We recently caught up with Kyle Roof to discover if electric vehicles are the dawn of a new age. This is what he said…
“Let’s take a detour to a couple of decades in the past, when the mere imagination of eco-friendly vehicles with zero carbon emissions seemed like a far-fetched dream. It wasn’t until a bunch of technopreneurs started seriously thinking about bringing in such vehicles with the ability to run on electricity rather than on gasoline.
Fast forward to 2020, there are 1.4 billion vehicles running on the road today and surprisingly, 5.1 million of these are Electric Vehicles (EV’s). These figures do indicate that the world of transportation is undergoing a trend-shift albeit a tardy one but still, a ray of hope is there at the end of this tunnel.
The question still remains, does this concept of EV’s possess enough potential to cater to the needs of every region across the globe? Let’s find out the answer together starting from the history of EV’s.
Electric Vehicle – History
The wake of the early 1820s started with the conundrum “How to get rid of animal-powered vehicles?”
Meaning thereby, that the manufacturers were looking out for viable options to replace the horse-carriages. Came the dawn of the 20th century and astonishingly, electric vehicles had already established their place in the consumer market and rapidly these vehicles became a shining symbol of opulence and luxury.
To our surprise, the very first electric vehicle came with the brand of Fritchle Electric Vehicle in 1912 and the company claimed it’s range up to 100 miles after one full charge. These vehicles dominated the entire market for more than a decade until another motor vehicle manufacturing giant Ford, introduced its first gasoline-powered Model T vehicle terming it as more economical than EV’s at the time.
Up until the late 1970s, the manufacturing and usage graph of EV’s was on the downside and in most of the regions, these vehicles had become non-existent.
The decade of 1990 – 2000, seemed to have revitalized the domain of EV’s since many countries across the globe introduced such regulations that could foster the prospect of eco-friendly cars on the road.
Insight into the Modern Day’s EV’s
In 1996, General Motors launched a range of EVs by introducing the GM EV1 electricity powered car, followed by Nissan Leaf and Toyota Prius, thus paving the way for an enormous demand for such vehicles.
While these companies were already producing electric vehicles, in 2003, Tesla came into being and under the leadership of Elon Musk, this company has now evolved to a giant which is successfully manufacturing luxury sports cars powered by electric motors over ICEV.
One of the factors that kept Tesla afloat even through rough times is the R&D on such factors which could later become the Unique Selling Points (USP’s) for such vehicles. The very first being the Battery Technology. Several EV production companies adopted the lithium-ion batteries which dramatically improved the travel range, affordability, charging capacity, performance and efficiency of the end-products.
Apart from these, the role played by the electric vehicles in preserving the environment is another exemplary point which cannot be overruled. While we are living in an industrial era, the electric vehicles are contributing a lot towards making our towns and cities worth breathing in.
A research clearly showed that an electric car saves 1.5 million grams of CO2 over a period of 1 whole year. This is indeed a way forward towards the Earth’s environment preservation goals.
Although there is a lot of room to debate the energy consumed during the production of EV’s and several circles seem to be concerned about the emissions which are indeed higher than manufacturing conventional vehicles but still, the only element that takes a toll on the overall ecological system is the production of batteries. The researchers in the field firmly believe that with the advancements in the technology, this issue will be solved.
Another point that the critics always bring up is the absence of commercial charging units on highways and motorways. This too, is a valid point and EV producing companies are constantly in contact with several governments to get licenses for such charging stations where the EV consumers can recharge their vehicles in less time.
Ease of Assembling & Disassembling of EV’s
Among other factors, the ease of assembling and disassembling its parts plays a vital role in determining the selling point of a vehicle. Same goes true for EV’s as well. After taking a thorough look at the design of an electric vehicle, we figured out that all it takes for a mechanic is to identify the part, unscrew it via using professional tools and replace it with a new part, except for the tyres.
Take for instance the tyres of any of Tesla’s models. These tyres aren’t made for manhandling or by using crooked tools because a slight mistake may cost you in thousands of pounds. You can find several videos over social media where EV owners tried to remove their tyres for a quick fix but ended up damaging or scratching the vehicle’s paint. That wouldn’t have been the case had they used some of the impact wrenches for changing tyres.
Such tools are made specifically to get the job done effectively so it’s always a better option to stack-up your tool-kit right before you are getting ready for a long trip.
Future of EV Technology
Following the footsteps of Tesla, car manufacturing giants like Nissan, BAIC, BMW, BYD, Volkswagen and even Mercedes have stepped into the race which is a positive sign that the competition among these companies will generate a variety of product lines for the consumers across the globe.
Even today’s EV’s are faster, reliable, safer and now the world is looking at the auto-pilot EV’s and who knows that we all wake up one morning only to get our hands on a completely futuristic vehicle that operates on voice commands or gesture control.”
Who is Kyle Roof?
This piece has been written by Kyle Roof, a tech enthusiast with a knack for vehicles.
