The Peak Oil Crisis: The Future Of Our Cars – Part 4

Hardly a day goes by without an announcement that some company is either developing a new model of an electric powered car or has made some sort of progress on the ones under development. These announcements are coming from major automobile manufacturers all over the world and from numerous startups working in small garages. It is clear from all the activity and rapidly increasing oil prices that the day of the electric car is almost upon us. For the immediate future there is no practical alternative for personal mobility with the speed, flexibility and comfort that we have become accustomed to except the electric car.

Before we look at the various forms these electric cars might take we should answer the key question of whether there will be enough electricity to replace gasoline and diesel we currently consume in cars and trucks
The coming versions of all electric cars will easily provide all the speed we can safely use and should have ranges on the order of 100 miles or better until they need to be plugged in again..

The key to the electric cars of course is the battery or other device to store the electricity. For the immediate future, the on-board power storage device of choice seems to be the lithium-ion battery. These have already been developed in numerous forms and chemistries. Manufacturers are busy trying to sort out which of these is the best fit for the size and type of electric car they are trying to design.

If the electric battery works as hoped, there are still a number of issues, such as how quickly they can be produced in large quantities, how much they will cost in large quantities, and the main question of whether there will be enough lithium to replace the 230 million cars in the U.S., the 900 million cars in the world, and the billions more that the six billion people in the world hope to own some day. This is indeed the key question of the age of the electric car.

There are other candidates for advanced electricity storage in the wings ranging from carbon foam to ultra capacitors that may prove to be more affordable and available than lithium-ion batteries. We should have better insights into this issue in the next five to ten years.

Falls Church News Press