Rachel’s Blogs

For this week’s Eco Ventures I revisited the eco-car sector – but with more of a focus on electric vehicles.

Governments around the region and the world are partnering with a number of companies to boost the technology within their respective economies.

A few questions were raised during interviews which I conducted over the last week, and I thought I would share them with you to find out what you think on the following.

How clean are electric vehicles?
Now whilst I am by no means biased one way or another, electric vehicles are often are perceived as having an extremely low carbon foot print, and little or no consumption in carbon fuels. Do consumers who are looking to purchase electric vehicles think beyond the car? Where did the electricity come from to power your vehicle? With this I suppose we could get into the smart grid debate.. but just as a point of interest…

Then there is the cost. Many industry observers believe that the price of electric vehicles is the main deterrent for users in going green, what kind of incentives and initiatives would you like to see?

The method used for charging. Now, at the moment electric vehicles can take quite a prolonged period of time to charge, with many owners charging overnight. What do you think would be a suitable solution to charge these green cars? I mean realistically we can’t have wires hanging from HDB block or condos to charge the cars below can we? Or are external rechargeable solutions the way forward?

Then there is the debate of swapping one scarce fuel for another when it comes to lithium batteries.. are we exchanging a depleting fuel supply only to replace it with a similar scenario? Are hydrogen cells the way forward?

The price of oil continues to rise and supplies continue to deplete is it not necessary for us to find an alternative to motor transport. Not to mention to reduce carbon emissions?

I have had the privilege of viewing a few electric car projects in the last week, and the technology is nothing less then fantastic. And whilst I have no doubt that electric vehicles of some variety will be the way forward with the mass amounts of government spending globally being pumped into the area – at the moment I suppose we are still in the trial and error stage.

I think for now hybrids, are good safety option.

Here’s an interest site of a local Singapore company that’s plugging its faith in the electric market:

http://www.ampleworld.com/

For more info, here are some interesting sites for you to check out:

Pluginamerica.org

Rechargeit.org

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