Introduction 3
electric vehicles, once cheap oil was widely available and the self starter for the internal
combustion engine (invented in 1911) had arrived, the IC engine proved a more attractive
option for powering vehicles. Ironically, the main market for r echargeable batteries has
since been for starting IC engines.
1.1.2 T he relative decline of electric vehicles after 1910
The reasons for the greater success to date of I C engine vehicles are easily understood
when one compares the specific energy of petroleum fuel to that of batteries. The specific
energy
2
of fuels for IC engines varies, but is around 9000 Whkg
−1
, whereas the specific
energy of a lead acid battery is around 30 Whkg
−1
. Once the efficiency of the IC engine,
gearbox and transmission (typically around 20%) for a petrol engine is accounted for, this
means that 1800 Whkg
−1
of useful energy (at the gearbox shaft) can be obtained from
petrol. With an electric motor efficiency of 90% only 27 Whkg
−1
of useful energy (at
the motor shaft) can be obtained from a lead acid battery. To illustrate the point further,
4.5 litres (1 gallon
3
) of petrol with a mass of around 4 kg will give a typical motor car a
range of 50 km. To store the same amount of useful electric energy requires a lead acid
battery with a mass of about 270 kg. To double the energy storage and hence the range
of the petrol engine vehicle requires storage for a further 4.5 litres of fuel with a mass
of around 4 kg only, whereas to do the same with a lead acid battery vehicle requires an
additional battery mass of about 270 kg.
This is illustrated in Figure 1.3. In practice this will not double the electric vehicle
range, as a considerable amount of the extra energy is needed to accelerate and decelerate
the 270 kg of battery and to carry it up hills. Some of this energy may be regained
through regenerative breaking, a system where the motor acts as a generator, braking the
vehicle and converting the kinetic energy of the vehicle to electrical energy, which is
returned to battery storage, from where it can be reused. In practice, when the efficiency
of generation, control, battery storage and passing the electricity back through the motor
and controller is accounted for, less than a third of the energy is likely to be recovered.
As a result regenerative breaking tends to be used as much as a convenient way of
braking heavy vehicles, which electric cars normally are, as for energy e fficiency. For
lead acid batteries to have the effective energy capacity of 45 litres (10 gallons) of petrol,
a staggering 2.7 tonnes of batteries would be needed!
Another major problem that arises with batteries is the time it takes to recharge them.
Even when adequate electrical power is available there is a minimum time, normally
several hours, required to r e-charge a lead acid battery, whereas 45 litres of petrol can be
put into a vehicle in approximately one minute. The recharge time of some of the new
batteries has been reduced to one hour, but this is still considerably longer than it takes
to fill a tank of petrol.
Yet another limiting parameter with electric vehicles is that batteries are expensive, so
that any battery electric vehicle is likely not only to have a limited range but to be more
expensive than an internal combustion engine vehicle of similar size and build quality.
2
‘Specific energy’ means the energy stored per kilogram. The normal SI unit is Joule per kilogram (Jkg
−1
). However, this
unit is too small in this context, and so the Watthour per kilogram (Whkg
−1
) is used instead. 1 Wh = 3600 J.
3
British gallon. In the USA a gallon is 3.8 litres.