Diesel seems to be the here and now of automobiles, but electricity seems to be the immediate future. I have recently had the opportunity to ride two electric scooters, and drive an electric car as well, and the only thing I can think of is the lack of power they have. No, I’m not going to badmouth them – everything we ‘need’ in today’s world depends on electrons filing this way or that in an orderly fashion. In fact, if it wasn’t for electricity, you probably wouldn’t be reading this on your computer, and I would’ve had to bang out the words with no spellcheck on a Remington.
I like these electric thingamajigs. They’re clean, they’re silent and you don’t have to worry about OPEC going crazy with the prices of crude. You don’t have to worry about changing gears or stalling the engine. If you ever run out of juice, plug it in to a socket like your laptop, and it’ll recharge itself. You can leave it to charge overnight and hey presto! You’re topped up in the morning. Running costs are unbelievably cheap – a car that runs on fossil fuels will struggle to match those.
As with all things that sound too good to be true, there are drawbacks. The power is rubbish, their range is terrible and they aren’t good-looking. The average range today is about 60km on a full charge, and to put that in perspective, my commute to office is a greater distance. Never mind getting myself back home from work, I won’t make it to the workplace on a single charge! I’m willing to forgive the lack of power and range if it made me look good – I don’t want flashbulbs-in-my-face good looks, just enough to get the ladies to want to see the driver. Unfortunately, I won’t get that, either – little scooters that resemble overgrown toys and a mini-car do not a macho image project. Heck, you can’t even rev the engine to impress people around you – they’d probably not notice, what with the silent operation of the motor.
Electric cars are the future, I agree – but they’ve been introduced a little too early. The batteries do not have enough energy density just yet, the technology is hideously expensive, and that affects everything else – the styling, ergonomics, everything else. The argument does exist that we’re helping the manufacturer develop the technology faster by purchasing the product, but not many people are that philanthropic with money when it comes to their car – and with good reason, they’ll probably own just the one car. If it isn’t practical, it is pretty much useless to them. Some factors have nothing to do with technology at all – I read in the paper the other day that a suburb of Mumbai had an eighteen-hour power cut. That’s right, eighteen straight hours. The reason was a fault in an underground cable that occurred in the evening, and the reason given by the Maharashtra State Electricity Board for not attending to it immediately was that they couldn’t repair it in the dark! If the electric board itself does not have access to electricity when it needs it, does the common man have a hope in hell of a guaranteed supply? I have no power at home for five hours a day because of regular load-shedding. What would you recommend I buy – an environmentally unfriendly hatch that runs on fossil fuel, or an electric car I can’t recharge?
It isn’t an easy choice, is it? Tell you what I’d like – an efficient, reasonably-priced hybrid hatchback. That way I won’t be at the mercy of the whims of either OPEC or the MSEB. What would you recommend?
