Electric cars Flashcards
What’s the difference between an engine and a motor?
motors run on electricity, electrical power to mechanical energy
engines run on combustion, fuels to mechanical force
Advantages of ICE (= internal-combustion-engine)
*higher top speeds than electric vehicles
*cheaper than electric cars
*Gas cars can go 250-300 miles on a tank on average. So, you don’t really have to worry about it most of the time.
*Filling up your gas tank is fast.
*Gas stations are everywhere. If you are on a trip, you can always keep going.
Advantages of electric cars
*accelerate more quickly than gas vehicles.
*generate torque (= rotational force) more efficiently than gas cars.
*Over the lifetime of a vehicle, electric cars are cheaper.
*charging the battery is cheaper than filling a gas tank
*Skip maintenance costs!
*On average, people drive 30 miles per day. So, the concerns about electric vehicle range won’t apply most of the time.
*Charge your electric car at home or at work.
*Some workplaces have priority parking spaces for electric vehicles. These even come with charging stations.
*Electric cars have zero tailpipe emissions.
*Electric cars are quieter.
Drawbacks of ICE
*Some power generated by the engine is routed to the drivetrain. This results in less torque.
*With gas vehicles, you are stuck paying for regular maintenance. Oil changes, coolant and transmission fluid are a few examples of costs you only pay with gas vehicles.
*Gas vehicles force you to pay for gas. Some have worse fuel-efficiency, thus making you pay for gas more often.
*You can’t fill up at home.
*Gas vehicles have tailpipe emissions.
*Gas vehicles contribute to toxic waste. Leftover oil, fluid, etc. is not biodegradable.
Drawbacks of electric cars
*As of now, electric vehicles are typically not able to reach the top speeds of gas cars.
*Ranges are typically lower than gas vehicles. The battery won’t get you as far as a gas tank.
*It can be hard to find a charging location in a rural area.
*Charging your electric vehicle takes much longer than filling up gas.
*Where the electricity to charge your vehicle comes from matters. Until the source of the power is clean, electric vehicles aren’t totally beneficial to the environment.
*The production of electric vehicles, just like gas vehicles, typically comes with emissions.
*As they make less noise, they may be more dangerous.
How does the Squidd’s respond to the statement : Electricity production is bad for the environment.
Producing electricity gets more efficient with scale (= the more you create, the less energy it takes to create it). So even if a big coal power plant is bad for the environment, at the level of an individual electric car, the contribution to climate change is very little, and much less than that of a gasoline car. For electricity generated from clean sources (sun, water), it plummets to virtually nothing.
How does the Squidd’s respond to the statement : Electric cars take more resources to make and do more damage to the environment.
If the batteries are removed from the equation, the resources needed to make an electric car and an ICE car are the same (except for the motor vs the engine).
With the batteries in, the difference in GH-gas emissions can be made up for in a few months of use since an electric car pollutes much less.
Even for high-performance cars, an electric car will break even with a comparable ICE car within a year, two years with a more “standard” model.
Don’t forget the extraction of fossil fuels to power ICE cars also pollutes a lot.
How does the Squidd’s respond to the statement : The rise in electric car ownership will lead to the collapse of the infrastructure because it will not be able to adapt to the increase in demand.
The infrastructure will not remain as it is. Some electric cars companies like Tesla are building their own infrastructures, and some of them are powered by renewable energy. Moreover, the grid is constantly improving (more PV panels so less pressure on it, + regular upgrades).
Why won’t electrical cars solve climate change?
*transportation remains car-based and electric cars still have a huge carbon footprint (manufacturing: mining of raw materials – lithium, cobalt, etc., which leads to pollution and deforestation + electricity production, which is not carbon-free), even if less than ICE cars. This means that the transition might be too slow to reach the target. And this transition will even be slower for trucks and buses, most of which are still diesel-powered.
*The pollution from wearing tyres, brakes, and roads, which also contributes to climate change, will remain.
*Moreover, prioritizing cars as a transportation method is extremely inefficient when it comes to space in our cities, another crucial part of the climate change equation. More and more cars = less and less space for vegetation, which transforms CO2 into O2.
→ A better solution would be a good green mass public transportation system; we have to think big.
Most experts seem to think that electric cars will take over much sooner than was expected a few years ago. Why, in your opinion?
Fossil fuels are running out, and governments are increasingly setting targets to ban ICE vehicles because they damage the environment.
Meanwhile, the prices of electric cars are falling, their lifetimes get longer, battery energy density (and therefore range) keeps rising, and there are more and more models to choose from.
How does an AC motor work?
An AC (alternating current) motor works by utilizing the interaction between the magnetic fields generated by the stator (stationary component) and rotor (rotating component) to produce rotational motion. The AC power source is fed into the stator windings, creating an oscillating magnetic field. This magnetic field induces a current in the rotor, which also generates its own magnetic field. The interaction between the stator and rotor magnetic fields creates a torque, causing the rotor to rotate. The direction of the magnetic field in the stator is constantly changing, causing the rotor to continually rotate in one direction. The speed of the motor can be controlled by changing the frequency of the AC power source.
How does an DC motor work?
A DC motor is composed of 2 curved magnets. Between them an armature is placed. Its both ends are connected to commutators and are wired to a battery. the current flowing through said wires induces a magnetic field in the armature. Therefore the armature spins so that the 2 opposite poles from magnet and from the armature, face each other. Then the brushes switch contact with the commutators. The current flows the other way around. Thus, the polarity ofthe armature changes and makes it spin again.
