This is supposed to be the car of the future? When you see a Renault twizy for the first time, you rub your eyes in amazement. The thing resembles an egg on wheels. Or a toy that is too big. For, say, six-year-olds.
In fact, the most important part of the minicar is under the hood. There is a battery that supplies electricity and powers the twizy with an electric motor. It therefore does not need gasoline like normal cars today. When the battery is empty, you plug it into a wall outlet. Almost like a cell phone. Already it goes further!
At the moment, electric vehicles of this kind are still rare, and there are only around 17,000 of them in Germany. But almost all car companies are working on it at high pressure. Some people develop dwarfs like the twizy that are barely bigger than golf course balls. But there are also family cars, such as the BMW i3, and bullets like the Tesla S, which accelerates from zero to 100 in 4.4 seconds and makes most sports cars look like snails.
The advantages of electric cars
Why are electric cars so popular? Quite simply, they have many advantages over vehicles with internal combustion engines that run on gasoline or diesel. For example, they emit no exhaust fumes. No toxic carbon monoxide. No carbon dioxide to warm the earth’s climate. No carcinogenic soot particles. The ride is completely clean. Of course, only if the electricity is produced cleanly, e.g. by wind turbines – and not in polluting plants such as coal-fired power stations.
But that’s not all: owners of electric cars don’t have to worry about rising gasoline prices and have fewer repairs to worry about – because the cars lack many parts that can break: the electric racers have neither an exhaust nor a catalytic converter that filters exhaust gases – because they don’t exist. You do not even need a clutch.
What’s more, electric cars glide almost silently over the asphalt. Today, cars are humming, roaring and howling because fuel is constantly exploding in their engines. In the electric cars, the electric motor only hums quietly. Some experts even think they are too quiet: they fear the whispering cars won’t be heard by pedestrians crossing the street.
The cars’ weak point: their batteries
What’s surprising is that electric cars are old hat. As early as the 1900s, they were already competing with steam cars and gasoline-powered vehicles – and were even much faster than them. The world speed record was held by a rocket-shaped electric racer that reached a staggering 105 kilometers per hour in 1899. At that time, gasoline cars did not even reach 60 km/h.
Nevertheless, gasoline-powered cars eventually prevailed, and electric cars disappeared for a long time. Only in exceptional cases do they still appear. If astronauts used them to bump over the moon, for example. Or in comics, where grandma duck went for a ride in an electric oldtimer.
Why have electric cars not yet made the breakthrough?? This is due to the major weakness that vehicles still have today – their batteries. It doesn’t store enough energy. A simple comparison shows this: a gasoline-powered car with a 50-liter tank can easily travel 500 kilometers. An electric car with a battery of the same weight might be able to do 50. The energy storage system is also extremely expensive. The battery alone of the Tesla S costs over 20,000 euros!
How to solve the problem of electric cars?
There are four ideas!
- First idea: Saving weight. Because the lighter the car, the less energy it needs to move. This is the tactic of the renault twizy. The mini weighs only around 450 kilograms when empty!
- Second idea: install many batteries to increase range. This is what is being done with the tesla S. The runabout is crammed with more than 8000 small batteries! The entire package weighs over 700 kilograms, almost as much as a small car! At least the car will go 500 kilometers.
- Third idea: hybrid cars. In addition to the electric motor, they also have a gasoline engine. When the power runs out, they continue to run on gasoline.
- Fourth idea: better batteries. Unfortunately, they still have to be developed. Researchers are hoping to develop lithium-air batteries that can store ten times as much energy as today’s models. However, no one knows when the super devices will be ready for use.
Doesn’t sound so great. So electric cars will remain a luxury for many years to come? It doesn’t have to be that way – claims carmaker tesla. The company wants to build a huge factory that will produce more batteries in 2020 than all the companies together today. Then, the promise goes, the price will also drop – by at least a third. Who knows, maybe they’ll be affordable when you’re thinking about your first car in a few years’ time.