I think in their heart everyone realizes gasoline powered cars are dead and are just waiting to be buried. More countries are making inroads into electric cars than ever before and while there numbers compared to gasoline vehicles are much smaller, they are growing very fast. We all know there are problems with electric cars that we would find annoying. One of the greatest drawbacks is not all electric cars can be plugged in and even those which can take far too long to charge. High-voltage charging stations are necessary and there is more than one standard being used, so even when one is driving and needs a charge, the station they are near if they are near one might be incompatible. There have been all sorts of solutions explored for this problem. One of them is by Elon Musk who wants to build charging stations across the United States for Tesla cars. He has also built the biggest commercial building which is to be used to create batteries.

I applaud Musk for his forward thinking but what he is doing is very dangerous and history has proven this. Why I am getting at is the fact electric vehicles are really in their infancy. Yes I know they have been around for over a hundred years, but this is the first time we have tried to improve them so they could compete with and beat gasoline cars. This means things will be changing rapidly and one who invests in one technology may get burned as another more effective technology is discovered. When musk was asked about competition, he said he was glad to have it because he wanted to see the world advance. If he meant this it was quite noble of him and shows how interested he is in the technological future. Over the years we have heard a lot of talk about new types of batteries, but so far the dominant battery seems to be Lithium-ion. These batteries are in our computers and electronic devices and have spread to vehicles of all sorts including airplanes. They are known to have problems, but most of the time are relatively safe.

A few days before I wrote this article a plane had to land because its lithium-ion battery overheated and went on fire. This has happened in quite a few laptops over the years and in several other airplanes. I don’t follow these things that closely, but I imagine there must have been some car fires due to these batteries. I have heard about batteries being developed that would eliminate this problem, but it seems all of them have drawbacks. The one which looked the most promising to me was a solid state battery which was encased in plastic and said to be fireproof. One of the things I liked about it was the fact you could increase its power by merely stacking more of these plastic batteries together, which is similar to the way the lithium-ion battery works. I first heard about the battery about five years ago, but since then nothing else has been said which I have discovered. This makes me think perhaps a flaw was found.

The Chinese, not to be outdone, figured out how to make a bus which is suitable for a metropolitan area and is powered by electricity and never has to be put on the charger. They created a bus which retains a charge for about ten minutes when running, but is able to recharge itself as it stops and starts on its route. While this would not be suitable for long distance buses, it could be a perfect bus for a place like Manhattan where the bus stops at almost every corner. There are many other cities which have a lot of people and could use a bus like this, so I think this one is a hit and I wouldn’t be surprised to see these buses in some of our own cities.

One of the biggest problems for homeowners with electric cars is the fact they need some sort of a charging station and these electric cars need 220 volts. I have no idea what it would cost to charge an electric car which might take all night using this type of charging station, but knowing the price of electricity in some of the cities on the East Coast, it seems to me it could be very expensive. I saw an estimate of the cost per mile to run an electric vehicle which in this case was a Nissan Leaf. The estimate stated it would cost about nine cents per mile, but this is a very generic figure. First of all the people who made the survey claimed this was the price to run this electric vehicle in New York City. If this is true New York City has one of the highest prices for electric in the country, so the cost in the rest of the country would be far less. Somehow I doubt this figure and think it might be higher, but on the other hand I would think repairs are less frequent and cheaper on an all-electric car.

An announcement was just made by scientists at Purdue University. They claim to have made an incredible breakthrough for electric cars. They have invented a battery which uses the flow system. This battery lacks the membranes which cause other batteries to fail and add to their cost. They claim the battery is so safe you could keep it around the house and never have to worry. This is not the best part of the discovery however. The scientists claim they can use current gas stations to charge these batteries and it won’t take any longer than filling your gas tank. How can this be? The way the battery works is it uses fluid. If you’re battery needed to be recharged you would pull into a gas station using the same pump and they would suck out the old fluid and fill you with new fluid. The old fluid would be sent to a plant to be revived and then used again. This sounds almost too good to be true doesn’t?

I hate to be a critic because if this works it will be incredible and the best thing that ever happened to the automobile industry and the environment, but I can’t help but feel it will become a way for the oil industry to continue to charge high prices for fuel. The only difference here might be the pumping of battery fluid instead of the pumping of fossil fuel. I certainly hope that doesn’t come to pass, but we have to realize the oil industry is probably frantically looking for a way to replace their profits and this could be it. Aside from that, this could certainly be a great thing for all of us. As I said before, electric cars have less parts and certainly don’t pollute on the scale of a gasoline powered car. They don’t need expensive catalytic converters or even expensive transmissions so if they mass-produce them they could become cheaper than the cars we buy today.

As time goes by some bright scientists might even figure out how to rejuvenate the battery fluid while it is still in the car, making the car’s range infinite. There are good things coming with electric vehicles and some countries have already said they are going to stop producing combustion engines. India is one of those countries and claims in the next eight years they will switch entirely to electric vehicles. This is the wave of the future and it looks like nothing can stop it.