Don’t be surprised if in the near future you find yourself taking out car finance for an electric car. New technology is being developed to make the electric car a real road machine in ways never seen before. These cars are now a certainty to come on to the market in waves. Every major car manufacturer is currently developing electric cars to at least prototype, if not production model levels.

Photo: metaefficient.com

New ideas, new technology, and new paradigms for the car
Although electric cars actually predate the petrol based species, there were problems. Batteries were primitive, and for decades, the drive didn’t deliver a lot in terms of power. In the late 1980s, the power situation began to improve with better basic models and much better power systems, even at sports car level, but at hefty price tags. Although the development of power has been highly erratic, in some areas the technology is advancing steadily.

Retooling has also been a real issue for car makers. The problem has been that the retooling for electric models is potentially prohibitive. This has naturally affected America’s embattled car makers, who are working more on survival strategies than innovations. However, some good news has come from Italy’s Audi.

The Audi 1 is reliably rumored to be the model best suited for the first fully electric model from Audi. That means a lot, because if the frame can be left intact, all that’s required is some CAD work to create a mount for an electric engine. Result- Costs go down, not up, and tooling is much less of a problem.

Photo: autoblog.com

That’s a blessing for car makers around the world, because it means their existing production lines won’t need much modification. It’s also good news because the expensive, heavy petrol engines are actually a negative cost factor for them, and they could produce more cheaply.

(This won’t hurt engine manufacturers either. The electric engines are at least in theory easier and cheaper to make at full production scales, and their profit margins could increase sharply with fully streamlined production methods.)

The “recharge” issue is also about to undergo a major rethink. An Australian college has come up with what’s basically a fan belt approach to recharging. That would mean that the batteries would only need to be replaced every so often, and the all night charging routine wouldn’t be an issue.

Even the venerable car battery is about to undergo a major shakeup. A revised version of an equally old electrical technology, capacitors, is looking like a winner for phasing out batteries altogether. The new “super capacitors” can release 1000- 10,000 times the charge of conventional capacitors. That’s in the good working battery range. Super capacitors have a much bigger surface area, and unlike conventional capacitors, are made of activated carbon, not metal. That means the cost of super capacitors is also much lower than conventional capacitors and batteries.

Photo: zoomilife.com

People taking out car loans in the future are quite likely to be borrowing less for much higher performance electric cars. If you’re a motorist or a car maker the news is likely to be all good.

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