Electric Cars are they any good?

[Iniyila 2]

Hello everyoneAs you probably know there are more electric cars coming out every day, so the main question we have to ask is that is it worth to buy one ? are they good for my daily use or not ? what are their main advantages and disadvantages ?Petrol cars produce dangerous gases for our environment so scientist brought diesel cars for us with less pollution, but anyway it still produce pollution so they thought maybe producing a car using electricite for powering should be nice so they putted some batteries and an electrical motor in a car and named it an electric car, but after seeing its main problem which is charging time, they tried to combine a petrol and an electrical motor or a diesel and an electrical motor. an example of these type cars is Toyota Prius which has sold many during years but as the producers said it is a petrol car with electrical motors as backup so maybe it will pollute less but it still not completely environment friendly.So why they can not produce a complete electrical car? they need a lot of batteries for saving a lot of energy and using so much number of batteries means your car will get a lot heavier and needs a more powerful electrical motor and again same thing happens, so you can not produce a car which goes like 1000km with just one charge and you think of carrying 4 people with it. maybe some people say there are many cars which can do huge distances with one charge like Tesla Roadster but i should say if you watch Top Gear from BBC then you will find out that the roadster only does 89 km per charge in real life (which later the some of their man responded both cars they have used was less than 20percent charged which i don't believe) so all of those records you see in their ads are only based on very specific conditions like going all the way with same speed and in real roads you will not ever see those numbers.After that problem you need to charge your car then how much time is needed ? you can not recharge a battery very fast because you will destroy it so maybe charging for 10 hour is nice when you have parked your car in home but when you ran out of power in the road then you have to continue your travel tomorrow, so if distance between your home and your work place is long (like working in other town) you can never go for an electric car. another thing is that using electrical power in the night may saves your money rather than using petrol car but you do not always ran out of power in nights, when you have to refill your batteries in 8PM then you will loose more money than using a petrol car which is fillable all day long with the same price. Another problem of electrical cars are the size, they are not very big most of the times so if you have a big family like 4 or more then you can not be sure about using an electric car. so this is why they are always trying to combine an electric car with a petrol car to gain more power and decrease those problems related to charging time, but here comes another question where the electricity comes from ? if we are using electricite coming from gas turbines then what is the different to pollute environment with your car or do that with power generators ?So i disappointed form electric cars which are on the roads right now, some celebrities buy them only for showing themselves as being a green person and nothing else. but i can see Honda is going to produce next generation of electric cars which i hope will be next generation of cars. Honda FCX Clarity is just a true green car, that uses hydrogen for producing electricity and it only produces water and electricity in this procedure so this is a real green car which doesn't get his electricity from those power plants which pollutes the environment, the main problem is hydrogen filling station which are not very popular right now, but i think this car will be starter of the next generation of electric cars, electric cars which really work!

[Parubilla 0]

I think electric cars are not fully develop yet. I?ve seen a couple and they are really tiny, like I would be afraid to be on the streets with that car, because those cars make me think about safety, like what if I have an accident is almost like riding a motorcycle, I could get seriously injured, and also electric cars are not design for tall or big people, because I?m a petite girl I don?t think I would have any trouble in terms of size, but I can?t imagine a huge person coming out of that car it would be like the clown car. I was seeing last night in the television a program about ecologic cars, and they showed a Honda car, it was like a sedan I think 5 people would fit perfectly, and it worked on a mix of hydrogen and oxygen completely, so the car does not use any fossil source, it?s still on development but I think little by little we we?ll see better solutions of cars that use renewable energy in the market and with better prizes, because let?s face it, these new car are really expensive compared to regular cars.

[Iniyila 2]

The car you have saw is Honda FCX Clarity which i mentioned a little about i my previous post but i will say more about it. this is not a new car and if i'm true i think i have seen in first 2008 in Top Gear reviewed by James May. they said this car will be the next generation of electric cars.This car hydrogen fuel cell based so it is an electric car but it doesn't use electrical power which is saved in batteries, it itself generates electrical power which is needed for powering its electrical motor. this car is currently in production and some has been sold in Europe , Japan and U.S.A but the cost is just high right now and they even do not produce enough so they only sell them to specific peoples. i read somewhere they have planned to release 200 more within 3 years which means two things , one there is no one interested (i will say later why) and second even at this cost there is a little or no profit for Honda. there is no one interested because there is not enough hydrogen filling stations around the world. in Germany there is only one hydrogen filling station and it is in Berlin so the car still is not practical because when you buy it you can not use it. The process of getting electrical power from that built in hydrogen power plant is completely green and environment friendly and the only thing comes out of the exhaust is H2O which is water, so every thing is perfect and you don't need to wait 16 hours for charging it. refilling it is just like petrol as the hydrogen in stations is in liquid form so the process is completely same as filling your car with petrol, the only difference is some safety features because hydrogen is under pressure so it doesn't act completely like petrol. this car produces 134 bhp which is enough for a car that can carry 4 people and other things like accelerating and top speed are completely acceptable too so we have a green car which for the first time can be used for your daily works like going to your work and do not worry about running out of power because you can refill it only in 10 minutes. As the car moving parts has been reduced while they replaced the mechanical motor with an electrical one so it will not brake down regularly, transmission is single speed so it will brake down less too. many things in this car are only luxuries and isn't too necessary like the string wheel which can change its position or those cameras all over the car and many other things so they can easily reduce the cost but when there is no filling station available so why they should do it ? this car is introduced in 2008 and in this 2 - 3 years we can't see any government concerning about building hydrogen filling stations fast. i think this is because of those factories which are currently producing battery based useless electrical cars and because there are currently many factories doing this so maybe policies aren't allowing Honda to shows its technology. anyway i think it is waste of time to try produce better batteries or light weighted bodies for getting battery based electrical cars to real world just go for hydrogen based one and this is the future.

[sheepdog 10]

I've been thinking some one these electric cars for awhile now. I suddenly realized, that they really aren't going to help a lot anyway. Think about this for a minute. You are trading off burning fossil fuel, but where does our electrisity come from? While there are some electric plants that are fueled by rivers and dams, a great deal of our power still comes from coal fired electric plants. If we increase our use of electricity, we will increase the need for it, and to power all the cars that run up and down the highways in the USA we are talking about one heck of a lot more electric, won't we just have to burn more coal? Sure there is some use of neuclear power, but I think that's a lot more dangerous than it's worth. Aren't we just trading sourses of a problem?Anyway, with the current models available, and electric car would never work for us. We live near a small town, and while we make a fair amount of our purchases locally, the vast majority of what we buy comes from places farther away than the current range of electric cars.

[Baniboy 3]

I've been thinking some one these electric cars for awhile now. I suddenly realized, that they really aren't going to help a lot anyway. Think about this for a minute. You are trading off burning fossil fuel, but where does our electrisity come from?

A petrol engine is just a good machine to generate heat. Most of the chemical energy in gas converts into heat and noise in a petrol engine. In a power plant the generated heat is directly used to move turbines. "Think about this for a minute"...

1. For not being able to drive long distances and charging, I don't see why it is a problem in a city environment. That is, if the ego can take it.
2. Also, before commenting on safety, you should search and find safety test results done by corporations that specialize in that stuff, like Euro NCAP.
3. The only reason the batteries are heavy, discharge quickly, the cars don't have high speeds and most other problems is that there isn't enough money invested in it (they sure are fast to invent super-light iPhones, because there are enough fanboys around to buy it). Why do you think it's so? Because *somebody* has been making profit on that fact... And it's a joke anyway with people complaining about about 'renewable' energy sources (in quotes because such things don't really exist, there are things that just last longer...). For example, the Finnish government is putting over 1 mrd € (=billion in English system) in Nuclear energy. While only a few millions are invested in 'renewable' energy sources. And then people ask why the other one just works soooo much better?
Edited February 16, 2011 by Baniboy (see edit history)

[sheepdog 10]

2. Also, before commenting on safety, you should search and find safety test results done by corporations that specialize in that stuff, like Euro NCAP.

I assume this NCAP is in reference to nuclear power plants. No amount of safty tests will ever convince me that something can't possibly happen in a neclear facility. And the results of an accident that could cause an area of hundreds of miles to become uninhabitable to humans for at least five hundred years is just not worth the risk under any circumstances.

For not being able to drive long distances and charging, I don't see why it is a problem in a city environment. That is, if the ego can take it.

This has nothing to do with ego. Not everybody lives in the city, so yes, for a lot of people this is a big problem.

[rvalkass 5]

I assume this NCAP is in reference to nuclear power plants. No amount of safty tests will ever convince me that something can't possibly happen in a neclear facility. And the results of an accident that could cause an area of hundreds of miles to become uninhabitable to humans for at least five hundred years is just not worth the risk under any circumstances.

Sorry, that comment had me laughing my head off! Euro NCAP is a standard devised by the UK Department for Transport (the name stands for European New Car Assessment Programme) for measuring the safety of new cars in collisions. The safety of both the occupants and pedestrians that may get hit by the car are measured. Each car is then scored on a "star" system (ie. given a score out of 5). Higher ratings mean the car is safer. So, for example, a car may score four stars for passenger safety and three stars for pedestrian safety, implying the car is above average for the safety of the occupants, and below average for the safety of pedestrians who might get hit by the car.

More information can be obtained from the Euro NCAP website: http://www.euroncap.com/en

[Iniyila 2]

Yes charging time is a big problem and no one can say anything else, i live in a city but my university is in another city, those peoples you see using public transport everyday for going from one city to another for working are not little, so if you have to charge a car for 16 hours after every discharge, then you can not use it for going to work. many companies are saying they have reduced the charging time but they tell you a time that you can never see it in real world. Now we can see the advantages of electric cars in many websites and ads and billboards and many other places but look the disadvantages are so bold that no one says them, battery is a replacement of fuel tanks in electric cars because the main goal of battery is to save energy and the fuel tank does the same thing too, now you can refill the fuel tank unlimited times but what about batteries? how many times you can recharge a battery ? so if you ran out of charge every day and recharge batteries every day then the batteries will die after two year and another thing! just like your mobile phone every time you recharge the batteries they will give you shorter time and this will give you less time which you can go with every charge when time passes by, these are things that everyone knows but buying an electric car now is only for keeping the prestige.

[Baniboy 3]

This has nothing to do with ego. Not everybody lives in the city, so yes, for a lot of people this is a big problem.I assume this NCAP is in reference to nuclear power plants. No amount of safty tests will ever convince me that something can't possibly happen in a neclear facility. And the results of an accident that could cause an area of hundreds of miles to become uninhabitable to humans for at least five hundred years is just not worth the risk under any circumstances.

When I reply with a quote, please notice that I'm replying to what you said in the quote tags. I wasn't talking to you when I wrote about cars. I also didn't comment on nuclear power plants. The only part specifically directed to you was when I replied to the quoted text.
Most of the people that own cars live in a city, so I wasn't talking about the people that live in the middle of nowhere and need to drive > 50 km to the nearest Walmart. So yes it is an ego issue in some cases.

@Iniyila: Yea as I said, not a lot of money is put in battery research for cars. If you research the times when a lot of money is invested in scientific research for product development (like NASA stuff or the like) you'll find that money is what it needs.
Edited February 26, 2011 by Baniboy (see edit history)

[sheepdog 10]

Sorry, that comment had me laughing my head off! Euro NCAP is a standard devised by the UK Department for Transport (the name stands for European New Car Assessment Programme)

Oh well, at least you got a good laugh out of the deal! Lordy, it's hard enough in this country to keep up with all the initials of government agencies, let alone know the ones for the other side of the pond! I get it now that the safty comment wasn't directed at me, I just thought it was when I read the post the first time.

I still can't quite figure out the ego thing though. Why would ego be involved with owning a car in the city? You have to drive places in town don't you? Or use it to get the heck out of town!

[Baniboy 3]

By the ego problem I meant that one's ego is too big to drive a car that doesn't have 100 horsepowers and takes 20 seconds to reach 100km/h. People want more performance for more money, while in a city, you don't need high performance and the ability to drive long distances anyway. A better solution would be not using personal cars in a city anyway, but centralize the city enough for public transportation to work properly.

[sheepdog 10]

A better solution would be not using personal cars in a city anyway, but centralize the city enough for public transportation to work properly.

LOL, Yea, like that would be possible! I can see the city planners trying to arrange something as complicated as bus or train schedules with multiple stops and greatly varring amounts of commutors depending on the time of day and location of the stop. In most cities they can't even get the trafic lights coordinated enough to keep traffic from forming a grid lock!

And public transportation would be a real pain if you were out doing grocery shopping and were in the habit of doing your shopping once a week, it would be extremely difficult to carry a week's worth of groceries home if you lived a few blocks or more from the bus stop/train station. If you had a few kids and a big dog, your looking at 30lbs just carrying the dog food and potatoes!

Nice thought though. Getting the masses off the roads would be a major help in the cities, not only with tranport time, but with all the polution, noise, congestion, etc all the extra cars cause. Less cars would make it safer for more bycicles or pedestrians.

[Baniboy 3]

Instead of claiming that something can't be done, you should research if it has already been done instead of writing 2 lines of nonsense about how they can't do it.As I already said, in a city, you don't have to drive 50 km to Walmart, which results in the fact that you don't have to go and buy a ton of groceries once a week/month, instead you can simply buy a little bit while you come back from work. I walk past one grocery store when I get out of the subway on my way home. I could make a quick stop on my way and get out of the metro and visit one of the 2 shopping centers on my way. With a bus stop every 500 m, I don't see a problem with carrying my stuff home. And I live 10 km from the city center. If one is able to walk 500-1000 meters but is too lazy to do so and uses their car instead, I would say stop breathing my air.

[anwiii 17]

are they still giving tax credits if you purchase an electric car in the u.s.? there was a sweet deal going on for those things a few years back.needless to say, i guess they are good for some and not good for others. i wouldn't be in one anytime soon though. i think it's just too inconvenient to change right now. i think the major drawback to them is their price. are they still 50% higher in price than another comparable vehicle? the prices a few years back were just plain ridiculous. also, where i live right now, i wouldn't even know where to go for a public charger and i definately wouldn't be able to charge it at the apartment complex i live at.all in all, i don't think electric cars are worth it. we still have a long way to go.with that said, i might as well be driving an electric car. my alternator is out so my battery doesn't recharge. instead of fixing up this piece of crap truck, i decided to just recharge my battery every time it's low with a cheap $25 battery charger i bought for walmart. i've only lived in the midwest for 6 years and i am turning in to something worse than a "redneck" hahaha

[Iniyila 2]

are they still giving tax credits if you purchase an electric car in the u.s.? there was a sweet deal going on for those things a few years back.

yes they still give but only for specific models, of course you can not use that advantages for good ones and this is only for those which do not have a good selling rate, in some models you even get a discount which government pays for that discount (the sellers themselves do not say this but all peoples know that) and this is really strange.

The important thing that governments do not understand is that these cars are not a replacement for petrol & diesel cars and they can not be, you can not have one of these cars as your main one and you can only have one if you have another petrol car because when you buy a car you don't think as it being able to go only for some little distance just to get you to your work or shopping center, of course you will expect the car being able to take you to another city too when you need it and these cars are not capable of that thing so i don't think about it as a complete car and i think it is like a bike that you take it for little distances but when you want to go and see your mother in another city you take your petrol/diesel cars.

I think diesel cars are just enough for saving out environment and so why we should insist on using electric cars, they are really not useful as your main car and i can say most peoples which have one also have another petrol or diesel one too.

A better solution would be not using personal cars in a city anyway, but centralize the city enough for public transportation to work properly.

yes this is a good solution but only if the time you need to go to a specific destination with public transport is 20 percent more than going to the same destination with your car, when i see i need 100 percent more time to use public transport i never use it. even with many cars in street and huge traffics still i will go to my university in 30 minutes with my car but going there with public transport takes me 75 minutes, so you will waste 45*2 minutes (a movie ) just using the public transport and of course i pay more for that too. so i have to waste my time and my money for what ? some peoples say it is good for me to waste my time and money but i give the bear in the north pole one more second for living but i don't think so, i go with my car and sorry big bear i don't like to loose 90 minutes of my life every day to give you a second because it is not fair.