Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Road transport
Electric cars
It is beginning to look as though the only real answer, on energy security
and climate-change grounds, to transport's dependence on oil is the elec-
tric battery-powered car. (Provided, of course, that the electricity used
to charge them can be provided by low-carbon means.) These have been
around for a long time. Indeed at the outset of the automobile age, in the
years 1899 and 1900, electric cars outsold their two competitors in the
US: cars driven by steam (quite impractical); and cars using the gasoline-
powered internal combustion engine (the clear eventual winner over the
subsequent century).
Ironically, electric-car technology undermined itself with the inven-
tion of the electric starter in petrol-powered vehicles. As Gary Kendall
notes in his book
Plugged In
(written for the World Wildlife Fund) this
“eliminated the need for the hand-crank and thereby neutralized a unique
selling point that electric vehicles could previously claim: ease of use,
especially for female drivers unwilling to turn the physically demand-
ing crank”. Kendall goes on to suggest that this “encouraged automotive
battery manufacturers to focus on mass production of small, low capac-
ity auxiliary batteries rather than on increasing storage capacity, which
would have benefited the range of electric vehicles”. His implication is that
somehow electric batteries could have replaced the internal combustion
engine earlier.
Li-ion
Forty, thirty or even ten years ago, such a shift is hard to imagine. For
it has taken years of development in consumer electronics, where the
energy-to-weight ratio of a battery is vital, to produce the lithium-ion
battery that is now powering electric cars. There will probably always be
a place for oil, probably in the form of diesel, to power trucks; it seems
unlikely that electric batteries will ever hold enough power to use in
long-distance road haulage. But with the advent of lithium-ion batteries,
it looks as though electric vehicles will no longer be confined to the niche
applications of milk floats, golf carts, forklift trucks and airport buggies.
Lithium-battery development began some thirty years ago at the Exxon
oil company, an ironic birthplace were electricity to eventually displace
