1:34 AM
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It seems like we've been waiting forever for
electric cars to come along, but after more false starts than you'll see at the
London Olympics this year, it looks like the electric car is finally here to
stay.
Now, we need to start with some boring
terminology: A true electric car (EV, for Electric Vehicle)
has no petrol engine as backup, so you are reliant on the batteries having
enough charge to get you to where you need to go. The Nissan Leaf is the
best-known (and best) electric car currently on sale.
A regular hybrid uses an
electric motor and/or a petrol motor, depending on the circumstances. You don't
plug it into a wall socket as the batteries charge while you are driving. A
typical journey, even a short one, will use both electric and petrol power to drive
the wheels. The Toyota Pries is the most popular and best-known hybrid on sale
around the world.
A plug-in hybrid,
"range-extending" electric car, is technically more of a fancy hybrid
than a true EV although it drives more like an EV than a regular hybrid. In
practice it might be a huge difference or none at all, depending on how you use
the car. A range-extender, or plug-in hybrid as it's more commonly known, has a
petrol engine which can be used to power the electric motor once the batteries
have drained, but the petrol engine does not directly drive the wheels*. The
Vauxhall Ampere/Chevrolet Volt twins are the leading example of this type of
car, and they claim an urban fuel consumption of 300mpg (yep, that's three
hundred. Not a typo!)
A car running on an electric motor is usually
very quiet (eerie silence or a distant hum instead of a clearly audible petrol
engine) and smooth (no vibrations from engine or gearbox). The response from
the car away from rest is both immediate and powerful, as electric motors
generate huge amounts of torque instantly. They're quiet from the outside to,
to such an extent that the EU is considering making audible warnings compulsory
in the future as pedestrians simply won't hear an electric car coming.
In terms of exciting handling, electric cars
are usually not brilliant, it must be said. They tend to be very heavy and
usually run tires & wheels more beneficial for economy than handling. But
as a commuter vehicle around town, they are zippy and efficient. Plus they
generate less noise, heat and pollution into the street so a traffic jam of
Nissan Leafs in the city would be a lot more pleasant for passing pedestrians.
The batteries on a typical electric car only
give it enough range for a few miles (although a true EV will have a bigger
battery pack as it doesn't have to fit a petrol engine & fuel tank as
well), so the cars use various means to charge the battery while driving.
Usually this involves converting kinetic energy from coasting and braking to
electric energy to store in the batteries. The Frisker Karma even
has solar cells in its roof to charge the batteries as well.
However, a longer journey will inevitably mean
that the batteries are drained. In a fully electric car that means you have to
stop and charge the batteries, so hopefully you parked near a power socket
somewhere and have several hours to find something else to do. In a hybrid, the
petrol engine will start up to provide the power. In a regular hybrid like a Pries,
the car effectively becomes an ordinary petrol car, albeit with a fairly
underpowered engine pushing a heavy car around so it's not swift. In a 'range
extender' like the Ampere/Volt, the petrol engine provides energy to the
electric motor to drive the wheels, which is more efficient in both performance
and economy. Depending on how you're driving, any spare energy from the petrol
engine can be used to charge up the batteries again, so the car may switch back
to electric power once charging is complete.
Well, how much of the following driving do you
do? We're assuming here that the batteries are fully charged when you set off.
Short trips (<50 miles between charges).
These sorts of journeys are ideal for electric
cars and plug-in hybrids, as the batteries will cope with the whole journey and
also get some charge while you drive. A regular hybrid will still need to use
the petrol engine, although how much depends on how you drive it and how much
charging it is able to get along the way.
Medium trips (50-100 miles between charges).
These are the sorts of trips that give EV
drivers plenty of stress, as the traffic conditions may mean you run out of
juice before you make it to your charging point. A plug-in hybrid or regular
hybrid will be fine because they can call on the petrol engine. In a regular
hybrid, this means the car will be petrol powered for most of the journey. In a
plug-in hybrid, it will be mainly electric with the petrol engine kicking in to
top up the batteries if needed late in the journey.
Longer trips (100+ miles between charges)
Not feasible in a fully-electric car, as you
will almost certainly run out of electricity before you get there. The regular
hybrid is basically a petrol car for almost the whole journey and the plug-in
hybrid is majority electric but supplemented by petrol in a far more efficient
way than a regular hybrid.
Let's summaries the three types of
electrically-powered cars:
Regular hybrid (egg - Toyota Pries)
PROS: cheaper, no charging required, no range
anxiety, regular petrol engine makes it feel like a regular petrol car
CONS: only very short journeys (a few miles at
best) will be fully electric, small battery pack and weak petrol engine means
relatively poor performance compared to a normal petrol car or a fully electric
car, poor economy when driven hard (like most Pries minicabs in London...), not
very spacious for passengers and luggage due to carrying petrol and electric power
trains in one car
Fully electric car (EV) (egg - Nissan Leaf)
PROS: powerful electric motor gives much
better performance than a regular hybrid, larger battery pack means longer
electric running, no petrol engine reduces weight and frees up a lot of space,
£5000 government rebate, electricity is cheaper and usually less polluting than
petrol, privileged parking spaces in certain public places
CONS: Still expensive despite rebate, minimal
range capability due to lack of petrol engine backup, resulting range anxiety
is a real issue for drivers, question marks over battery life, technology advances
will make next generation massively better and hurt resale value, some driving
adaptation required, lengthy recharging required after even a moderate drive
Plug-in Hybrid / range-extender (eg - Vauxhall Ampere)
PROS: powerful electric motor and backup
petrol engine give best combination of performance and range, most journeys
will be fully electric which is cheaper than petrol, no range anxiety,
privileged parking spaces in certain public places
CONS: Very expensive despite rebate, question
marks over battery life and resale value, wall socket charging is still slow,
lack of space and very heavy due to having petrol engine and fuel tank as well
as electric motor and batteries.
For most people, an electric vehicle is
difficult to justify on pure hard-headed economics. Even with a £5,000 rebate
from the government, an electric car is expensive. A Nissan Leaf starts at
£31,000, so after the government gives you £5K you have spent £26K on a car
which would be probably worth about £15K if it had a normal petrol engine. That
could conceivably buy you a decade's worth of fuel! And there are still
question marks hovering over the long-term reliability of batteries and resale
value, which may bite you hard somewhere down the line
Buying a hybrid or electric car because you
think you're helping the environment may not be helping that cause as much as
you think, if at all. Producing car batteries is a dirty and complicated
process, and the net result is that there is a significantly higher
environmental impact in building an electric or hybrid car than building regular
petrol or diesel car. So you're starting behind the environmental eight-ball
before you've even driven you new green car.
Beware of "zero emissions" claims
about electric vehicles, because most electricity still comes from fossil fuel
sources (like gas or coal) rather than renewable sources, so you are still
polluting the atmosphere when you drive, albeit not as much and the effects are
not as noticeable to you. If you have your own solar panels or wind farm to
power your car, this is much more environmentally friendly.
Range anxiety
The biggest electric car turn-off for car
buyers (other than the high purchase price) is the joint problem of very
limited range and very slow recharging. In a petrol or diesel car, you can
drive for a few hundred miles, pull into a petrol station and five minutes
later you are ready to drive for another few hundred miles. In an electric car,
you drive for 50-100 miles, and then have to stop and charge it for several
hours to drive another 50-100 miles.
If you only take short journeys and can keep
the car plugged in whenever it stops (usually at home or work), this may never
be a problem. But you can't expect to jump in the car and drive a couple of
hundred miles, or get away with forgetting to plug the car in overnight after a
journey. You have to be much more disciplined in terms of planning your
driving, and allow for recharging. Away from home this is still a big problem
as there are relatively few power sockets available in public parking areas for
you to use.
A plug-in hybrid like the Vauxhall Ampere/Chevrolet
Volt gets around the range anxiety problem, as does a normal hybrid like a
Toyota Pries, but you are carting a petrol engine (and fuel) around all the
time which you may not need, adding hundreds of kilos of weight and taking up
lots of space, so it's a compromise.
So as you can see from all of the above, it's
not at all straightforward. You need to carefully consider what sort of driving
you will be doing and what you need your car to be able to do.
*there is a complicated technical argument
about whether the Ampere/Volt's petrol engine directly drives the wheels under
certain circumstances, but it's really boring and doesn't really make any
difference to how the car drives.
Stuart Masson is founder and owner of The Car
Expert, a London-based independent and impartial car buying agency for anyone
looking to buy a new or used car.
Originally from Australia, Stuart has had a
passion for cars and the automotive industry for nearly thirty years, and has
spent the last seven years working in the automotive retail industry, both in
Australia and in London.
Stuart has combined his extensive knowledge of
all things car-related with his own experience of selling cars and delivering
high levels of customer satisfaction to bring a unique and personal car buying
agency to London. The Car Expert offers specific and tailored advice for anyone
looking for a new or used car in London
