The Battery Problem for Electric Cars
Electric cars are the hot trend. Most people expect them to be just like hybrids, but they will not. This is because electric cars have a battery problem.Let’s consider the average hybrid car compared to a normally aspirated vehicle. The Ford Fusion Hybrid is an award winning vehicle. It drives just like the traditional version of the car, but gets better gas mileage. It goes just as fast. It actually goes much farther on a tank of gas than the traditional model. All and all, it is the same car but with better performance.
Would a Ford Fusion electric car simply get even more mileage? Unfortunately, no. The electric car is an entirely different platform and it has entirely different issues that must be faced. The primary problem is the car is intended to be a suburb vehicle, not one that can go great lengths. The battery is the weak link.
The batteries on electric cars are lithium based. This represents the best technology we have in batteries, but it isn’t very good. The problem is the batteries just don’t hold a very powerful charge. This translates into a published range of about 100 miles for an electric car. That is not very far if you think about how much you drive in a day. This is particularly true when the truth about the batteries is published.
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The 100 range figure is based on the lithium batteries in the car being fully charged when you start and completely out of a charge when you finish your day. This is not how lithium batteries work. If you run them all the way down, they will not last. Instead, they typically can only be run down till there is 20 percent of the charge remaining. That immediately cuts our range of driving down to 80 miles a charge. That isn’t a lot for someone living in a city like Chicago, Los Angeles or San Francisco.
The first mass produced electric cars will be out in late 2010. It is great to see them hit the market, but buyers have to be realistic. These cars are going to be limited in scope and performance until the battery technology is dramatically improved.
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