The Electric Car Revolution

The world is indeed going through a second electric car revolution -- the first one…failed, but this one will not and let’s talk about why.

In the past (1970-1980’s), the hippies and green tech folks pushed for electric cars, but the world just wasn’t ready for them.  However this time it’s an idea whose time has come.

As political instability in the Middle East is going in fifty different directions right now and the price of gasoline is skyrocketing again (for the second time in several years), the electric car is becoming cheaper and cheaper, and the technology is getting better and better, so much so that in a few short years the electric car may very well be the norm and the gasoline car will be going the way of the horse and buggy.

Here is the history of the first electric car revolution -- back in the 70’s oil was cheap and plentiful, but then there was a scare (shortage) in the late 70’s and people clamored for alternative energy, but then oil prices quickly receded and people forgot all about the electric car and cleaner energy, not to mention that the electric car was pegged as being ‘outside the mainstream’, and driving one was literally like driving a lean mean…golf cart.  This is just not the case today, and that has people looking to electrics.

The most popular electric cars today are hybrids, and within a few years time it would not be surprising if almost every model car had a hybrid counterpart.  These cars are the bridge between the gasoline car, which is going out, and the new electric car which will be phased in, phased in perhaps a lot faster than we might imagine.

Examples of popular hybrids or PHEV’s (Plug-in Hybrids) would be the Chevy Volt, the Toyota Prius, and several new Jeep models as well.  Of course all of the other auto makers are following suit right now, it’s just a matter of time before there are many, many more hybrids on the road.

And then there are the real cars of the future, the true electric cars, for example next year Ford will make available it’s electric version of the Focus, it will not be a hybrid, it will be a pure EV.  It can reportedly go 100 miles on a single charge, which is more than enough distance for most people’s daily tasks.

The problem with the electric car is in the battery, the battery needs to be made cheaper, and there need to be places where old batteries can be replaced, in fact, in the future there will very likely be service stations which simply swap out your old electric battery and put in a new one, these would be like the gas stations in today’s world.

There is an Israeli company that is already building an infrastructure in that country right now, and it will come “online” fast, much faster than you can imagine, within years not decades.
The electric car revolution is already upon us and it may surprise a lot of people how fast these new vehicles replace our old and antiquated combustion engines en masse.