If you’re old enough, you may remember your grandparents talking about electric cars. But the electric powered cars people are talking about nowadays are nothing like those electric vehicles from the early 1900s.
When you hear someone talking about hybrid cars, they are actually talking about a car that runs on a combination of gas and electricity (in technological terms, cars with gasoline-electric powertrains).
You may be sitting at home looking at hybrid cars for sale on Ebay or
searching online at discount electric cars imported from China and
thinking “I love the concept, but it’s too bad I don’t have a parking
spot”. Many downtown residents don’t want the expense of parking a
vehicle.
Rather than looking at buying a used electric golf cart or building an
electric golf cart at home instead, you should look at
electric bikes! Whether it is an electric scooter, a regular electric
bike, a diy electric bicycle, or anything else of that type,
two-wheeled electric vehicles have many advantages that a standard
electric car (even a Japanese electric car) will not have. While many
people do not like the idea of biking to work as they fear arriving in
a sweaty mess, electric bicycles (or other two-wheeled electric
vehicles) do the work for you, allowing you to arrive in a relaxed
manner, looking professional and fresh.
10 years ago electric and hybrid cars would make people giggle at their very mention. Yet these prototypes were nothing short of the human brilliance paving the way for what is soon to become the future of road transport. Electric vehicles are not a fashion trend, they represent the next revolution in automobile technology. It’s not so hard to see why there is such a hype about electric cars. Here are some of the points:
Electric motors by design are much more efficient than Internal Combustion Engines (ICE). They achieve efficiencies of well over 90% compared to an average of 20% for ICE. This translates into greater economical incentive since electric motors average 6Km/Kwh (Kilometer per Kilowatt-hour of energy) compared to 2.5Km/Kwh for ICE running on petrol. Efficiency with ICE is a big problem as there is not much scope for improvement. You see, in physics the laws of thermodynamics come into play theoretically limiting the efficiency of these designs to about 40%.