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An Australian Parliamentary committee has recommended that petrol and diesel cars be phased out in favour of electric vehicles in a report. This is not yet law but shows that the government is serious about reducing the dependency Australia has on oil and reducing greenhouse emissions.
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Australian Plan to Ban Petrol and Diesel Cars
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Cum tacent, clamant. When they are silent, they shout. -Cicero
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday April 07 2019, @03:30PM
I agree that they're too damned complicated and expensive.
Thing is - there's nothing about an electric car that requires that. Most of the first cars were electric, precisely because it's so simple - batteries, motor, and throttle control. The first was built in 1828, 80 years before the far more complicated Model T. Today we have many similarly simple electric vehicles for sale in the form of bicycles, scooters, skateboards, etc. Battery, motor, and a lump of control circuitry the size of a golf ball. The components need to be bigger to handle the power demands of a car, but they don't actually need to be any more complicated.
The complication seems to come in because everyone is trying to market electric cars as the fancy high-tech sequel to gas cars, probably to justify the still-high cost of the batteries and recover the cost of radically retooling the production line. And of course, being able to charge outrageous prices for parts and repairs. But they're not a sequel, they're a return to automobiles' roots.
The consumability of batteries is an issue, but not nearly as bad as you make out (as others have detailed). The cost - well, that's a mix of immature (but rapidly advancing) battery technology, and trying to shoehorn it in to meeting the same expectations as gas cars.
Personally, for the forseable future I'm in favor of series hybrids - provide enough battery capacity for a 30 mile range instead of 300, and you cut the battery price by 90%, while still providing fully electric operation for 90% of the typical use cases. Then throw in a tiny, efficient generator and small gas tank for range extension. A reasonably efficient EV consumes about 15kW (20hp) cruising down the highway - a 30hp generator tuned to operate efficiently at constant load to recharge the batteries while driving could be far smaller, cheaper, and more efficient than the 100+hp engine in a typical gas car, which has to deliver power across a wide range of speeds, and is least effective at low RPMs, where high power is most important. There are various options for that, though personally I have my eye on Liquid Piston, who are developing a beautifully simple flex-fuel generator for the military, 30kW from a 12" cube you can lift with one hand, with higher efficiency than most fossil-fuel power plants, and only two primary moving parts.