Why Electric Cars Won't Work

Well, they will, just not for a very long time. They have a number of simply huge problems to get around before they become a viable and cheaper option than traditional petrol and diesel cars.


First issue to be resolved is their mileage. It's terrible. For those in the double glazing selling game, like the national managers who do hundreds of miles a week, this just isn't an option worth considering. Typical mileage on a single charge might squeeze out 200-250, maybe slightly more depending on the battery and make of car. Charging takes between 8-12 hours, which again for those doing lots of travelling, this is only going to hold them up. Manufacturers and scientists need to come up with a solution to charge the cars batteries a lot quicker, and find a way to store more charge in them.


The next problem is where you charge it. The Government has announced the installation of 4000 electricity charging points across the UK. This may sound a lot, but in reality it is nowhere near enough. You can imagine the scene. 20-30 years in the future when we may have possibly made the jump from petrol to electric, you would have hundreds of people vying to get a space at a charging point. This is the wrong way to go about it. For people to properly adapt to electric driving, charging points need to be installed from people's homes, not in random public places.


Then you have the issue of generating the electricity. The power stations used to generate electric really aren't as green as they should be. If the country is to gear up for electric driving, then we are going to have to open up more power stations to cope with the extra demand. But we need to find a way to do this in a more environmentally friendly way.


So, they cost too much, you can't get decent mileage and producing them causes a huge carbon footprint, which goes against the environmental principles of electric driving.


Problem is we can't wait decades for electric cars to overcome these issues. The route we should be heading down is the hydrogen fuel cell one. It's cleaner to produce. The end result is water from the exhaust, hydrogen is all around so we don't have to produce it in the way electricity does. All we need to do is to develop a way to store and compress it on mass (which is already being done in places like Germany) and we have a more viable solution.