Who Is Driving Electric Cars?

Do you remember watching the news 20 years or so ago when they showed that first electric concept car revealed at one of the auto shows?  It was a funny looking spaceship like vehicle that very few people would be caught actually driving around town where somebody might recognize them.

Times have changes over the years and electric cars are looking hot!  Electric cars are not being made in the form of sports cars, luxury sedans, and even family coupes and station wagons.  There is even an electric pick up truck waiting for release.  So where are all of these great zero emissions, Earth saving vehicles?  Why don’t more people have them?

There is still some work that needs to be done on electric cars.  The battery charges don’t last long enough to really leave town and most don’t drive fast enough for highway use.  Now there are the $100,000 plus electric cars that will go a couple hundred miles between charges, but where would you charge it if you happen to be out in the middle of nowhere when your battery dies?  AAA probably couldn’t help you much more than offering a tow.

A comparison of the costs to run an electric car and a gasoline powered car is quite shocking.  Independent studies have shown that where it costs a gasoline powered car about $8 per 100km traveled (this is based on gasoline prices at the time of the study), it costs an electric car under $2 per 100km traveled (again, based on current electricity costs at the time of the study).  Even if someone were to pay a few thousand dollars more for an electric car, the savings would reimburse them in no time.  Electric cars cost less to maintenance as well, except for the batteries, of course.

Electric cars have come to be fine looking cars that anybody would be proud to own, and work is being done on them to make them more efficient, more practical, and more affordable for the general public.  Perhaps once the electric cars have come a little further in technology more people will be willing to give them a try.  Until then we’ll have to leave saving the atmosphere to the tree huggers of the world, and they deserve a thank you from the rest of us.