The Electric Vehicle, is It the Answer?

What Battery Chemistry Is The Most Advanced ?

Batteries, for as long as it can be remembered have been bulky and difficult to handle, especially using lead-acid, which have been in use since the beginning. Battery power sources have not changed a great deal since the advent of the basic Edison cell. Today, we have the latest technology at hand, the Lithium Ion rechargeable battery, a real power pack of unequalled ball of energy. True, it is expensive, but then, so is the cost of oil imports and the subsequent gasoline refinement process, with its yearly ups and downs. With the use of this new energy source, it is believed that finally a true totally electric car will routinely travel the roads and the high speed autobahns of the world. True, our battery powered car will require a small internal combustion power source to backup the on-board battery pack, bur, for the initial design attempt, it will have to be part of the package.

What About Equivalent Gas Mileage With This System ?

We are told from one electric car designer that pushing the newly recharged batteries and using the small backup engine to recharge the batteries, one could get the equivalent of about 150 miles per gallon. Of course, you still need to keep the backup engine fueled and we have to assume that this fuel would be an E-85 modified engine. We have to keep in mind that the batteries would most likely require an overnight recharge to run smoothly, but this would all depend on your personal daily round trip commuting distances. Now, what if our daily commute is 100 miles. Would this design approach meet the requirements ? The best Lithium battery chemistry should give the driver 50 miles on a full charge, this means the E-85 fueled engine would have to do the other 50 miles of travel. This can be considered a worse case scenario and so at say 30 m.p.g, the engine would consume about 2 gallons. A quick calculation means about 50 m.p.g.. for the combination.

So, What About The Energy Consumed To Produce The Batteries ?

Well, one has to consider this to be honest, but remember that this energy consumed is a one-time cost and we have to divide this by the amount of times the batteries are used. There is still the daily…or almost daily charge of the lithium battery system to keep the car running and it does drop the effective equivalent m.p.g. a little. The exact adjustment depends on the local cost per kilo watt hour. What has to be taken into account is the yearly increase in renewable energy sources, slowly decreasing the need for fossil fuels. All in all, it would be a new experience in driving, but it would certainly, over time, as did the original gasoline engine, increase the use of fossil fuel over the decades, now trend it in the other direction, which is its prime objective…