this article writes about the list of car companies that are developing electric cars.
I want to ask you, do you think that electric cars are useful for the future and the survival of humanity on earth?
nb; if there is a topic that is the same as this, then I will immediately delete this topic, thank you
Yes, they are useful, but not for survival of humanity. Humans can live without cars for that matter.
Electric cars are like digital vs analog cameras, or CRT vs LED screens, etc. There are so many analogies, but it seems the "common" people are far more close to cars. It took a while for photographers to recognize and eventually accept digital photography, same thing here.
They certainly take less resources, not too much less if the country generates electricity burning fossil fuel, but less none the less.
Start with the basics, take a look at a combustion engine vs electric motors. The complexity of the first vs the simplicity of the second. As a driver, you will immediately notice the amount of extra maintenance steps no longer needed. An electric car only uses some oil for the driving wheel, and even this nearly optional.
You see, direct mechanical direction is becoming a thing of the past, and that's when you actually drive the car yourself... Same as many other input methods are no longer direct, the gas and the brakes, these made their way into conventional cars. You push the gas pedal and you are no longer pulling some lever inside allowing more gasoline flow like it used to be. no. Modern cars today are pretty much "by wire", with the "inputs" being more or less glorified digital controls that tell a computer the intention of the driver (ie, accelerate), same with braking.
Take a simple toy electric car, and you are looking at a simplified version of what you will be driving. It has a battery, it has en electric motor, and wheels. Add direction and brakes, mostly for regulatory reasons. Tesla cars are known to brake plenty with regenerative braking, meaning, if you release the pedals, the car doesn't coast as much because the regenerating of energy happens to make the car slow down so much that people call it 1 pedal driving (ie: just push to accelerate, release to brake). Many people claim they can drive without ever touching the mechanical brakes, especially when regenerative braking is set at its highest regenerative level (it can be softened/disabled). If you know car mechanics, try to digest the magnitude of simplicity this entails. You do know Tesla doesn't even bother with gear changes? Of course they don't electric motors are very efficient which is how they found their way into Rail locomotion so early in the 20th century and ever since (No diesel locomotion engine remains that drive directly the wheels, all they do is put an electric motor and a diesel generator next to each other). This is because the electric engine is so powerful under varying loads already.
So you end with: Car body, wheels, battery bank, electric engine directly attached to wheel (no transmission), lights, chairs, windshield a single digital screen (optional) and you are pretty much done. Elon Musk had a chance when he started Tesla, to move humanity into electric cars. When he started, electric cars were still seen as toys with much disdain. It took him alone to prove them wrong, as the big manufacturers didn't care, and he delivered, and the big guys now how no choice but to follow, and this is why you see many brands jumping in.
To accelerate things, the efficient electric motor patented by Tesla has been given away for anyone to use. The patent is only used defensively, anyone is welcome to use it without paying royalties, not unlike Free Open Source software.
Did i mention that, going to a gas station to "fill" disappears from your life? The idea with the electric car, is that you plug it anywhere you park. So you will see more and more parking with electricity, and less and less gas stations. Think of, places where you used to go develop your photographs, in the past these shops were all over the place, now they are hard to find, if any remain. Or you could think of VHS rental shop, now that there is digital streaming, the likes of blockbuster, once staple of living, are no more.
In the following years you will see the combustion car quickly diminish at an accelerated rate. Business like restaurants to attract customers will make sure all their park space has electric plugs, kinda like you wouln't go to a shop without wifi anymore.
And yes, the lovers of "vroom" would claim how this is the end of the world, that cars are "not fun anymore", but such is progress. It has happened to so many things already, new generations will simply not know about it. Did you know the military doesn't teach morse code anymore? Yup, it remains in movies, just like the telegraph, the record player, vhs... Maybe the television will follow, who needs it when everything is streamed online? Aside from being a glorified big display with a tuner, that tuner is having less and less use, or the ones used by cable box, digital and all, are a thing of the past. Because there is no point in getting 500 channels when you are only going to watch only a few for few hours, and its what they want not what you want anyway.
I say we are no longer waiting for the future, the cars exist, we have entered in the phase of massive global-scale adoption. China is probably coming with cheaper, shorter ranged (and probably not as safe as Tesla) electric cars, but good enough for commuters. Of course it doesn't help that Beijing is smoke city...
It will simply become too cumbersome to keep running combustion engine cars anymore. Think of this, your VHS is broken, you need to take it for repairs, can you find a repair technician quickly? Not anymore right? Those that remain are the old people who used to do it in their glory days. Same with cars.
Love it or hate it, electric cars have arrived. Be thankful if you are still allowed to direct the wheels, because self driving is also making tremendous advance. Google (renamed Alphabet/Waymo) already envisioned a car that is essentially a chair with a tablet on wheels. No wheel, pedals, no nothing. You tell it where you want to go, and off it goes. You might say that was too early but i expect this to return once the things are considered safe enough...
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