I recently got my level one driving license and I was wondering which car to buy, after hovering on the thought of buying a Mustang the thought of electric car popped in my mind and after a lot of thinking I ended up settling for a Tesla. This blog is the outcome of the struggle that I went through while taking this decision.
In 1800's cars were invented; it was a boon for mankind. Easy transport easy commute to destinations and lots of employment. The father of modernization in automobile manufacturing, Henry Ford with his company ford motors revolutionized the automobile sector when it came to manufacturing cars in an orderly and more efficient way. Till date, we follow his principles in the mass production of cars and what not. The industry that was flourishing hand to hand with automobile was the oil industry, and when I say to oil it means the crude oil industry segment responsible for discovering, sourcing and production of all the products related to crude oil and in the matter of no time the oil industry took over the automobile sector, with the dependency of vehicles on fossil fuel to power their internal combustion engines. The oil industry rules withholding all the cards in their hands. The outcome of this was the world started fighting over oil deposits all over the planet. There were or probably are wars still going on to get a hold of the oil supplies throughout the world. Also, we cannot ignore the outcomes of burning fossil fuel through these internal combustion engines, namely the health factors and also the harm that it caused to nature. With all these considerations in mind, one should wonder why haven’t there been any efforts to find an alternative to this situation. Consider the availability of alternatives to fossil fuel. It is a source of energy like electricity or solar power or anything that can be available to the people around the world readily without any control over the supply. If we would dig in to search, we would get shocked to learn that there were efforts made however they weren’t made available to the people, reasons? Yes, let me tell you those reasons in the later part of this blog. In recent years not far long there started a revolution to shake the automobile industry by introducing electric cars to the world and let me stress on the point, available to everyone. The company I am referring to is Tesla founded by Elon Musk. Following him, NOW other car companies have entered into the race too.
So why is this electric car segment the troublemaker.? Why didn’t anyone come up with an alternative for internal combustion engine cars? Why is the electric car market booming in the recent times? These are the questions that are weighted in this blog.
First of all, let me explain how a combustion engine works. The engines have a number of parts to regulate the inflow of fuel to produce just enough power to drive the crankshaft which in turns drives the wheels forward or backward regulated by a gearbox. We all are familiar with these terms or at least we have an idea of how things are. See the car itself consists of thousands of parts that moreover have hundreds of minor parts, not to forget the crux of all this, the fossil fuel!! Now the reason why I wrote all this is that when we look at the sourcing, the research and manufacturing of these parts that make the car run have millions of people involved. Imagine what would happen if the requirement for these parts gets stopped. The time that has taken to mature the automobile industry has made or is making billions of dollars for corporations that manufacture the car, its parts and the fuel that makes it move. Also not to forget the supply chain industry for fossil fuel, namely the petroleum companies. All of them will be out of business or if not suffer the losses of demand drops. And they wouldn’t want that to happen, we are talking about billion dollar corporations here, also powerful in ways no one can imagine.
Secondly, there were attempts to find an alternative for fossil fuel by replacing it with biofuel however that research vanished in thin air before it could be used for commercial purposes, and guess what, there wasn’t any clue of why or how. I still remember an article in the early 90s where someone invented the alternative for petrol by processing onions. Also, the research on jatropha (Biofuel plant) for the production of biodiesel has come or probably forced to come to a dead end.
Thirdly the preference for electric cars has been increasing day by day in recent times. I thought of finding the reasons for that and I learnt that it’s mainly because of the increasing gas prices and the tech-savvy preferences of people all over the world. Ok, imagine driving a car to be as easy as using your Smartphone. Just type the destination you have to go and that’s it, the car will drive itself to the location. This is the main reason for people to shift towards the electric cars, it’s as easy as operating a Smartphone. Also, count the parts that would be required for the car to move, they will be mainly the electric motors the battery and probably an onboard computer!!! Isn’t that great? One would not have to worry about servicing a clogged pipe for the fuel to move or worry about the level of gas in the fuel tank or the tuning of the engine for better functionality, Just recharge the batteries like a Smartphone and you are good to go. In comparative terms, a battery operated electric car will be far better on maintenance than a car running on fossil fuel, also take into account the serviceable parts in both the cars. The best part here is anyone if given a thought will be able to make an electric car getting the spares with the skeleton of a normal car running on fossil fuel, although there would be some technical and legal hurdles, but they can be sorted out.
For the troublemaker part, this electric car era is like a revolution taking into account the availability of electric energy through non-conventional sources is becoming cheaper and cheaper also the shift of countries over energy plants that are producing energy from sun or wind or any non-conventional energy source is on a rise. Many countries have agreed to shift their electricity requirements primarily on non-conventional energy sources. With all this in mind the fossil fuel industry and the car companies that make engine operated cars are facing troubles. Remember we are talking about billions of dollar industry and powerful on a global level, the ones that kept this shift of consumers to electric cars on a hold, are now facing trouble as electric cars are making their way to the automobile industry with a bang. It will be time that will decide the fate of electric cars as this phenomenon cannot be stopped now.
Do comment or mail me your thoughts.
