Electric Cars - Are We Ready for Them?

Electric cars are mentioned quite often when issues like urban pollution crop up.

The need to find an alternative for vehicles running on internal combustion engines using fossil fuels is widely recognised. The need to reduce environmental pollution stemming from vehicles running on fuels like Gasoline and Diesel has been widely accepted. The need to reduce greenhouse emissions is well endorsed. Global warming has caught the attention of laymen too.

The development of Electric Cars - cars running on electricity - has been welcomed in principle as an altenative to the vehicles running on fossil fuels. Electric cars, it is agreed, are a sensible alternative to cars running on fossil fuels.

And, yes, there have been some Electric Cars.

Nisson LEAF

But where are the people ready to buy them? Do we have enough of them? What is holding people back?



President Obama has set a goal of a million electric vehicles on American roads by 2015. Will the goal be met?

There are quite a few issues hindering the acceptance of Electric Cars on a wider scale.

The first, perhaps, is the issue of cost.

The maintenance cost of electric vehicles is lower because there are no oil changes, belt replacements, etc; the cost per mile is just about 20% to 25% the maintenance cost for a car running on petrol/diesel. Nissan estimates that the Leaf's 5 year operating cost will be US$1,800 versus US$6,000 for a gasoline car.Though the savings are substantial, the single biggest deterrent is the initial price of the electric car - thanks to the cost of the Lithium Ion battery pack used to run the car.

In the US, the Government offers several tax incentives - Federal as well as State. For example, the Federal Gvoernment offers a tax break of upto $7,500 and proposal are underway to make that a tax break at the time of purchase rahter than a break to be availed in the next year's income tax return. Similalry, there are reliefs from Sales Tax in several states.

The second is the issue of the charge on the battery running out midway.

The average American is said to drive less than 40 miles (64 km) per day; the range of most Electric Cars available today is significiantly more. All the same, people are often worried that the battery pack would run out of charge before reaching the destination and leave them stranded - a worry known as range anxiety. it is all in the mind, as one wojuld quip - but, yes, it is there all the same! And it's called "Range Anxiety". (Oh yes, they have a name for everything, don't they?!)

While hybrid cars like the Chevy Volt ( which can go 35 miles on a fully charged battery and run another 375 miles on a gasoline-powered generator that takes over when the battery runs out) should make buyers feel more confident and rid themselves of Range Anxiety, in the longer run the solution may lay elsewhere: in widely available facilites for charging a car's Lithium Ion battery pack.

Chevy Volt Electric Car

Governments as well as manufacturers of cars are sgtriving to address the problem of setting up extensive facilites for recharging car batteries.

The time taken for charging an Electric Car's Lithium battery pack can be considerable. Facilites for a "quick charge" are also there though quick charges can deteriorate the life of the battery pack.

While one might be be wondering whether we should first develop the recharging infrastructure to increase demand for electric cars or wait for the demand to grow first before pumping vast financial resources into the development of the infrastructure, one might as well go abck to the times when the first gasoline cars were introduced into the market and the network of gasoline stations developed in tandem. Yes, for a while, there could be appreciable inconvenience but if things are allowed to develop at their own natural pace, the issues can resolve themselves with little meddling from anyone!

While all this may be fine in the global context, perhaps much of it is purely academic in a country like India where we do not have adequate electric power to run our minimal household requirements (which are far less than the power requirements of a European or an American household)!!

But the need for Electric Cars is bound to catch up in India too - and we do have faith in our ingenuity to rise to the occasion.