A Clean Future Is More Affordable

There has been a consensus in recent years that sources of clean energy are now more affordable than traditional energy sources. While this wasn't always the case in the past, developments in technology and economies of scale have brought the price of various key technologies down over time.

In the area of transportation, solid state mass produced components have become commonplace where motor controllers designed to control vehicles were previously a special order item. Before the recent shift in the automotive industry over the last decade, EV hobbyists who wanted to convert a car to electric would seek out the help of custom builders who would size and build controllers to order. With the low volume of EV hobbyists, the capital investment to scale up production just wasn't there.

Now if you were to search amazon for electric motor conversion kits you'll see a wide assortment of items available which include various types of motors, controllers, sensors, and wiring looms to fit many different applications. Electric hub motors to build an e-bike, with such a low barrier to entry for a hobbyist, have become a very popular way to start building your own electric powered transportation.

Industry leader Tesla recently laid out it's MASTER PLAN PART 3 which goes into some detail about what it will take to transition the world not only to clean energy transportation, but also to use clean energy in industrial operations. The big takeaways are that:

1. It's definitely feasible with the resources we have available to us
2. It's going to cost everyone less that sticking with fossil fuels

Hertz seems to be saving a good amount of money switching to electric cars!

For people that are into this sort of thing, cell.com has a very detailed and technical analysis about our cheaper clean energy future.

Some other things that just make good sense economically and environmentally with electric vehicles specifically, are that they have less maintenance and so many fewer moving parts. The difference is HUGE! A typical Electric vehicle with have only about 20 moving parts, where as a traditional gasoline vehicle will have around 2,000 moving parts. Gears, valves, transmissions, pumps, and all the little parts that shift, spin, slide, and grind need lubrication systems and are still going to wear out and need to be maintained and eventually replaced. From 20 to 2000 - that's 100 times more moving parts! How much longer will your electric car last? 100 times longer? Well not 100 times, but even if they only last 2 or 3 times longer than your old gas car that makes them much cheaper to own. If we have million mile electric cars, and we drive a ton, say 20,000 miles a year, then it would take 50 years to wear out such a car! Many speculate that the upcoming Tesla Cybertruck will last 50 years.

THIS IS GOOD NEWS RIGHT!? Well not for everyone. It seems that there are many who would prefer to just keep doing things the old way so they can continue to profit from their prior investments. If you've spent billions of dollars on factories building engines which burn gasoline, you'd want to keep building those same engines as long as you can sell them. Fortunately, there are enough people with a social conscience who want to do the right thing for our environment such that we have all kinds of incentives to help tilt the financial weight even more in favor of clean energy investments. Even still, we should be grateful for innovator who have come along and PROVEN that it can be done, and in this way force the hand of those who would resist our clean energy future for more profits on investments of the past.

Even more interesting is the newer form factors enabled by compact electric drivetrains that just couldn't be done until recently. The wide assortment of E-bikes in the marketplace is the result of lighter and more powerful batteries which have been coming down in cost. Nobody wanted a heavy bicycle that couldn't go very fast, but if all we had was the old lead acid batteries of yesteryear that's all we could get, slow, heavy and not capable of going far on a charge.

More powerful and smarter electronic controllers have also enabled newer self balancing options such as electric hoverboards. More recently in the past few years we're seeing a huge swell in the Electric unicycle industry. These one wheeled electric vehicles, Electric Unicycles or EUCs for short, have opened a new way for many to get around, some traveling in excess of 50 mph! For utility or just for FUN (fun is our favorite part at CEVRA) these are not vehicles you could reasonably power with a traditional gasoline engine, they require the instant torque and smart responsiveness that are out of reach for all but electronic drivetrains.

While in the modern world many of us live in a democracy and can vote for those who favor a clean energy future, being in a capitalist society we can vote with our wallets. Every purchase of an Electric vehicle reinforces the direction of a clean energy future. While a politician may make (and might keep) promises to invest in a clean energy future, we can all make those investments ourselves directly in our daily lives.

Get updates or tell us what's happening where you ride: contact CEVRA.

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