Electric Cars:

A car can be a wonderful thing. It can take you where you want, when you want -- even when those places aren't served by public transportation. In fact, much of modern life would be impossible without cars. They help us get to our jobs, schools, grocery stores or even just to the local shopping mall. Unfortunately, as wonderful as cars are, they also have some serious drawbacks. Two of these drawbacks are that they often cost a lot of money to maintain and they pollute the atmosphere with noxious gases. Air pollution has become a serious problem in many urban areas, and with gasoline prices at record highs, the internal combustion engine may soon be a luxury that society simply can't afford.
Few people would advocate giving up cars altogether, but is there a way we can have the power and convenience of an automobile without the pollution and expense caused by burning gasoline? Fortunately, there is. Many people think that the cars of the not-so-distant future will be powered not by gasoline, but by electricity. In fact, these electric cars -- also known as EVs or electric vehicles -- aren't futuristic at all. Electric vehicles have been around since the first half of the 19th century; however, even now in the 21st century, internal combustion engines still rule.
The heart of an electric car is its battery. Unlike the batteries in most cars, which primarily serve to start the engine and run accessories like the radio or air conditioner, the battery in an electric car runs everything. Most importantly, it runs the electric motor -- or, more precisely, it runs a controller which in turn runs the electric motor -- so it needs to be powerful and long-lasting enough to take drivers where they need to go with a minimum of recharging. Until recently, no reliable, mass-producible batteries have been manufactured that could make electric cars competitive with gas-powered cars. However, that's beginning to change. Electric cars have not only become feasible, but they're now expected to start rolling off the assembly lines of major automobile manufacturers.
Perhaps the greatest problem associated with electric car batteries is recharging them. The best solution to the recharging problem is to take the car home in the evening and plug it in, similar to the way you might plug in a laptop computer or digital music player, so that it can recharge overnight. EVs will come with charging systems that allow them to recharge from a standard electric socket so that the next morning you'll be ready to hit the road again. Although at least one company claims to be developing systems that can recharge an electric car in 10 minutes, existing rechargers take between 3 and 10 hours to bring an electric car battery up to full strength using normal home electricity.
Once an EV has been recharged, how far will it go before it needs to be recharged again? This depends on a number of factors, including the type of battery in the vehicle. EVs using lead-acid batteries have the shortest range -- around 80 miles (128.7 km) on a single charge. NiMH batteries turn in a better performance, with a range of about 120 miles (193.1 km) per charge. This is where lithium-ion batteries excel, with a range of more than 220 miles (354.1 km) per charge -- using the Tesla Roadster as an example. If driving distance is the most important consideration, lithium-ion batteries are the ones to choose.

The range of an EV can be extended even further with a technology known as regenerative braking, which uses the kinetic energy of the car's brakes to recharge the battery on the fly. Under optimum driving conditions, regenerative braking can extend the car's range up to 50 percent, though in most situations the gain in driving range will be smaller.
EVs will be best suited for commuting to work or school and for local travel and shopping trips. The most obvious advantage of electric car batteries is that they don't produce the pollution associated with internal combustion engines. Another important advantage of battery-powered motors over gas-powered engines is the lower cost of the fuel -- that is, electricity for EVs and gas for the internal combustion engines. The United States Department of Energy has calculated that a typical EV can run for 43 miles on a dollar's worth of electricity. Yet another advantage of these rechargeable batteries is that they recycle well. Almost 100 percent of these batteries can be recycled, which keeps old batteries from becoming a disposal problem.