Electric Vehicles: Are they the future

Cars, everybody knows about them, “wheeled motor vehicles used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor” (Wikipedia, 2014). For over a century they’ve been taking us from one place to another, making them our number one choice for transportation. But how do they work? In simple terms, these vehicles have an internal combustion engine, fueled mainly by petrol, that generates enough force overcome the inertia produced by the earth’s gravity and its own weight (simple physics). Thanks to the evolution of technology, cars today have become very efficient and practical vehicles. But as we all know, cars run on petrol, and not only is it bad for the environment, but (EROSKI CONSUMER, 2014) estimated that we’ll run out of petrol in the whole world (if we continue consuming petrol like this) around the year 2043. In the last decade most carmakers have been researching for alternative ways to power the cars like biodiesel, air, natural gas and hydrogen. But it has been the Electric Vehicles (EV) what carmakers have been emphasizing. These vehicles are powered by batteries to run an electric motor that generates the force to move the car. As car companies keep introducing the EV’s, selling them as the car of the future, many people refuse to buy these vehicles and stick to conventional Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEV for short). What’s the reason for this? And as this happens, there this one question that keeps revolving in our heads about this: Are these cars the future?

Modern cars started appearing around 1894 as an innovational way of transportation. But what they didn’t knew was that these vehicles would replace the horses in no time (back then horses were the number one transportation for ever...

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...Probably. These cars are great examples of what technology can be capable of for consumers, but it still isn’t enough. Not too long ago, James May (Top Gear show presenter and journalist) said that “to be the car of the future it has to be better than the actual modern car, but without changing the lifestyle that we already have” (Top Gear (series 12, episode 7), 2008). For the EV this means that it has a long way to go to be the future car. Car manufacturers have to keep in mind that EV’s need to be more reliable, more practical and affordable to attract the consumer. As car makers keep emphasizing for innovating technology, that future car can be closer. But until the EV can surpass the advantages that the conventional cars already have, people will stick to use petrol until they find an alternative fuel vehicle suitable to do the same job as the conventional car.