Why Electric Cars?

In this article, let’s discuss about electric cars. In modern era we can see different types of electrical vehicles on the road. More people are considering these vehicles as an alternation for the conventional combustion engine vehicles because of its fuel cost and inefficiency in highway traffic. Are these vehicles really energy efficient and cost effective? Let’s find out.

Electrical car is not a recent transportation method. In fact first electric car was produced 20 years before the Ford Model T was built. Thomas Parker built the first practical electric car in London in 1884. This car was powered using a specially designed rechargeable battery. In late 19^th century and early 20^th century electric cars were the preferred automobiles considering the level of comfort and ease of operation that was not provided by combustion engine automobiles of the time.

Electric car built by Thomas Parker, photo from 1895 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

In modern days one can say the most popular electric vehicles are produced by the American company Tesla because of its elegant and futuristic designs and technology poured into their vehicles. Before I come to the modern electric car phenomenon, I would like to talk about the qualities of electrical vehicles a century ago, then you can understand where we are now. Morris & Salom Electric Carriage and Wagon Company is the first electric car company in America. Their first commercial car was named Elecrobat.  It was slow, heavy and had steal tires. Batteries were weigh more than 700 kilograms. It was not a very good example for what I mentioned earlier. 

Morris and Salom in the 1894 Electrobat
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

Another company named Caffrey Carriage Company in Camden, New Jersey built a car which was lighter and had pneumatic tires. It had two 1.1 kilo watt motors which can drive the car up to 40 kilo meters per charge at 32 kilo meters per hour. It was steered by its rear wheels.

Late 20^th century was all about combustion engine cars. With the rise of oil companies, the world had turn their back on electric vehicles. Therefore gasoline cars flooded the automobile market. Then manufactures were reluctant to produce electric vehicle to drive on highways.

I personally think that today’s electrical car revolution has begun with the Tesla. In 2004, Elone Musk led a team at tesla to re spawn the electric car for the masses. Tesla signed a contract with group lotus to build Roadster in 2005. The Roadster used an AC motor descended directly from Nikola Tesla's original 1882 design. If you are interested you can research about how the name “Tesla” came to this company.

Tesla Roadster
Source: https://www.tesla.com

In 2008 Tesla Roadster was the first electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells. It can drive up to 320 kilo meters per charge. Tesla stopped taking orders for the roadster in the US market in 2011 after selling 2,250 cars around the world. Tesla began shipping Model S sedan in 2012 and Model X crossover SUV in 2015.

Tesla Model S
Source: https://www.tesla.com