Why isn't everyone driving electric cars?

Question

With all the natural resorces being used up, why hasnt everyone change to electric cars yet?

Answer 1

Who killed the electric car is a rentable DVD from Netflix and it explains the whole corrupt string of reasons. It is up to us individual US citizens to push solar electric power as a way to clean up our atmosphere and end the PetroPiggishness of this past century. We are renting solar panels for our home this fall and also building an electric car this year too. We are quite excited to plug our car into the socket in the garage and charge the car overnite instead of contributing to petroleum cartels and oil wars. I no longer want to contribute to the use of fossil fuels and the criminally destructive consciousness that is associated with it. If I had the funds I might buy a very cute little electric car by Phoenix Motorcars that has a new high tech battery that allows the car to go a distance of over 250 miles/charge. In fact, the battery supposedly charges in TEN MINUTES, the same amt of time it takes to fill a gas tank. So we are not far from Americans driving electric cars. Since most of big-business and corporate America still plan to sabotage the electric car, it will take revolutionary activism at a grass roots level to get this changed ASAP. Fossil fuels are the OLD way. Be part of the solution and rent solar panels and charge your electric car. We can all make a difference and ease global warming and green house gases. The solar revolution is at hand. Rethink solar. Contact me for more info.

Answer 2

Because mostly we put up with what we're given by the big car & oil companies and the entertainment media that supply us with "information" on personal transport choices.

Electric cars are much more efficent "well to wheel" than infernal combustion, even if the electric comes from an oil fired station.
eg law of thermodynamics the bigger the better, using unrefined oil, direct pipeline - no tankers/filling stations, always optimum temperature and load, most car journeys are too short to get efficient and the gearbox is never exactly right.
Electric cars generate maximum torque from 0 rpm, use no power when stationary & recover energy slowing down.
They are also have few moving parts so more reliable & cheaper to maintain.

In many cities, like Westminster London, electric cars are exempt from taxes, free parking and recharging facilities.

EVs are simply much more enjoyable to drive than smelly, noisy, unreliable junk the motoring industry peddle, and the motoring media just lap up all tehir freebies & never question the options; and jo public just take what they are given.

The Tesla can do 0-60 in 4 seconds, 250 miles per charge. Altair nano Li-ion batteries can be recharged in 10 minutes and have a life expectancy of 20 years. (Note oil companies own a lot of other promising battery patents)

Answer 3

It requires fossil fuels to create the electricity to power electric vehicles. Since electric cars are not as efficient as the cars running on gasoline, electric cars don't provide that much of an advantage for the environment or the people who drive them at this point in time. Electric vehicles have several limitations with regards to speed and mileage. There are also insufficient electric fueling stations. In time scientists will develop new methods for producing electricity because they will become economically feasible. As this happens, the technology for electric vehicles will also improve as economics become more favorable. One day, more people will drive electric cars, but right now it is a more costly alternative and doesn't do as much to preserve the environment as some people think.

Answer 4

GM made an electric car, available for lease in California in the late 1990s. The auto and oil industries worked together to kill it off. The company recalled all of the wildly successful electric cars and crushed them. There is a documentary about it called, "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

So, basically, the oil industry is doing its damndest to prevent electric cars from being manufactured to a wide market, because it would hurt their profits.

Answer 5

well fist we have to get renuable energy really up and running - electric cars would be powered by the electricity generated at the power stations we have today, and with so may of them being fossil-fuel burning, electric cars would not decrease global carbon emissions. And they're expensive - not for all markets. An easier alternative would be to begin running cars of pressurised hydrogen - normal petrol motors can run off it with little or no alterations,. pressurised hydrogen in sutably and affordable form is still in prototype.
Or we could just cut downon our car transport - public transport, cycling, walking......

Answer 6

They are hard to come by. Some models have been taken off the market in favor of researching hydrogen powered vehicles. The Oil industry hates the idea of them, for obvious reasons, and they have a lot of pull in this country. Check out the documentary "Who killed the electric car"

Answer 7

Heya there, If everyone drove electric cars, the government would presumably shift taxes onto something else, to remain revenue-neutral. Perhaps it would raise taxes on the fossil fuels used to generate the electricity, or perhaps increase road tax from the zero rate, or tax something else entirely, like alcohol. In the UK, though the amount of revenue raised from road tax is significant, it is only about 3% of goverment revenue in a year. So its not going to break the national accounts. As others have pointed out, electric cars are NOT very CO2 efficient, as (in the UK) they rely on mostly fossil fuels being burned in power stations to generate the electricity, coupled with transmission losses. The same applies to hydrogen, really. So your premise that electric cars "save the environment" is not true, by itself. The "cleanest" cars remain either diesel or electrics fueled from (mostly) nuclear power stations, as in France and Japan.

Answer 8

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Electric vehicles exist, and can be bought, but suffer from a bad rap because of negative and untruthful information put into our culture by special interests.
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Contrary to some disinfo you may have heard, electric cars don't pollute anywhere near what gasoline vehicles do. A gas engine is less than 25% efficient. Electric motors are more than 90% efficient, and delivering electricity by wire is 95% efficient. This beats trucking gasoline to thousands of gas stations! Fuel also burns far more efficiently at a big plant than it does in your little car.
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I can prove this by showing you fuel prices - after all, you will be paying for fuel no matter how it gets to you, right? About how much does gasoline cost per mile? It varies of course, but it's somewhere around 10 to 15 cents per mile. How much does it cost to drive electric? The Toyota RAV4 EV, for example, gets 4 miles per kilowatt-hour. Off-peak (nighttime) electricity costs about 3 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending where you live. This means driving electric only costs about a penny per mile - MUCH cheaper than gasoline, and it's all due to the greater efficiency of EVs.
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Efficiency improvements mean less pollution - because you are driving further on less fuel. Remember also, that only about half of electricity is made from burning dirty fuel (and only 3% is made by burning oil.)
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Did you know an electric car can be had for as little as $5000? For this price you get a conversion - a gas car converted to electric. Cars like this look and handle like normal cars, and do freeway speeds, but have limited driving ranges. This is the kind of car I drive. More info here:
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http://www.squidoo.com/cheap-electric-car/
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If you want a new electric car, here's an exciting one, coming out this year. It will go up to 250 miles on a charge, carries 5 people plus cargo, and can charge in only TEN MINUTES. This car can be pre-ordered NOW. Info here:
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http://phoenixmotorcars.com/models/fleet.html
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The Phoenix will be expensive though. If you don't need to get on the freeway, you might like the Zap. It's a very fun vehicle that only costs $10,000.
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http://zapworld.com/ZAPWorld.aspx?id=188
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I'll bet you've never heard of any of these cars. Popular culture, with help from the media and various nterests, continues to propogate the myth that such cars are impossible. Join me - drive an impossible car!
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Answer 9

Because they are very expensive and not enough power. Besides, electric cars are not the future because they still burn natural resources to produce the electricity. The best you can really do right now is hybrids.

The future of automobiles is really Hydrogen, but no one has yet worked out the kinks of public safety. (Hydrogen is very explosive)

Answer 10

Hmmm...good question. I think it's just a slow process because we've used oil for so long. There are many people experimenting with different resources from what I've read, but I think it just takes time. As for me I hope that day comes soon! Then we won't be fighting over this oil business anymore! =)