invented in the 1830's and persisting for around 100 years. In their final days, they had an average top speed of 30km/h and had a range of bugger-all.

The 2^nd time the electric car appeared in any sort of major way was in the late-50's–mid-60's, in particular with the Kilowatt. This under-developed car had a top speed of around 60km/h and could only drive for an hour at top speed after a full charge. Needless to say, it didn't sell well, with only 47 built.

Since 1987, Australia's gruelling World Solar Challenge has vehemently inspired innovations in solar panels, electric motors, light weight chassis, powerful batteries and energy efficient battery controllers. Ultimately, the event has helped inspire the 3^rd era of electric cars.

General Motors sparked the modern era of electric cars with their outstanding EV1 in 1996, with other models appearing in the late-90's from big brands such as Ford, Nissan, Honda, Toyota, and Peugeot. Most came in limited manufacturing runs, and were considered unsuccessful commercially.

Somewhat-of-a resurgence in interest has been sparked by Tesla Motors, named after the amazing and under-rated electric genius Nikola Tesla. They've designed an amazing sports car that is 100% electric; The Tesla Roadster, originally code-named “Dark Star”, is a nice looking car with some amazing specifications — presently a top speed of just over 200km/h, a range of around 325km on a single charge, and 0–100km/h acceleration in under 4 seconds. The car also has a build-in charger so that with a special cable you can charge it anywhere there's a power point, but it will take longer.

The Roadster is a lovely piece of engineering with a surprising price-tag of just under USD$100,000 (presently ~EUR€75,000/~AUD$125,000), which seems steep until you consider the new technology and class this car is in. This isn't a Bugatti, but it still proves that electric cars are not a compromise compared with internal combustion engine cars.

As Tesla ramp up production of the Roadster, they are developing a new model, code-named WhiteStar, which aims to be the electric equivalent of a BMW 5-series, coming in with a reasonable target price tag of around USD$50,000 (~EUR€40,000/~AUD$60,000). Comparitively, the EV1 was estimated to have had a street-price of USD$40,000–$50,000.

Other manufactures are appearing on the market too now, so the next decade should be very interesting in terms of competition and development.

At the turn of this millennium, though, it looked like a pure electric car was practically doomed. The USA declared hydrogen as the future fuel of choice and since then hybrid cars and hydrogen cars have unfortunately become the goal of major manufacturers.

Personally, I believe hybrid cars are simply delaying the inevitable and stagnating innovation while providing a great deal of positive “marketing fluff” for the automotive industry. It also keeps the oil companies in business, and will help increase the price of fuel because of lower demand. Ultimately this will impact everything else because of rising transportation costs and our expanding reliance on imported goods.

Hydrogen isn't an ideal fuel source for the future either. It is clean to use, and produces water as a waste product, which is fantastic. The CSIRO with the collaboration of RMIT announced in January that it would be possible to generate your own hydrogen using a small device that slowly collects and stores hydrogen at home, ready to be used in a car.

The problem with hydrogen is that it is not a harvestable energy but rather an energy carrier. In layman's terms, we can't go and simply extract hydrogen without expending a lot of energy in the conversion process. I see hydrogen as being an obsolete fuel before it even took off: Battery technologies are overtaking hydrogen in so far as energy storage per cm², the energy requirements of large-scale hydrogen production still hasn't been overcome, and the investment required to create yet-another distribution network for a new energy source is enormous.

Common complaints about electric cars include the “longer exhaust pipe” argument, which does have some truth behind it. Essentially, it's believed that electric cars simply shift pollution from roads to power plants, where coal is common, particularly in Australia. Unfortunately little Johnny has committed Australia to nuclear power, which further exasperates environmental concerns, albeit in the longer-term though (something politicians never understand). This is a shame, since we were going to build the world's largest solar tower.

Ultimately we need to find alternative energy production, in harvestable form, on all levels, which presently is heading towards primarily solar, hydro and wind, in that order. If used, existing solar power technology alone could provide us with several-thousands of times more energy than we presently use. Spain have taken the solar-tower challenge from Australia and made it a reality with their mighty (but still unfinished) Seville Tower, of which the BBC were lucky to receive a guided tour.

Ironically while walking back to the office today from lunch I spotted a giant battery in a skip. It probably would have been funnier if it was a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 battery, but it did remind me of Toshiba who announced in 2005 a Li-Ion battery that can be charged to 80% capacity within a minute, compared to the usual 2–3 hours. This will solve the charging-time problem with electric cars, and should appear in the market soon; it proves that our increasingly mobile lifestyles are hastening development of battery technologies.

I've never owned a car, because I've never needed one, but I've always said that it must be 100% electric and something more substantial than a crappy golf-cart inside the body of a plastic Smart. It looks like this will soon be realistic!

Now, what happened to the flying car we were promised…?