Battery vs Fuel car?

Fuel. But some car companies now make a hybrid SUV.

They say battery electric cars are not as cheap to operate as the manufacturers make out. Firstly you pay about double the price as a petrol car. Then you are limited how far you can drive as the batteries discharge and you have to stop in many cases for hours waiting for the batteries to recharge. Maybe you have to rent a motel room so you can let your car recharge so you now have to split your trip into 2 and have the cost of your trip blow out for the rent of the room that if you had a petrol fuelled car you would have been at your destination in one day. Then apparently if you run the heater or the airconditioner you cut the range of the car in half as they draw so much power from the batteries that it uses a lot of the power that was meant for the electric motors. I read one couple who said they will not use the heater or airconditioner and choose to freeze or overheat so they havethe full range of the vehicle. Then apparently very cold batteries do not supply the full charge of power to the car so on very cold days the range is lower and that is why people choose not to use the heater as therange drops a lot more.

Then if you put up with all the disadvantages you find out that the battery life is limited to 7 or 8 years before costing several thousand dollars to replace. They have also found that if the electricity is made from burning coal then the amount of pollution it takes to make the electricity is just as bad as the pollution that comes out the back of a petrol car.

So you spent double the money to but a short range vehicle and paid for the electricity to charge it then put up with all the short comings of battery electric vehicles, and then spend another $7.000 dollars or more to renew the batteries every several years and suddenly they are not cheap to run at all and very inconvenient to run. To me fuelled cars are a better buy at the moment as they can be cheap to buy, can be operated all day in virtually any conditions, driving them in comfort at highway speed.

fuel if you want more power and distance and battery if you want to spend less money

Never would I buy an electric car

Electric cars need time for the technology to mature and for the glitches to be sorted out. The batteries still need quite a bit of work for them to be as convenient as internal combustion engine cars.

If you only drive locally, or rarely drive farther, a battery car is your best bet. If you are driving long distances occasionally you can rent a car... cheaper than maintaining a car you don't usually need. If you frequently go more than a couple hundred km in a day get a fuel powered car. As JetDoc says, hybrids are a good choice.

The big unknown is battery cost. All batteries do better with restricted charge and discharge limits; Toyota gets spectacular longevity from their hybrid NiMH packs by limiting state of charge to the range of 40-80%, allowing less than half the battery capacity to be used. That is unacceptable as a restriction on electric cars, but an owner could keep his use to those limits most of the time.

Tesla, the maker of the "ooh - ahh" performance cars, has a policy you can buy with the car that allows the large 85 KWh battery packs to be replaced (once) for $12,000. The catch: the policy must be purchased within 90 days of taking ownership of the vehicle and the replacement must be at least 8 years after that. Without the policy the price is unknown but at today's pricing is expected to be between $30k and $40K USD.

Why not buy a HYBRID which can do BOTH.

Fuel as I don t drive short distances and batteries need charging very regular to get any range. Oh and battery cars have been around for over a decade.

Hi so as thesis not due for some 23 years and the best made plans of mice and man are always never likely. then we keep using the idea of hybrid cars. for at least 15 years.

the infrastructure is the only basis for such ideas. as the human animal is very much against change of any sort. that deadline is more likely to be extended many times.

Battery