Introduction to Electric Cars

Electric car is basically a type of automobile which uses electric motor rather than a gasoline engine for impulsion or forward motion, while these cars are basically the automobiles power-driven by electricity and is used by the people for transportation purpose. Different type of onboard battery packs are used for providing power to these electric motors.

Normally these cars come under the category of battery electric vehicles (BEV) due to the usage of onboard battery packs which provides power to its electric motor (Leitman & Bob, 2008).

Electric cars were there in the world since the beginning of the 19th century but initially it wasn’t able to gain the attention of the people using cars as the medium of transportation.

Electric cars popularity began to rise in the late 19th century and particularly in the start of the 20th century as well because at that time, electricity was considered as the most preferable method for propulsion or forward motion (Sandalow, 2009). Another reason for its increasing popularity at that period was the altitude of comfort and easiness of function these electric cars were providing to its consumers as compared to gas cars or gasoline engine cars which were of low quality at that period of time.

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But soon by the end of the 20th century, ICE technology start enhancing significantly enough that it was able to regain the advantage for gasoline cars through providing better and larger range of gasoline cars with the rising demand of petroleum road and rail network in that era and the significant rise in their production leading to mass production of gasoline cars created demand and helped gasoline cars to earn the competitive edge.

Better use of the marketing strategies by Ford Company also played a major part in the decline of electric cars in United States by 1950s.

After that, the demand of these electric cars kept decreasing but they temporarily re-emerged in the United States in late 1990s due to the changes in government regulations that were made because of the concern that the gasoline cars are causing pollution in the environment so electric cars may be used as an alternative as they act as environmental friendly if compared of gasoline cars. And in the so past few years electric cars has been able to re-capture their market as there are quite high in these past few years. Working of an Electric Car Generally, an electric car entails three major components.

1) Battery 2) Controller, and 3) Electric Motor The first component is the battery. The battery of an electric car is most important part in itself. Generally lead acid batteries are used in these electric cars. Lead acid battery is basically an electrical storage device or apparatus which is used to store energy or power through reversed chemical reaction. This battery consists of plates of lead or grids and an electrolyte comprising with a dilute sulphuric acid which basically is used for converting electrical energy into potential energy and back again.

This electrolyte present in this battery is dangerous and can harm your health and can lead to burns as well if made in contact with (Oxlade, 2009). The Lead acid battery used in electric cars is quite expensive and it also makes the car very heavier as it enhances the weight of the car by at least 1000 pounds. Still there are different alternatives available with different battery sizes which may help to increase the car efficiency as lower the weight higher is the car efficiency. A large amount of storage is required as there are more than 50 batteries on average which are being installed inside the car for power generation.

Although large numbers of batteries are being installed in electric cars still their engine is not as stronger as of gasoline cars. After travelling a decent bit of distance, an electric car requires a time period of around 9 to 10 hours for the complete recharging course. Although so many batteries are being used in the building of the car machinery, still there is an added 12 Volt battery being installed on board so that car accessories like wipers, radio, air conditioners, etc can extract the amount of power they require for proper working.

Now after the installation of these batteries a charger is required for making these batteries charged whenever they require energy, so for that purpose a converter of around 12 Volt to 300 Volt is installed (Georgano, 2008). The 300 Volt DC generally serves the purpose of driving the AC motor. That 300 Volt DC is being converted into 240 Volt AC and then it is transferred into the electric motor with the use of the converter installed. Now for converting the DC volt into sine waves swiftly, transistors are being installed for this mere purpose. Now the controller plays the part of a negotiator or third party in transactions i.

e. it collects the power from the battery and then transfers or provides this power to the motor. When the accelerator present in the car is pushed or pressed then the controller gathers and transfers around 96 Volt to the motor and as soon as the accelerator is discharged or set free then the controller collects and provides 0 Volt to the motor. As the accelerator of the car is pushed in different modes, so the output or power that is being transferred by the controller to the motor depends upon the mode of accelerator being pressed (Pilgrim, 2010).

To ensure that variable but relative power is discharged or transferred from the accelerator to the motor there are different potentiometers attached in between accelerator and the controller. But if the potentiometer gets damaged or unusable then the consequence can be lethal, so in trying to minimize that risk two potentiometers are attached in between them instead of one. But both the potentiometers should illustrate the same value in order to ensue, if the values aren’t equal then the controller stops performing and due to its stoppage the car stops immediately.

In many cars the controller is of a manual type showing two operations of ON and OFF. Whenever the driver should turn the switch ON and when decelerating he should turn OFF the switch. But it was creating discomfort for the driver as it will not create a continuous flow and he also will have to pay attention to operate this switch and that will shrink the amount of concentration he is paying on driving that can lead to accidents. On the other hand, the controller constantly monitors the value of potentiometer and quickly transfers the relative amount of power to the motor.

The motors used in the electric cars vary as per the preference of the consumer or user as some prefer DC motor while others prefer. In majority cases, the DC motor is preferred by the users rather than AC motor because DC motors is effortlessly configured and they are very cheap as well. AC motors requires a comprehensive installation in the form a 3-phase motors operating at around 240Volt AC. On contrary, DC motors only require 96 to 192 Volts with another advantage as it can overdriven for a relatively shorter period of time period.

COMPARISON between GAS CARS & ELECTRIC CARS Although there isn’t much difference physically visible between the two cars i. e. electric and gas cars, but there is a fact that gas cars in the past years have an edge over the electric cars. The reason why gas cars were felt stronger than the electric cars was the uninterrupted flow it generates through the use of gasoline engines. The combustion engine used in gasoline cars is way much stronger to produce better mileage and speed than the one produced by the electric car.

Due to the strong engine , a gas car can easily travel for about 250 to 300 miles at one go but it would be difficult for the electric car to even travel a mere distance of 100 miles in one go due to average power that it produces which is not enough for long drive travelling. Similarly the stoppage time also serves as an important disadvantage for the electric cars as it would require around 10 hours to recharge the battery completely to start the moving or transportation process again. While, it takes around few minutes to refuel the gas tank and starts travelling.

A person planning to convert his car into an electric one would require huge initial cost but the profit of using this electric car in long run would be better as cost per mileage is very less in using electric cars. Although these discrepancies present in the electric car has been reduced to a huge level at of extent at present, due to the usage of the higher technology batteries which are not only smaller in size but are also more efficient that the batteries used in the past decade (N.

p. , 2010). The whole new form of technology of Electric cars or vehicles that has been introduced in the past few years is of Hybrid cars. Hybrid cars are basically the cars which use both the electric motor installed in the system and the internal combustion engine to produce power for the proper running of the vehicle. These hybrid cars have made it possible to compete even a better way to the gas cars which were stronger than electric cars of the past.

The main advantage of using hybrid cars is not only that they are significantly fuel proficient but they also contribute to the environment friendly conditions by lessening environmental air pollution (Rampur, 2010). ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE At present, many have observed the need to take some serious measures regarding different human activities which are harming the environment conditions. Among which one important activity which is destroying our environment is the huge burning of fossil fuels which is causing a lot of air pollution. Driving a car is the most air polluting act an average citizen commits.

Air pollution is not a good idea for a variety of reasons, large and small. The right ideas involve long-term planning, protection and a profound commitment to preserving the natural world. Without a healthy natural environment, there will be very few or almost no healthy humans (Brimblecombe, 2003). Air pollution is basically is the exploitation of huge amount of chemicals or organic resources that are causing damage or anxiety to humans or any other living beings, and this also includes the damaging of the natural environment as well.

Now days, throughout the world, the extensive amount of car usage is creating a lot of problems to the environment by highly contributing to air pollution and the global warming perspective as well. The emission of different dangerous gases from the combustion engine of cars is leading to destroy the natural environment of the world within no time. Generally following are some of the variants that are exhausted during the car travelling- Carbon monoxide, Nitrogen dioxide, Sulphur dioxide, Benzene, polycyclic hydrocarbons, and Formaldehyde. Similarly it is also contributing to Global warming as well (Colls, 2002).

Global warming is basically the boost in the standard temperature of earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid of the20th century and its predictable dangerous persistence. According to the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), worldwide surface temperature augmented during the 20th century. Most of the experimental temperature enlarges in the middle of the 20th century when it was caused by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, which resulted from human activities like fossil fuel burning and deforestation (Soon, 2001).

Air pollution contains many variants that may go through the nose, mouth, digestive vicinity or skin. There are several chemicals which are harmful for living organisms like benzene, lead, carbon monoxide, volatile nitrites, pesticides and others. There are several cases in which different harms or diseases are observed due to these treacherous gases. These gases have given harmful effects on the bone marrow, blood, spleen and lymph nodes.

The effect of these gases have also produced damage to blood cells as well as they are facing unvarying turnover with the entrance of new blood cells as full-grown cells which are then lost making the blood system defenseless to the hazardous effects of environmental poisoning. Common air pollutants also have hazardous effect on blood and thus damaging the organs of the body as well. For instance, carbon monoxide combines to hemoglobin with two hundred times more eagerly than oxygen and thus it collapses the release to the tissues of any remaining oxygen.

Therefore, carbon monoxide poisoning is a form of suffocation. Carbon monoxide can worsen the cardiovascular disease if present in humans. Many airborne substances arouse the immune system to make active the leukocytes and macrophages that can lead to tissue damage, particularly to the cells that are attached to human blood vessels. The later serious and collective effect of these actions is to speed up the changes that ultimately escort to severe diseases like hypertension and ischemic heart disease.

There are some threats as well caused by the global warming. Firstly, rise of global warming would also raise the sea levels as well. At present, there are about 5,773,000 cubic miles of water in ice caps, glaciers, and enduring snow. Secondly, the melting of ice caps would make the worldwide bionetwork out of balance. Usually, the ice caps are fresh water, and when they start melting, it will start desalinating the ocean means it will decrease the saltiness present in the ocean.

Another effect that would occur due to global warming will be that it will jeopardize various classes of animals as the temperature would rise and that would lead to the change of the landscapes in the arctic sphere. Due to the rise in sea level, the number of larger typhoons that may hit the planet would increase. And the global warming itself will give rise to the warming of the earth (Houghton, 2004). So ultimately, it can be said that the usage of these electric cars is the most feasible option available as it would decrease the severe environment problems of air pollution and global warming through less emission of fossil fuels.

SUMMARY Electric car since the beginning of the 19th century became prominent enough to gather the attention of the people, since then there have been many ups and downs for it in the market due to the environment issues attached to it but still in today’s world it has the most competitive and building market and there is a wide probability we may be using the same electric car for our daily transportation in the future. Electric cars initially were not environment friendly as during charging these cars emit huge amount of different radiations hazardous for the people around.

But the new technology of the electric cars i. e. hybrid cars are very much environment friendly as it the system involved in its production has minimized the fossil fuel and radiations to a very low extent. Moreover, electric cars previously involved some disadvantages to other gas cars which have been eliminated by using the engines providing the advantages like better air eminence, better fuel efficiency, and reduction in the moving parts, less dangerous in case of accidents, better security and proper exploitation of the available infrastructure (Blaylock, 2009).

So it can be said in the future we may see a further improvised version of electric cars totally eliminating the variants which may damage and perform hazardous effects on the health of the living organisms. Works Cited: Blaylock, Jonnie. "Benefits of Electric Cars. ”. N. p. , 13 Aug. 2009. Web. 18 July 2010. http://searchwarp. com/swa533470-Benefits-Of-Electric-Cars. htm Brimblecombe, Peter. The effects of air pollution on the built environment. illustrated ed. Vol. 2. N.

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