Electric Cars (EVs), Alternative Fuel Vehicles

Due to the increasing levels of air pollution, the vehicle manufacturing industry is beginning to consider developing alternative fuel vehicles. Alternative fuel vehicles are those that do not use traditional fuel, such as petroleum, in order to operate. It is a known fact that petroleum, when fueled to an internal combustion engine can produce emissions consisted of harmful gases. Reducing, if not totally replacing, the use of petroleum in the energy conversion will strongly impact the levels of pollution in the air.

Electric cars are just among the alternative fuel vehicles that are already running on today’s roads. The name itself signifies that it is fueled by electricity and not by petroleum. However, it does not fully reduce carbon compound emissions completely, because the battery it uses also produces carbon emissions. Nevertheless these cars can reduce the rate of carbon emissions by as much as 30%.

Electric cars have a high potential of reducing massive amount of air pollution within ten years of continuously replacing petroleum-generated cars. Some prominent car manufacturing industries, such as Mitsubishi, are beginning to design electric cars for future investments. Car developers in highly developed cities like Indianapolis estimate that a third of the 900 million petroleum-generated cars will be replaced with electric cars in 2020.

As an example, 40 million alternative fuel vehicles are already on the run. Most of these vehicles are electricity-generated and do not produce any smoke. Nevertheless, Mitsubishi Indianapolis electric cars still have some significant disadvantages, including expensive battery price and limited output endurance.

Despite that, EVs are found with low running costs and maintenance. Unlike an internal combustion engine that has hundreds of parts, an EV’s engine only has 5 major parts which requires maintenance. Mitsubishi Indianapolis car designers have been working on lowering the maintenance requirement for EVs by perfecting the integrating these five parts.

Another good feature of an EV is its high energy efficiency. Compared to an internal combustion engine which normally wastes a large percentage of energy by converting it to heat, the electrical energy produced by the battery of an EV is purely converted, with less waste, to mechanical energy. Mitsubishi Indianapolis car designers just need to develop battery switch technology on EVs for extended driving power.