Together in Electric Dreams

(Reply to a question on electric cars)

I have mixed feelings about electric cars. In theory we could maybe use them to replace oil but there are many problems.

• A major problem is the difficulty in refuelling. If you are short of petrol, you can pop into a station, fill up and five minutes later you are off. With electric cars, at the moment, you would have to leave the car recharging for a few hours (at least). This is fine if you are travelling to the shops or work and you can leave the car plugged in there while you shop/work. But with any longer journey you are faced with problems. The only option would be to drop off a discharged battery or two at the service station and fit some fully charged ones. But this infrastructure would have to be fitted to stations all around the world. And can you imagine an old man or woman disconnecting a couple of lead batteries and humping them into the station? We would need to have some smaller, lighter batteries which can be easily removed and replaced. These batteries would have to be standardised to every electric car. The time, trouble and cost of preparing every car and garage is phenomenal.
• There is also the problem of recharging your car at home. Fine if you have a garage where you can lock it away and plug it in, but in the UK, many people have to park their cars on the street. What happens then? We would either have to bring the batteries indoors to recharge every night or construct recharging posts all along the street. Again the trouble and cost seem unacceptable.
• Then there is the time and cost of replacing millions (30 million in the UK alone) of ICE-powered vehicles with electric. Can the countries afford it? Can the people afford to replace their cars with brand new (probably expensive) ones?
• Can we produce enough electricity for all these cars? Without oil and gas, we will need more electricity for heating and cooking so there is going to be a tremendous demand everywhere.

However, I do think that electricity has a place in future transportation. Personal vehicles may be acceptable in cities but the main use will be public transport with electric trains, trams and trolley buses. (This is where mainland Europe has an advantage over the UK and USA). Like many possible solutions, electrification needed to be started thirty years ago when we had the time, money and energy to do it. I think it's all too late now.