Electric vehicles: FAQ

Electric vehicles: FAQ

Can I get a grant to buy an electric car?

The Department for Transport will from January 2011 provide grants worth £5,000 against the cost of low-carbon vehicles including fully electric or plug-in hybrid cars. In order to qualify for the grant, the amount claimed must not represent more than 25 per cent of the cost of the car. At the time of writing the exact criteria have not yet been finalised, but it is expected the vehicle will have to have a range of at least 70 miles, a minimum top speed of 60mph, and meet European safety standards. Full details of which cars are eligible and details of how to apply will be posted on this site as soon as they emerge.

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What is a quadricycle?

Sometimes referred to as a micro car, a “quadricycle” is a four-wheeled vehicle with an unladen mass not more than 400kg (excluding batteries if it is an electric vehicle) and whose maximum continuous rated power does not exceed 15 kW. The best known quadricycle is the G-Wiz. There is a perception that large, heavy cars such as 4X4s are safe, but they pose an increased risk to pedestrian in the event of a collision. Quadricycles on the other hand are designed to operate in urban areas at low speeds. Greater Manchester has an average traffic speed of 12.1mph, Leicester 13.6mph, London 14.6mph, West Yorkshire 14.6mph, Merseyside 14.9mph, South Yorkshire 15mph and the West Midlands 15.5mph (Road Statistics 2008: Traffic, Speeds and Congestion). The fact that quadricycles are lighter than conventional cars makes them less of a risk to pedestrians and less damaging to the road surface. Furthermore, they are economical and almost entirely 100 recyclable.

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What is an electric car?

Almost every car on the road today has an internal combustion engine and uses either petrol or diesel as fuel. Electric cars are powered by a battery, an electric motor and motor controllers. No other engines are used by the vehicle. It’s important not to confuse electric cars with hybrid electric cars such as the Toyota Prius, which use a petrol or diesel engine to power the electric motors. This type of car is not regarded as a pure electric vehicle.

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What is an electric car like to drive?

If you can drive a conventional car you will have no difficulty with an electric version, but there are few differences. Unlike a conventional engine, an electric motor works efficiently at a wide range of speeds, so an electric car does not need a gearbox.

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Regenerative braking

Electric motors may be used to slow the vehicle and pass the energy back to the battery. This is known as regenerative braking. Regenerative braking makes use of the energy lost when a vehicle slows to replenish the battery. It saves on brake pads, but increases the range of the car by a relatively modest amount.

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How do electric cars work?

An electric car’s rechargeable battery provides energy to the car’s motor controllers, which regulate energy flow to the motor, and the electric motors turn the wheels. Electric car batteries vary from car to car. The use of lead-acid battery pack is giving way to lithium-ion batteries, which have a higher power-to-weight and power-to-volume ratio but are expensive to make and can lose their ability to hold a charge when not in use.

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Where can I charge my electric car?

Electric car batteries are recharged typically from a household socket at home or a rapid-charging point. Household electrical supplies are widespread but not powerful enough to give anything than an overnight charge.

The EV Network shows the locations of all public charge points in Britain. The site also gives details of an additional pool of privately-owned charge points contributed by other members on a cooperative basis.

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How much will the car cost to charge?

The amount of energy required varies from car to car as does supplier charges, but as an example, the G-Wiz has a full charge time of 8 hours using 9.6 KWh of electricity costing about 50p.

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Can I recharge an electric car using solar power?

There have been claims that solar panels incorporated into the roof of an electric car can add up to 20 miles per day to its range – in Vegas perhaps, but it’s not happening anytime soon in London. But where electric cars are concerned, beware of outlandish claims. A far more realistic application for photo voltaic cells is for them to trickle charge a battery for the in-car air conditioning.

Honda has designed a solar-powered hydrogen station domestic use, which can produce enough fuel to power its FCX Clarity fuel cell car for 25 miles of driving each day.

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What is bio-plastic?

The bio-plastic body panels used in various electric concept cars are lighter than steel and are derived from renewable sources such as vegetable oil, corn starch or seaweed as opposed to conventional plastics which are made from petroleum. Petroleum-based foam can be swapped in favour of a soybean-derived alternative, seat covers made from hemp-based fabrics.

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What have electric cars got to do with mobile phones?

Cars of the future may draw heavily on mobile phone technology for everything from entertainment to crash-avoidance software. The iChange electric concept car features a body that adapts to the number of passengers on board and adjustable seats and car ignition all controlled via an iPhone. There are parallels between the development of mobile phones and electric cars. In the early days of mobile phones the handsets were heavy, gave poor reception and cost many thousands of phones. Mobiles are now so inexpensive, the cheapest models are almost disposable and we have grown used to charging them overnight. It is likely we will learn the same habits where electric vehicles are concerned.

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What is a fuel cell?

Hydrogen can be used as a fuel for electric cars thereby doing away with the need for a battery – these so-called fuel cell vehicles can travel longer distances than electric vehicles that need to be re-charged directly from a mains supply. Hydrogen produces only water when it is burned, and whilst its production requires significant amounts of energy, if these are from a sustainable source – as is the case with the solar hydrogen station – the fuel makes sense for use in cars since it produces no harmful emissions at point of use.

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What if everyone switched to electric cars – could the national grid cope?

Not if we all swapped over to electric cars at once plugged them in first thing in the morning. But as with mobile phones, most of us will charge them overnight when there is enough off-peak electricity to charge many millions of electric cars. Time-based charging management and the ability of electric cars to store surplus power on behalf of the national grid could help.

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What is a Lithium air battery?

Lithium air battery technology being developed by engineers in America and Japan could allow electric cars to travel up to 400 miles between charges. The main advantage of lithium air is the battery is significantly lighter, but is able to hold more energy. It is estimated that lithium air batteries could deliver five to ten times the energy of lithium-ion batteries; in theory rivalling the energy density of petroleum.

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Are electric cars too quiet to be safe?

Although no one has yet been killed by a car because it was too quiet, there is concern that near-silent electric cars pose a threat to pedestrians. Enhanced Vehicle Acoustics is an American company which has received start-up funding from the National Federation of the Blind in order to develop ‘car tones’ – artificially-created sounds for otherwise silent electric cars. There is no reason why this feature should sound like an internal combustion engine – operatic car, anyone?

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Why do electric cars have poor range?

In simple terms, because the cars are too heavy and the batteries are not as efficient at storing energy as a hydrocarbon fuel such as petrol. The 16kWh, lithium-ion battery pack planned for the Vauxhall Ampera weighs 181kg, takes three hours to recharge using a standard domestic supply and yet allows the car to travel only 40 miles.

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Will electric cars always be cheap to run?

Do the math. VAT at 17.5% is charged on the value of petrol and its fuel duty, and depending on the price of oil accounting for up to 80 per cent of the price at the pump. Electricity from a domestic supply on the other hand is taxed at 5 per cent. The widespread adoption of electric cars would lead to rapidly declining tax revenues from fuels. The most practical and equitable way of replacing the lost revenue would be national road-user charging.

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Can an electric vehicle replace my petrol car?

Not if you want it to do everything, but we are going to have to become much more flexible about the way we travel if we are to preserve resources and protect the environment. There will be those who will scoff at the idea of an electric bicycle, but for many more the bikes will be a revelation as they can make a 30-mile round-trip commute a realistic option for even a novice cyclist. Car clubs and innovative hire schemes such as whipcar.com will allow us to pick the vehicle most appropriate for a journey without having to commit ourselves to buying one car and expecting it to do everything.

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Are electric cars safe?

Batteries can explode, but so can petrol. If you are comfortable driving around with 60 litres of highly combustible petrol under your seat, then you will be ok with batteries. Battery production standards are exceptionally high for those destined for cars as the manufacturers know that an incident in these early days could be disastrous. The industry considers a 100-mile range as a benchmark distance, but without weight reduction this is unlikely to increase in the medium term. Quadricycles are lightweight but are often criticised for not meeting the same safety requirements as conventional cars. Quadricycles are designed to operate in urban areas at low speeds - the fact they are lighter than conventional cars not only gives them a greater potential range, but makes them less of a risk to pedestrians and less damaging to the road surface.

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Will all cars be electric?

No one can know the answer. The major manufacturers project that pure-electric cars will account only for a tiny proportion of overall sales for at least the next 30 years. But whilst there remain significant technological developments to be made before electric cars can compete on equal terms with conventional cars, car manufacturers are lazy and have little incentive to abandon fossil fuels, which in many respects work well. Whether legislators are any more motivated remains to be seen.

A carbon tax would see the cost of producing electricity from coal fired power stations increase to more than that for renewables. From that moment almost all new ‘power stations’ in this country would be wind or solar based (being Britain more wind than solar). The nature of the national grid would change from the current hub and spokes system to a peer-to-peer network system. This would radically reduce the cost of power supply.

This in turn would enable cars to run on electricity, which could allow cities (should they have wish to do so) to ban all vehicles that were not zero emission from all or part of their cities. The first bans could be on days and in places where local pollution is above World Health Organisation limits. This would provide the motor industry with the motivation to build zero-emission cars with improved endurance.

This could all happen extraordinarily quickly – faster than past changes in computers and communications. Faster than you can say “iPod” or “mobile phone”. The reason is that the energy industry is huge – around three trillion pounds a year and demand for energy is growing rapidly. So the potential for renewables, and by extension electric cars, is mind boggling – as soon as the price is right.

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