There are a number of myths about Electric Vehicles, some of these are because of a misunderstanding of what EV’s are best suited for, some are due to experiences with old or badly made EV’s and others have been propagated by people with a vested interest in keeping EV’s out of the mainstream.
Some of the Myths and Facts :-
EV’s are slow and can’t keep up with the traffic. – Myth
A properly made EV is not only not slow, but in many cases can out perform a similar petrol car from a standing start. Electric motors have a very high torque at low revs which gives them excellent acceleration at low speeds. The conversion we are attempting here at EVAustralia is expected to have a top speed of 130km/h with acceleration of at least as good, if not better, than what the car had before the conversion.
One factor that has contributed to this myth is that there are some EV’s that have been specifically designed for short range local neighbourhood commuting. Basically running down to the shops and around the local area where you don’t need anything over about 40km/h. This reduces the cost of the vehicle but effectively customising it for a particular purpose.
EV’s don’t have enough range to be useful. – Myth
Around 80% of all travel by private car is to and from work, of that a great percentage is less than 50km round trip. An EV does not need to have a large range to be able to handle the majority of Australians commuting.
The conversion the EVAustralia is doing is designed to have a range of 50km because this is our daily commuting distance. If we required a longer range we could have achieved this by using different batteries and/or adding more batteries however this would increase the cost of the conversion.
The reality is that a good EV is designed around what you actually want to use the car for. If you only need 20km round trip then cut the cost by using less batteries. If you want to drag race a Porsche at the lights then put in a bigger motor and lithium-ion batteries.
EV’s still contribute to greenhouse gasses. – Fact
It would be great to say the EV’s don’t contribute to global warming at all but that isn’t true. EV’s are far more environmentally friendly and economical than petrol cars however the power still has to be produced and the raw materials in the car still have to come from somewhere. On the plus side power for an EV can come from renewable sources, in fact in most states you can elect to buy "green" power from your electricity company. Also due the grants provided by the Federal government many Australians are electing to install solar power system. Even if you are using plain old electricity there is a lot more an electricity provider can do to clean things up at single power station than it is possible to do on a few million cars.
Another point to consider is that by converting a car to electric you are actually recycling the car and taking a polluter off the road at the same time.