Many in the last century had imagined that by 2020, mankind would have had flying cars and teleportation devices and awesome technology that no one could have possibly imagined. Though SpaceX and Apple give them a run for their money, humans have not quite lived up to their expectations. One of the most anticipated and currently heavily pushed technologies of our time though is the electric car. Everyone wants it, but they are not that good. Even if some are good, they cannot replace their alternative everywhere. In this and the next issue, we are going to talk a little about electric cars.
Before we venture into electric cars, we must first have a brief history of cars in general. Though many people throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century lay their claims towards the development of a locomotive, mainly the train, the formal inventor of the car that we know today is known to be Karl Benz, who first presented his car, the Motorwagen, in 1881, with an engine that he designed just a few years earlier. He is also the founder of the Benz car company which we know so fondly as the latter part of Mercedes-Benz. Interestingly though, the first electric car(as such) was presented by the French inventor Gustave Trouvé in the International Exposition of Electricity, Paris in 1881. His car though was a three-wheeler. After that, the major production of cars (like almost everything) shifted to the US, where Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 and expanded his business rapidly using the assembly line model of manufacturing. The Ford Model T was one of the first extremely successful cars. Slowly, the car spread throughout the world in the early twentieth century as became, as it remains, the major mode of transportation throughout the world.
Why the car
The car, as a concept, became extremely popular because of its salient features. The convenience of a car is unbeatable (both the seating arrangement and its transportation capabilities). One thing that man has always needed to grow and progress has been transportation and cars made it a hell of a lot easier. Another magical thing about cars has been the discovery of fossil fuels as fuels. Instead of tying a living animal with feelings on the front of your vehicle or making your legs do the work, all you have to do is pay a little money to buy a magical juice that can be easily fed into the stomach of your machine which will make it run at humanly impossible speeds at the press of a small lever. Extremely easy is it not? What also made it extremely convenient was that this fuel was available easily almost anywhere around the world and is still quite affordable. The car hence rode the wave of this magical substance and became one of the most essential commodities for the development of literally anything.
Fossil fuel to electric: the big shift
From the beginning of the twentieth century, we now come to the beginning of the 2010s. A lot of major scientists and everyone had begun to understand the dark side of the magical liquid that we mentioned earlier. Fossil fuels emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide on burning which, as we all know, are harmful to the planet. Another reason for the search for alternative fuels was that this magical juice was not present ubiquitously around the world, and at some point in time, we would run out of it. Hence major car companies started to look for alternatives such as CNG, electricity, bio-diesel etc.
Why electric?
The major alternative for fossil fuels could be crudely classified into two parts, alternative fuel technologies and different concepts. Fuels such as CNG and biogas etc needed different kinds of engines and heavy modifications to existing cars. They also never caught on as much as fossil fuel-based cars because they were, in general, not so convenient. For example, as some of you may know, the process to upgrade an existing car that runs on petrol and diesel to CNG requires the fitting of heavy equipment such as the CNG tank and takes up almost all of your boot/trunk space in your car. But how does this connect to electric cars being more convenient? One of the most major advantages an electric car has is that it doesn't have an engine.
In a fuel-based car, the fuel first has to be combusted and the heat and power generated are then used to drive the car forward. This combustion engine is a big part and takes up a lot of space in the car (including the cooling system etc). Other than that, cars also require batteries to power other things such as music systems, air conditioning and for starting the car. In an electric car, electricity is directly used to give power to the wheels and hence a lot of less moving and engine parts are required. Hence electric cars are much simpler than normal fuel-based vehicles. Another major reason for the preference of electric cars is the generation of the fuel required. CNG or biodiesel or any such alternatives have to be manufactured separately and many of them are not widely manufactured. But, on the other hand, electricity is everywhere. It has reached the farthest corners of the globe and is easily available. Sure, it may take you a little time to charge your car, but at least you don’t have to establish a new plant for it!
Moreover, electric cars don’t have the concept of a manual gear change, or even a gear change in general. In an internal combustion engine, there are various gears for the vehicle which provide different levels of torque and power. The ‘lower gears’ provide more power(they are used while going up slopes) and the higher ones produce more torque, which is used for higher speeds and higher fuel efficiency. The gears are wheels of different sizes which have to be changed by pressing the clutch, etc etc. Though some cars now are available with an automatic or semi-automatic option, the mainstream cars still come in ‘stick’. With the absence of gears in electric cars though, they become very easy to drive and extremely convenient.
With the development of newer technology, especially computing, electric cars now are just a very big computer. Hence, it can be connected to various devices, it can be updated, it can provide you with a wide array of amenities you wouldn’t even have imagined. Indeed, some of these technologies have also been incorporated in fossil fuel-based cars(such as the MG Hector which is internet enabled), the major R&D being done on them will be based around electric cars, since they are regarded as the future.
Now that we have answered the question of why electric cars are preferred, we can look at how they are being brought up widely around the world. Then also comes the problems that electric cars bring with them. Are they sustainable? Is there a dark side? We’ll venture into that the next time. Keep watching this space for more!
Authored by Miheer Karandikar
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