The electric car was among the earliest automobiles — small electric vehicles predate the Otto cycle upon which Diesel (diesel engine) and Benz (gasoline engine) based the automobile. Between 1832 and 1839 (the exact year is uncertain), Scottish businessman Robert Anderson invented the first crude electric carriage. Professor Sibrandus Stratingh of Groningen, the Netherlands, designed the small-scale electric car, built by his assistant Christopher Becker in 1835.[4]
Practical and more successful electric road vehicles were invented by both American Thomas Davenport and Scotsmen Robert Davidson around 1842. Both inventors were the first to use non-rechargeable electric cells.
What advantages do EVs offer? EVs produce zero emissions at the point of use. An electric motor is 400% to 600% more efficient than an internal combus tion engine. An EV, per mile, uses one-half the fossil-fuel resources an ICE consumes. An EV produces only 5% to 10% of the emissions of an ICE per mile traveled. All of the EV’s emissions occur at a (oil- or coal-fueled) power plant, which runs 400% to 500% more efficiently than an ICE and scrubs its own exhaust. EVs can use electricity from anywhere including sustainable energy resources (wind and sun). EVs are simple, silent, and affordable to operate.
Zero-Emission or Emission-Elsewhere? It is a major step for an automobile to no longer emit exhaust gases. In fact, it is nearly inconceivable. That’s why consumers will love zero-emission vehicles. They may not be driving a solar-powered car, but they will be helping the sun to once more shine through clear skies.
In the literal sense, of course, the EV is the “emission-elsewhere” car. The electricity to power the car has to be generated somewhere. And, though some energy is available from sustainable energy sources like wind, solar, and water power, the bulk comes from coal- and oil-fueled power plants. Isn’t this just transplanting the problem somewhere else?
The answer is both yes and no. Yes, the pollution is transferred to another region. However, this matter has been scrutinized extensively by the U.S. Depart ment of Energy and several California agencies charged with air-quality manage ment. The bulleted list above reflects their findings.
EVs are very efficient. They have to be. A pound of battery has 1/100 of the energy of a pound of gasoline. On average, a 30 mpg ICE car uses only 5% to 10% of the energy of its fuel, whereas the EV converts 70% to 80% of the battery’s pack into propulsion, for the same mile.
Running costs
Electric car operating costs can be directly compared to the equivalent operating costs of a gasoline-powered vehicle. A litre of gasoline contains about 8.9 kW·h of energy.[39] To calculate the cost of the electrical equivalent of a liter of gasoline, multiply the utility cost per kW·h by 8.9. Because automotive internal combustion engines are only about 20% efficient, then at most 20% of the total energy in that liter of gasoline is ever put to use.
Also Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_ca…

Depends if you mean the world economy or one particular countries economy.
the cost of use of fossil fuels is described in teh Stern report http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independen…
ie the cost of climate change dwarfs the current credit mis-management crunch.
and the King review of low carbon cars http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pbr_csr0… ie we could benificially start to change to electric now.
Suddenly switching is rarely as enconomically benificial as evolution, encouraging un-discovered solutions to be brought in; getting maximum return from the existing cars and infrastructure, plus the upfornt one-off cost of loans and finance for companies, governments and individuals.
Different countries economies will be better placed to bring new technologies to market, invest in new infrastructure depending on their exposure to public debt; fossil fuel or renewable energy supply security etc.
but the most important resource is social capital and a culture willing to create a sustainable future not based on global infinite growth models (an imposibility on a finite planet)

For the last 4 years, the US has average $700 billion dollars per year sent to foreign countries for oil. The US economy could not sustain the loss of that much money each year.
That amount of money should have stayed home and been used on Infrastructure, Medical and Education. It would have provided living wage jobs that would have prevented the current economic melt down.
The production of US produced electric cars would not put anyone out of work, it would have changed their jobs from producing carbon powered cars to electric powered cars. Same with repair mechanics, they would repair electric engines instead of internal combustion engines.
Batteries and electric engines are recyclable and would be better for the environment. Even the acid in the batteries is reusable. The cleaner air and removal of green house gases produced by gas engines speak for itself.

a sudden switch over would be disaster for the economy as a whole. new infrastructure would have to be built virtually overnight, new cars would have to be built and sold virtually overnight. building the minimum number of cars needed would take at least a year IF all the automakers only made electric cars for the year. that also assumes that battery packs could be made in the numbers needed in that same period of time. to do all this requires trillions of dollars to be invested immediately. right now the money is not available. and after the cars were built, and the infrastructure was built, then you have to sell the cars to the people. that means 15 million new electric cars sold in one year. at an average price of $25,000 per car, how many people would be able to buy the cars? not enough to sell 15 million new electric vehicles thats for sure. remember that many people are upside down in their car loans now, and you want them to take on even more debt?
overall it would kill the economy in the short term, and it would make economic recovery extremely tough in the long term.
the better way to go is a gradual introduction of pure electric cars into the market place, and build the needed infrastructure at a reasonable pace that allow market forces to aid the building, while preventing a complete economic meltdown.

Wow, stoopers is just crazy-wrong. He makes a bunch of wrong assumptions and then builds on them. The US government has already done two studies on whether there’s enough power for everyone to charge electric cars, and it’s fine. The key is that peak demand is about 4x nighttime demand, and so 3/4 of the power stations are idle at night. So, charge at night.
Oil companies would lose a lot of jobs, true — but they would be foreign workers in foreign countries that we buy the oil from. Mainly, we would stop sending billions of dollars overseas, so those billions would be spent right here at home, and that would have a big effect on the economy.
What’s more, by us taking the lead in electric cars, we would bring America to the forefront of electric technology (we’re already there, just not shipping any products)… so other countries would be interested in our cars and products, tipping the trade inbalance in our favor.
You really got to watch those secondary effects.
Here’s a really important economic concept: Conservation does not help the economy. “driving less” won’t help our economy. Driving new and better cars will.

the calculations come out that whe would need to build 550 new nuclear power plants or add some 2,000,000 new wind turbines. Since the wind turbines will cost 3 times as much as nuclear plant, the US will ship all it gold reserves to foriegn contries to make those wind turbines and then the US will have the same standard of living as say Kenya.
So by interpilation we would only built 1/2 the wind plants and we’d stop driving cars and end up with a standard of living equal to about China.

How would having to buy new cars right now affect your family’s budget?

I see two bigger issues when millions of jobs are outsourced to cheaper countries and when we run out of oil. thats the reason dubai is investing in tourism, then I guess all those workers will have to find some other work to do when their oil sources are depleted. and they already have skills, drilling, pumping, they could dig water wells in developing countries. and it wouldnt be that hard for them to switch for alternative fuels.
direct ethanol fuel cells sounds like a good thing to do. if workers lose jobs on oil rigs, they can buy land, grow sugar cane and make ethanol. I heard you can get two to four times more ethanol than it takes to create it. or algae biofuel, on the same area you can get 10 to 30 times more oil compared with palm oil.
the only issue are plug in cars. it would make a large strain on power plants and most electricity already comes from coal power plants which pollute a lot. and then batteries are an issue too cause they arent efficient, so you would spend a lot of money getting new ones. fuel cells are better, then you only need energy in a form of gas or liquid, like ethanol that is easier to make compared with hydrogen that takes three times more energy to separate it from oxygen (hydrogen + oxygen = water).
and I’m not sure if electric engines are 400 to 600% more efficient. I do know that internal combustion engines are 25% efficient, while electric engines are 90% efficient. oh and ethanol has 6 to 8 kwh per 1kg and if you count that electric engines are more efficient, then direct ethanol fuel cells sounds like a good future. except that fuel cells and other alternative fuels are still quite expensive. but I’m sure it costs a lot to build an oil rig, refineries, tankers. every fuel costs something.
people are worried about food prices too. reality is that there is already enough food in the world to feed everyone. its politicians that hardly do anything to prevent starvation, kim jong il closed north korean borders and that caused mass starvation. werent europeans and cubans starving? look at great irish famine. today ireland makes enough food to export it too. its all about management. switching to ethanol fuel cells can create more jobs than oil ever did. you can buy land, grow sugar cane, distill it and you already have ethanol. corn is used too, but it has starch and then you need to add yeast to convert starch into sugar and its sugar that turns into ethanol (alcohol). sugar cane is already sugar, thats why brazil is growing sugar cane for ethanol.
we will still use oil for a long time. during this time I’m sure many people would buy new cars. so when people decide to get a new car, is it truly so hard to pick an electric one? you can convert your old car, electric engines are two to three times smaller than gasoline engines. and engines are all metal which still has value.
the largest issues of all is that you have to create alternative fuels, while oil was already made probably million years ago. gases like methane were compressed under extreme pressure. now we only drill, pump, refine and we can already fill our tanks. except the oil in alberta (canada) is mixed with coal, so it would cost quite a lot to extract the oil. middle eastern oil is already clean, you only have to refine it.
anything else? oh, economy. well ethanol is already taxed, many people can do this work without leaving their cities. unlike oil rigs that are out on the open sea or in the middle of nowhere. sailors work for months on tankers without seeing home. while making wind turbines or solar panels can offer a lot of work right in your hometown. and technology keeps advancing. I’ve seen a solar panel that can power a laptop and the panels themselves arent larger than the laptop. if anything goes well, then its poor richer, rich richer. traditional fuels are cheaper and pollute a lot. new, alternative fuels are expensive, while they pollute less. I rather pay more for less pollution, WHO estimates that 2 million people die each year cause of pollution.
and the environment wouldnt be affected as long as we dont continue using coal and nuclear power to get electricity. nuclear power plants still create high levels of radiation. you know what they say “I support nuclear, but not in my backyard”.

As an engineer, I’ll give you my best take on the viability of electric cars and how it would effect our economy. My conclusions are based on scientific laws of energy.
From an engineering standpoint, switching to primarily electric cars would be an environmental, economical, social and political disaster. It is impossible, and will likely never happen.
This conclusion is based on the following:
1. Power isn’t free and you have to “make” it.
2. Power doesn’t come from magic, it comes from an energy source. The rate that energy is made useful is “power”.
3. Regardless of where power comes from, power is power. So… electric vs gasoline vs diesel vs coal vs nuclear – energy is energy, just from a different source, and power is the rate that energy can be used. Granted, some may pollute more than others, but they all have an impact.
Driving a car to drive up a hill uses the same amount of energy no matter what the car runs on. Gasoline, diesel, electricity, etc. The energy used is proportional to the mass of the car. There is no energy or power “savings” by using electric cars. Just a different source.
If you build a gasoline (or oil or coal) fired power plant, then use the energy to charge your car’s batteries, then drive the car up a hill, you are using the same amount of energy! The car has gone up the same hill as it would have if you just put the gasoline engine in the car. You save nothing. You just move the pollution “elsewhere”.
The PROBLEM with electric cars is as follows, and describes why using electric cars is not economically, environmentally, socially and politically impossible:
A car uses 10 times the energy of our homes. THEREFORE, if we drove electric cars, we would need 10 times more power coming into our homes. That means, for every nuclear power plant, there needs to be 10 more. For every coal plant, there needs to be 10 more. For every 300 foot tall dam, there needs to be 10 more. 10 times more power lines. 10 times more transformers. 10 times more switching stations.
In the USA, we have ROLLING BLACKOUTS because we don’t have enough electricity for our homes. Where are we going to get 10 times more energy? Remember, it doesn’t come from magic! We simply don’t have the power. We have the energy sources (coal, nuclear, petroleum), but not the power.
Imagine the political implications of an environmentally minded “green” democrat trying to tell its constituents they need to build 10 new nuclear power plants to charge up the “green” cars? Imagine how long it will take to fill in the environmental impact reports to allow a new train line to deliver the DAILY supplies of coal to the 10 new coal plants? Imagine the newly endangered species that would result as 10 additional dams and 10 additional valleys are flooded (which can’t happen, as we already did this in the west and there aren’t too many more valleys to flood.)
Just think of how long it takes to get approval for a nuclear power plant. There are currently just over 60 nuclear power plants, some with multiple reactors, totaling just over 100 reactors. We need 1000 NEW nuclear reactors, to run our “green” cars. 1000 more potential 3-mile islands.
We have 600 coal plants in the USA. We need 6000 more (10 times).
Add to this the oil power plants, the natural gas power plants, the geo-thermal plants, hydro power plants. Multiply by 10. Rinse and repeat, etc.
Now, put all that on a ballot, and get the population to vote on it. No way would that ever be popular enough to pass.
The GM “Impact” electric car was thankfully killed. I drove it, it was fantastic! But… we don’t have the power. We have the energy, but not the power. And we can’t “invent” power, we have to make it from the energy sources. The government bailout of GM/Ford/Chrysler will not work. Hybrid and electric cars won’t solve the problem. You can’t run your hybrid car on water, gorp, or magic. You need a dense energy source.
People under-estimate the quantity of energy we get from oil/gasoline/diesel. The energy usage is mind-boggling. It’s not going to be solved with windmills and solar panels. The problem will be “advanced” through the building of thousands of polluting power plants, located in somebody else’s back yard. Electric cars will absolutely sink this country.
In my opinion, the best approach would be to “re-zone” huge urban areas, and redirect construction so it is oriented around public transportation. We need to stop with the sub-urban development, and start building upward. If America can’t walk to school, work, and the grocery store, that needs to be changed.
But this probably won’t happen either – imagine the horrified look of Joe the Plumber when their neighborhood gets rezoned and a tattoo parlor and adult bookstore open up just around the corner. Its much easier to “bail-out” failing businesses than to do the hard work to take the country where it needs to be