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Electric Vehicles
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17074 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1990 |
2,604 Words |
| Author
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William O. Briggs, Jr.
William O. Briggs, Jr., has been a consultant to major
companies producing energy from such sources as oil, gas,
coal, geothermal, wind, and solar radiation for more than 17
years. He was the founder in 1979 of the first electric auto
dealership in California. |
Electric vehicles are not a futuristic pipe dream. They were the very first automobiles, and Thomas Edison himself bought electric car No. 2 off the Studebaker assembly line in 1902. This was not really surprising, because his company made the batteries that powered those first electric vehicles. The car had a top speed of 15 miles per hour, with a 50-mile range between charges. Between 1902 and 1911 Studebaker alone made about 2,000 electric cars and trucks.
However, due to range and speed limitations, electric vehicles (EVs) gradually gave up the market to internal combustion engine cars in the late 1920s. And so it remained (with few exceptions) until the gasoline crunches of the 1970s, which triggered a flurry of hurried manufacture and sales of electric vehicles ranging from glorified gold carts to vans. However, most of the companies involved were entrepreneurial start-ups, which offered little service support after the sale, and most of these companies eventually dissolved. This left EV owners on their own to find parts and service. Moreover, the range of these vehicles was so short and inconsistent that they were impractical for almost every use. In any event, as soon as the gasoline lines disappeared, so did the EV market.
In contrast, the decade of the 1990s begins with strong interest in electric vehicles being spurred by ongoing air quality concerns in more than 100 U.S. cities, as well as in many European cities. With transportation being a major contributor to urban air pollution, low-emission, alternative-fuel vehicles hold considerable promise for helping to relieve the problems of air pollution.
This has led to programs sponsored by both government and electric utilities. Federal government programs are under the auspices of the Department of Energy (DOE), with research and development being carried on through laboratories, universities, automobile companies, battery companies, and specialized engineering and component manufacturing companies.
On the state government level, the most notable agency involved is the California Energy Commission, with programs analogous to the DOE's. In January 1988, the California Electric Vehicle Task Force, made up of several public agencies and electric utility organizations, was formed with the purpose of facilitating the commercialization of EV technology.
In the private sector, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), whose members are the major electric utility
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