Real benefits? and is it real?

Talking about the new modern technology, which is 100% electric powered car, is pretty common these days if you are the person who is interested in the tech news. Many scientists and engineers have already proved about the benefits of the electric cars comparing to the internal combustion engine vehicles in environmental and energy efficient phenomenon.

             Electric cars contribute to cleaner air in the cities because they produce no harmful pollution at the tailpipe from the onboard source of power, such as particulates, volatile organic compounds, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, ozone, lead, and various oxides of nitrogen. The clean air benefit is usually local effect because depending on the source of the electricity used to recharge the batteries; air pollutant emissions are shifted to the location of the generation plants. The amount of emitted carbon dioxide depends on the emission intensity of the power source, which is being used to charge the vehicle; the efficiency of the vehicle and the energy wasted in the charging process. This is referred to as the long tailpipe of electric vehicles. For the main electricity, the emission intensity significantly varies per country, and within a particular country, it depends on demand. The availability of renewable sources and the efficiency of the fossil fuel-based generation used at a given time. Charging a vehicle using renewable energy yields very low carbon footprint.

            In addition, Internal combustion engines are relatively inefficient at converting on-board fuel energy to propulsion as most of the energy is wasted as heat. On the other hand, electric motors are more efficient in converting stored energy into driving a vehicle, and electric drive vehicles do not consume energy while at rest or coasting, and some of the energy lost when braking is captured and reused through regenerative braking, which captures as much as one fifth of the energy normally lost during braking. Typically, conventional gasoline engines effectively use only 15% of the fuel energy content to move the vehicle or to power accessories, and diesel engines can reach on-board efficiencies of 20%, while electric drive vehicles have on-board efficiency of around 80%.

            From the contents above is the absolutely beneficial fact of electric car, but there are some problems that scientists, engineers, and governments have to figure out such as popularization, practicality, and realization.

            From New York Times, the recent news of the electric powered cars mentioned about some practical solutions about these problems using the major U.S. electric car company Telsa as an example.

            Tesla Motors said on Wednesday that it planned to invest about $2 billion in a large-scale factory to produce cheaper batteries for a mass-market electric car within three years. Tesla said the factory would allow it to develop and cut the costs of its batteries for its vehicles more quickly, in part by producing finished batteries from metal ore instead of from components. Sales of its Model S sedan, which costs $70,000 and higher, has been constrained by a battery shortage, the company has said. By building its own factory, Tesla would have more control over the supply and cost of its batteries.

The automaker expects to reduce the per-kilowatt cost of its battery packs by more than 30 percent by the end of the first year of volume production for its third-generation electric vehicle. At full production, the factory, known as the Gigafactory, would produce enough lithium-ion batteries for about 500,000 cars annually by 2020, more than suppliers worldwide produced last year. The potential uses for mass-market Tesla vehicles go far beyond transportation and could help redefine the relationship between consumers and their cars.

Mr. Musk is also chairman of the residential solar power company Solar City, which is already moving in that direction, using Tesla battery packs for solar customers to store power from their rooftop arrays for use at night, as well as a system for businesses to help them reduce their need for power from the grid. Other car manufacturers are experimenting as well. Last year, Ford Motor announced a partnership including Sun Power and Whirlpool to demonstrate how families can reduce their electricity bills by using electric vehicles in conjunction with home appliances.

Though electric vehicles and the kind of technology needed to use them as miniature mobile power plants, have been slow to catch on, analysts say that the market for them will grow, especially with gas prices remaining high. In January, Navigant Research predicted that by 2022, there would be more than 35 million of them on roads worldwide. Tesla said it would partly finance the factory by issuing $1.6 billion in convertible senior notes in a public offering.

Reference

Shah, Saurin D. (2009). "2". Plug-In Electric Vehicles: What Role for Washington? (1st ed.). The Brookings Institution. pp. 29, 37 and 43.

Sperling, Daniel; Gordon, Deborah (2009). Two billion cars: driving toward sustainability. Oxford University Press. pp. 22–26.

“CO2 Intensity”. Eirgrid. Retrieved 2010-12-12.

Clark, Duncan (2009-07-17). "Real-time "CO2 intensity" site makes the case for midnight dishwashing". London: Guardian. Retrieved 2010-12-12.

External Link

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/automobiles/tesla-plans-5-billion-battery-factory-for-mass-market-electric-car.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As%2C%5B%22RI%3A9%22%2C%22RI%3A14%22%5D