Electric vehicles

Electric vehicles

An electric vehicle is a vehicle that propelled by an engine running only on electrical energy, unlike the hybrid vehicles, often with two engines with an electric.

The electric road vehicles have emerged in the early twentieth century. La Jamais Contente and was the first car to exceed the speed of 100 km per hour. Many small electric delivery vehicles were also used in the past. However, the progress of the internal combustion engine were faster than those related to batteries, and electric road vehicle quickly fell into disuse. The transport vehicle will start to worry about search in the electric car a means of transport does not pollute the air during operation, with the advent of air pollution issues (greenhouse gas emissions and particulates) and noise.

EDF, which still has 1,500 electric vehicles, announced September 5, 2007 a technology partnership with Toyota, on the evaluation and development of PHEVs, and recharging terminals, parking and roads.

Electric cars are generally much more energy efficient than cars using combustion engines (diesel, gasoline, hydrogen). Indeed, the charge of a battery can achieve a yield of 98%, ditto for the landfill. The use of energy in an electric motor is 97%, resulting in a yield of taking the wheel of 83%. Furthermore, electricity can be produced locally and cleanly (micro-turbines, solar panels), which significantly reduces the network losses and indirect emissions from energy compared to fossil fuels traveling far and long. Recall that the performance of a conventional internal combustion engine is less than 20% in normal use, which means that 80% of the energy produced is lost.

A modern battery allows for over 1000 cycles (over 200,000 km in the case of a battery with an autonomy of 200 km) at an average cost of 2 cents per mile and 0.25 cents per mile for electricity. To date, there is no technology more environmentally friendly and cheaper.

The batteries enable the most modern battery life up to 500 km and can often be recharged at home. The establishment of a network of charging stations would still be the ultimate solution to completely resolve the issues of autonomy of these vehicles. Israel, Denmark, Australia, California and Hawaii currently implementing systems of this type to allow the democratization of the electric road vehicle.

Electric vehicles have other advantages. Their “fuel” (electricity + battery) can be cheaper than gasoline (calculated on the basis of the price of a liter of petrol to 1 euro) to a certain annual mileage for absorbing the additional initial by the full battery of inexpensive electricity. They are very easy to maintain, requiring very little change room, and the engine can perform up to 1 million miles for cars.

Their main drawback lies today in the low range (up to 200-480 km at a speed of 110 km / h), their high purchase price, particularly for batteries that are generally available for hire by the manufacturers, inadequate after sales service (both in know-how of the geographical distribution) and a resale price totally dependent on battery condition. The economy of the electric vehicle because its cost per kilometer (prk), incorporating all costs and revenues (cost, state aid, product resale) is much higher than that of a diesel vehicle.