Electric cars are an energy hoax!
It will be a wonderful world when the Libs are done with it.
As a means of providing energy from an on-board source to the wheels or any of a number of non-propulsion amenities on a moving vehicle, the use of electricity is hard to beat. It is the SOURCE of the energy that is the problem.
Generation of power from fuel cells, by the conversion of hydrogen into electrical energy, runs into a couple of problems right away, where is the hydrogen coming from, and how do we carry a sufficient supply on board for a reasonable radius of travel distances?
Regardless of how dangerous gasoline is as a fuel, at least the technology for its distribution and dispensing have been worked out over the past century or so, to the point of relatively few instances where it causes uncontrolled flame spread. So we shall have some version of the internal combustion engine as a compact and relatively lightweight power source for some time to come. The fuel may change, but the pronciples remain much the same. There may be fuels with higher energy densities than gasoline, such as Diesel fuel, requiring a more compact on-board storage tank, but most of the alternatives offered, like compressed natural gas, propane, or ethyl alcohol, have a much lower energy density than gasoline or Diesel fuel per pound, or volume, or any other measure.
Battery technology, despite a couple of hundred years of trying to find a means to pack higher energy densities into smaller and smaller space, has not yielded the reliability and means of quick refueling that liquid fuels have provided. Seems like the materials used just do not respond well to some of the thermodynamics that come into play. Rapid transfer of electrical energy almost always results in steep increases of heat output, resulting in a molten puddle of whatever materials the batteries were constructed of.
Now, if we just had superconductors that would transmit a stream of electrons at ambient temperatures, perhaps we could find a way around this bottleneck. But alas, like the promise of nuclear fusion, this always seems to be some 30 years in the future.
Except we have had several “30 yearses” in succession already, and seem no closer to the resolution of the problems.
Meanwhile, this constant tinkering with batteries as a storage medium of energy does not seem to be moving the problem. As an alternative, could one suggest the development of a compressed gas over a hydraulic fluid medium. The power plant builds up pressure in the system by compressing the gas over the hydraulic fluid, and the hydraulic fluid is piped to the propulsion wheels, which are turned by a slave hydrostatic pump. By reversing the valving, the hydrostatic motor could be turned into a pump to provide vehicle braking, building the pressure back up, which is stored in a reservoir. No mechanical drive line in involved, no gears, universal joints, or shafts anywhere.
Very large mine trucks already use a similar driveline, and it has had a number of applications in relatively low-speed, heavy-duty off-road machinery. This could be refined into a much higher-speed application, suitable for conventional road travel, with relatively few tweaks.
Is it more or less expensive than this really weird engineering that is now being put into various hybrid or full-electric vehicles? Can it be done on a practical scale?