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Often people are surprised by the fact that the earliest powered vehicles were actually driven by electricity, not oil based fuels, and that the idea of electric vehicles today is anything but a new idea. In fact, it was back in the 1830s that a man named Robert Anderson created an electric carriage, whilst over in the Netherlands at the same time similar projects were also underway. These early electric vehicles managed to achieve speeds of just over 65 miles per hour, which would be considered fairly impressive even by today’s standards, but was far in excess of the achievements of the gas powered vehicles of that era.

Perceptions of electric vehicles today tend to lurch from rickety old golf carts to the slightly absurd milk flats, but the truth is that electric cars today can easily out perform their gas powered counterparts. Not only can they outperform them, but they can do so at a fraction of the cost to both the consumer, and more importantly, the environment. For example, the new Tesla Roadster can leave the Ferrari Spider standing at the lights whilst gliding effortlessly past the Mercedes SL550, whilst costing about a cent per mile in the process. With a top speed of about 130 miles per hour and with a three hour charge sustaining a full 250 mile trip, this is anything but a milk float.

It is easy to assume that the single most important advantage from using electric powered vehicles is the reduction of pollution to the environment through the burning of fossil fuels, but another advantage is the reduction of noise pollution, all too often forgotten. Our urban life reverberates to the hum and growl of hundreds of gas powered vehicles, and we have come to accept this. However, electric cars have the capability of eliminating almost all of the noise associated with cars, and this can only be an advantage. Some people have speculated that silent, or virtually silent vehicles may prove hazardous to those who may not be as aware of oncoming traffic when crossing roads, such as children or the elderly.

Besides the greener conscience that road users will have through purchasing an electric vehicle, there are many other benefits and incentives on offer which help to make the whole idea of ditching a gas powered car a much easier decision. For example, if you were to purchase the popular little G-Wiz at under 5,000, you will receive a number of benefits in the UK alone. There are now over two hundred fuelling stations across the UK - so maintaining it is much easier than before, and if you drive round London you’ll benefit from free parking, itself worth 5,00 a year! There’s also no road tax to pay, and the car sits happily in the lowest insurance category, so is a far cheaper option all round.

On a much larger scale, one country has taken the gigantic step forward and proposed a strategy to entirely eliminate their need for oil to support their road traffic within ten years. Israel has recently unveiled its Project Better Place which is a long term plan to replace oil based gas guzzling vehicles with electric ones, with an estimated completion date of within ten years. The country already has half a million stations which support the re-charging of electric vehicles, and with the average distance capable of being travelled between charges more than ample to enable a vehicle to travel between any two points within the country without the need to stop, it is both an ambitious project but one which looks as though it could very well set a high standard for the rest of the world. The plans include introducing electric vehicle distribution in a similar way to mobile phones, with companies giving the cars away free whilst users simply pay for the cost to use or charge the car, doing so either on contract with unlimited usage, or on a pay-as-you-drive basis.

As with any major change to long established consumer habits, there has to be enough demand to make the whole idea of replacing gas powered vehicles with electric ones, otherwise the finance is simply not going to be sufficient to enable change on any real scale. Most people are now aware that milk floats are not the be all and end all to such vehicles, and with films such as Minority Report showing Tom cruise tearing up the road in a sporty little electric Lexus, many people are starting to see that there are multiple advantages to the idea of switching over, and that there is no need whatever to sacrifice style for efficiency or even for the environment.

An issue that those sceptics raise concerning electric vehicles is that although eh car itself might not be giving off fumes and harming the environment by burning up fossil fuels, the energy for the batteries has to come from somewhere, and this is likely to be through the main electricity grid, itself powered through the burning of fossil fuels, so that ultimately the whole scheme simply shifts the focus away from the end consumer and back to the big industries. In fact this argument is not entirely valid, since more and more power companies are turning to renewable sources of energy, and this is likely to continue. The other argument is that of the fuel consumption ratio. Gas powered cars burn the fossil fuel in a very wasteful way, whereas electric cars use energy in a much more efficient manner. In this way, the actual amount of energy used, and therefore the amount of fossil fuel burned, is far less.

Picture a future that is smoke free, with no stinky gasses being belched from the back of cars driving past your street, and with no concerns regarding the waste of fuel whilst you sit idly at traffic lights or in a road jam. Although concerns have been raised that if we all arrived home at tea time and plugged our cars in we’d overload the grid, that has been demonstrated to be untrue, since at night the grid is very underused, and if we all turned to electric vehicles, the amount of energy used would be far less overall. Perhaps we can even foresee a time when the solar panels on our roof allow us to store energy through the day to re-charge our batteries at night.

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