Development And Impacts Of The Electric Vehicle example essay topic

Hybrid Automobiles The technology of the electric vehicle has been around for a long time but faded as the gasoline powered engine became more popular. Now, the future of electric vehicles is very bright. Their impacts are very significant that ranges from the economic point of view and also from the environmental. Imagine driving a quieter, cleaner car with the windows down letting the clean pollution-free air flow throughout the car. Production of the advancing technological electric vehicle can trigger this idea to come into effect.

The problem of this technology was to research the development and impacts of the electric vehicle. At the turn of the 19th Century, when automobiles were new, electric vehicles outnumbered gasoline-powered vehicles. The problem for the electric car was that electric battery technology did not improve nearly as fast as gasoline technology and by 1910 the interest in the development of the electric vehicle had all but ceased (Sedgwick 15). Today, the current surge of interest in electric vehicles replacing the internal combustion engine, or ICE, is due to mostly one concern, air quality.

The world's population of cars is polluting the world's cities, producing large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The electronic vehicle is driven by a battery that runs exclusively on electric. The batteries that exist today have a limited range between fifty and seventy-five miles per full charge. Newer prototype batteries have a rather large increase in their range, but they are still prototypes. The longest range documented by an electric vehicle in one charge is 230 miles (Sedgwick 21). The limited range of the electric car in use today really is not a problem considering the fact that Californians, the main users of the electric vehicle, drive an average of forty miles a day (Sedgwick 6).

This means that the owner will have to plug the battery into an 110 vs. AC power source and let it charge for eight to ten hours, which is the current time it takes to fully charge the present batteries. Fast charging is still in the developmental stage and will work somewhat like a gas station where one pulls in and in ten minutes the car will be fully recharged. Battery-powered vehicles would provide modest greenhouse gas savings if introduced into full-scale production today. The energy efficiency of the electric car would only increase, drawing less energy from power plants, meaning even more of a substantial cutback in greenhouse gasses. Electric vehicles using electric from natural gas power plants will only cut the release of greenhouse gasses more, natural gas is the cleanest burning and most efficient fossil fuel. The electric-powered automobiles do not burn the fossil fuel, they just use the electricity generated from the natural gas power.

These cars that run on electric which was generated by nuclear of hydroelectricity would have nearly zero greenhouse emissions. The switch to a hybrid car would also lessen the drilling for oil and our dependency on other nations to readily export it to us. The primary reason the government has shown its support for this technology has been air quality. Automobiles and small trucks are responsible for about half of all urban air pollution. Today's vehicles that are powered by gasoline and diesel fuels emit the vast majority of carbon monoxide, half of the hydrocarbon and nitrogen pollutants, and a small proportion of particulate and sulfur dioxide. A switch to hybrid-electric automobiles would dramatically reduce all of these pollutants in urban settings.

In some cities the air quality impact of electric vehicles can be extraordinarily positive. Electric vehicles may not eliminate all air pollutants and, depending on where their electric comes from, may contribute a small factor to some pollutants like nitrogen oxide, but their effect on air quality is greater than any of the negatives. The main reason is that many power plants are located far from populated areas, and a large proportion of emissions from electricity production are released at night when sunlight is not present to form ozone and when people are indoors not exposed (Sperling 16). Internal combustion engine emissions are always in our face, while electrical emissions are far off and at night.

The entire world would benefit greatly from cleaner air. The reasons need not be elaborated on. They are that evident. It is astonishing that the hybrid-electric automobile is not already in full-scale production today. These vehicles were preferred over gasoline powered vehicles but gasoline powered vehicle technology developed faster than the hybrid-electric technology. The big oil companies have put up a major fight in terms of allowing this technology to advance and they have promised to make gasoline more efficient, but it is far less costly to produce and operate an electric vehicle in the long run.

Auto manufacturers like Ford, GM, Toyota and Honda seem to be way ahead of others in the sense that they have placed their cars into the market in the southwest which are populating urban areas increasingly. I think more push has to be made to convince the American public that these vehicles will save them money if they look past the initial purchasing cost.

Bibliography

Sedgwick, David. "Entrepreneur Prepares to Zoom into Market for EV Batteries". Automotive News, 1996.
21 March 2004.
Sperling, Daniel. Future Drive. Washington, D.C. : Island Press, 1995.
Ford Motor Company. Electric vehicles. 1996.
21 March 21, 2004.