Oil is the backbone of modern life. It is in the food we eat, the houses we live in and the cars we drive. One of the most important commodities in the world is oil. For 150 years we have been extracting it from the ground, it is the easy and economical fuel that makes the modern world possible.
The electric car
Today you can buy vehicles that are fully electric, as well as vehicles that are partly electric, these are able to run on electricity for shorter journeys before continuing on petrol or diesel power.
Fully electric vehicles dont need any other fuel such as petrol or diesel as they are powered 100% by electricity which is stored in the battery inside the vehicle. Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles combine petrol or diesel with a battery powered motor. They can be plugged into the main electricity to provide you with substantial driving range on electric only power.
There are also extended range electric vehicles that are powered by an electric motor which takes the energy from a battery. If the battery becomes depleted, the petrol engine can continue to power the electric motor.
Electric cars are very cheap to run, they only cost 3 to 4 dollars to fully charge and this gives you a typical range of around 100 miles. A petrol or diesel car costs 12 to 18 dollars to drive 100 miles, in other words, six times the cost of an electric car.
Alternatives to the electric car
There are many alternatives to the electric car. One of them is the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle and it requires a couple of things to understand. When we think about hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.The chemical reaction inside the proton exchange membrane creates the electricity required by the vehicle. The number one benefit is the clean hydrogen. These cars emit nothing but water vapor and not much of it.
The second benefit is sustainability as hydrogen is the most abundant thing on earth as 75% of the mass of the planet is made up of hydrogen. Refilling a hydrogen fuel cell car takes a few minutes compared to hours plugged in from the most of the electric charges.
One of the many challenges possessed by this car his distribution, this is because hydrogen needs to be highly compressed but naturally it needs to be 14 times lighter than air, it will want to be very gaseous and low in density so it has to be managed, it needs to be created, it has to be compressed, it has to be kept in that state from the point where it is stored to the point when it is put in the vehicle. we think about the proton exchange membrane.
That makes it trickier than gasoline and there is also the problem of processing the hydrogen. However, the future of the fuel cell car seems bright as new materials are discovered and these materials will enable the production of cheap fuel cell vehicles.
At CES 2014, Toyota announced that it plans to launch a fuel cell vehicle by the start of 2015 and it has already presented a prototype.
Author Bio: A well recognized automotive expert Chris enjoys providing used cars. Chris is a trusted used car expert and provides an insider’s perspective, on a wide range of used car topics, aspects and industry. When he is not busy he lends his automotive experience as a writer through various articles on a number of sites which are published in such a way as on http://tcaauto.com/.
