On one hand, electric vehicles would seem to be a dream come true from an environmental standpoint; given the limitations of electric vehicles, hybrids would seem to be the next-best alternative. However, hybrid and electric vehicles have certain limitations and downsides.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t buy a hybrid or electric; in parts of the country where electricity is generated by wind turbines, hydroelectric dams or geothermal, the use of such vehicles can go a long way toward reducing greenhouse emissions. (In regions where electricity is produced in coal or oil-fired plants, it is debatable as to whether plug-in vehicles make any difference in this regard.) You should be aware however that such vehicles can be very expensive, and all-electric vehicles have at least one serious downside that make them impractical for anything but very short local trips.
A Brief History
Surprisingly, the history of the electric car reaches all the way back to 1828, when a Hungarian inventor named Anyos Jedik created a small model vehicle powered by one of the first electric motors. With the advent of storage batteries in the 1860s, it was not long before a prototype of a practical electric vehicle (an electric motorcycle) was built.
The first electric car in the US was produced in 1891, and their popularity rose until 1912, when they accounted for 40% of all cars on the road. However, with the rise of the power of oil corporations as well as improvements such as the self-starter and the muffler, gasoline-powered vehicles supplanted their electric counterparts, and the electric vehicle industry was pretty much dead by the mid-1920s.
There was another serious problem with all-electric cars that has yet to be overcome: their limited range. While the average gasoline-powered vehicle could cover as much as 250-300 miles on a single tank of fuel at relatively high speeds, electric vehicles were slow and could not travel much farther than twenty miles without the need to recharge. Furthermore, most of the room in the vehicle was taken up by batteries.
Hybrids: Two Solutions
The hybrid of course uses both a gasoline engine as well as electricity to power the vehicle. The Toyota Prius uses small motors for each wheel at low speeds (Ferdinand Porsche came up with a similar design in the 1890s); the gasoline engine kicks on at highway speeds. The Chevrolet Volt, expected in show rooms later this year, operates more like a diesel-electric locomotive; while it relies on batteries for the first 20-40 miles, a small gasoline engine powers a generator that in turn powers the electric motor once the battery reserves have been depleted.
Herein lies one problem that has some safety experts worried: because of the batteries and the electric motor, the Volt is heavy for its size. The vehicle requires a correspondingly heavy, high-strength steel to support it. The concern is that the vehicle’s construction may make it difficult for emergency workers to cut into the metal to rescue accident victims in case of a collision. There are also some unknowns when it comes to an electric vehicle in an accident situation. The other argument is that such a heavy framework would protect the occupants very well.
There is as yet no word on what an insurance policy on a Volt would look like or cost (aside from the usual factors of driving history, age and location), and the vehicle has yet to be subject to crash tests. On one hand, it looks like it will protect its occupants extremely well; on the other hand, with the added weight and the chances of electrocution, it could cause a great deal of damage and serious injuries to others.
Time will tell; stay tuned…
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