An electric car is a car powered by one or more electric motors that use electrical energy that is stored in batteries, which then projects the power through electric motors to the vehicle’s drive train.

The first electric cars appeared in the 1880s, electric cars were popular in the 20th and early 19th century until common combustion engines were made for mass production and gasoline was cheaper than electric.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the energy crisis occurred that stopped the electric vehicle in its tracks.

Fast forward to 2008 when there was a renaissance in electric vehicle manufacturing due to advances in battery technology power, technology management and also concerns about rising oil prices and not to mention the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Since 2008, many governments, local authorities and countries have granted tax exemptions, tax benefits and government subsidies to help the growth of the electric vehicle market and reduce the aforementioned in an effort to reduce greenhouse gases and CO2 emissions.

Benefits of electric cars

There are many benefits to electric cars, a significant reduction in air pollution due to no exhaust pollutants being of great importance. Greenhouse gases and other similar emissions are greatly reduced, as in the case of the BMW I range, where BMW builds these cars with as many green components as possible and its factory units run on solar energy, which reduces fossil energy and your carbon footprint in half. very early in the production stage.

The other benefits of electric cars in 2014 is that we now have a new kid on the block in Tesla motors, these pure electric cars have a range of up to 300 miles per charge. Tesla is licensing patents on its technology to other motor industry giants to try to push and achieve greater range for all new electric cars.

Other benefits are FREE road tax and a £5000 government grant for a new electric car. Also, if you live in the UK and travel an average of 720 miles a week, this will only cost you, as of November 2014, £27 – now that has to be a benefit.

Plug-in electric (hybrid) cars

During the 21st century, the greatest demand is for the plug-in electric car since these vehicles have a better autonomy and are more practical for the average businessman who has to travel more than 100 miles per day. Also, due to the more well-known range anxiety, the production of plug-in electric cars has been boosted since the beginning of 2008.

However, as of 2010 a new dawn had dawned with cars like the Chevrolet Volt, Vauxhall Ampera, Mitsubishi Outlander in 2014 and the BMW i3 range extender in 2013. These cars have taken on the electric car format and generally had a small engine. ability that works as a generator to keep the batteries recharged, ultimately giving you a longer range.

Another benefit of plug-in electric cars is that you can now achieve 290mpg, which as we know from prices at the pumps, in November 2014 a gallon of petrol would cost £6.00 on average. So as we can see, this is a great reason to buy a plug-in hybrid car.

Pure and plug-in electric car charging

This is very easy today with the ability to charge from your own home also with superchargers across the UK and other charging facilities across the UK. By 2020 the European Union has said the UK must have a minimum of 60,000 electric car charging points, considering this is only six years from now we think you’ll be in good hands to charge your car at any time no matter where. you live in the UK in 2014.

So the locations can be;

A home charger that sits discreetly on one of your exterior walls, in a shed, or in your garage.

From a charging station on the UK road network, to supermarkets, to Tesla supercharging stations, from fire stations, from other government locations to car parks, airports and anywhere else you can fit one.

These chargers depend on the power unit, one charge can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 8 hours to fully charge your car, however the average time to charge a pure electric car today drops to 4 hours in many cases. If you drive less than 100 miles a day and get four to eight hours of sleep a night, you can have a fully charged car without having to go to a gas station again and waste time at the pump.

With a plug-in hybrid it’s pretty much the same, however you can obviously travel well over 100 miles a day, in fact you could travel up to 1000 as these vehicles don’t rely on being plugged into a power unit.