Electric Cars (2)

Recent discussions in the news and a Top Gear item have prompted me to post again on the subjetc of electric cars.

Top Gear carried out a review of two electric cars at around about twenty five to twenty seven thousand pounds AFTER the government subsidy had been applied.  These are not cheap cars then.  The exact models are irrelevant as it seems these are representative of those presently coming on to the market.

The manufacturer of one of the cars claimed that before the test journey the cars were not fully charged and therefore this was not representative.  I have to disagree in that you may well find yourself in a situation whereby the car is not fully recharged before a journey.  With petrol, diesel and lpg cars you can handle this by fuelling quickly and easily en route.

Their next comment was that the cars were run down to ensure they ran out of charge in a place where there were no public charging points.  Again fair as there are very few of these in the whole of the UK especially if you are outside of the major cities.

I don't doubt that Top Gear did emphasise the negative features, but there have been mamy longer term tests over a week or more which have come to the same conclusions.  Top Gear is an entertainment programme with limited time.  They made the key points about electric cars well I feel.

Supporters of the electric car have said that it is all being viewed wrongly.  They suggest that the electric car is primarily a city car. 

Sounds good so far as the daily mileage is likely to be low.  All these city car owners will then need a second car to use on longer journeys or succumb to expensive and unreliable public transport.

More of a problem however is charging.  As there are very few public charge points, even in London, then you can only realistically charge your car at home.  Fine if you live in a property with a drive or better still a garage (to minimise jokers and vandals tampering with the charging cable).  Many people who live in cities have neither of these, and whilst those in ground floor properties could try and run a cable across the pavement to their car (Health and Safety!!) what about those on upper floors?

Someone suggested that electric cars have replaceable battery packs so you can drive into a filling station and swap your flat battery for a fully charged one.  There are two big problems here.  Given the weight of these battery packs a fair amount of insfratructure will have to be installed to achieve this, and a reasonable stockpile of batteries to ensure there are always some fully charged.  More importantly is the design of a common battery pack - manufacturers all have their own designs  tailored to their car design - the chance of a common battery for all cars, fitted in a location where it can be changed in a reasonable timescale is somewhere close to none at all.

Electric cars have only one purpose in their existence - to allow wealthy 'eco friendly' people to make a public statement.

I cannot see them being a practical solution in my lifetime.