Electric Cars and Their Future: Informative Speech
It is hard to imagine an average adult in the USA who does not own a car now. Americans’ reliance on traditional automobiles, ran on gasoline, is so high that they often think skeptically of more environmentally-friendly transportation alternatives, such as electric vehicles. Nevertheless, as Henry Ford once said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” (Vadari 205). With the electric car revolution around the corner, today’s talk aims at informing the audience about the principal advantages of electric vehicles for the environment.
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Focused on the history, current status, and future implications of electric cars, this speech will explain how this means of transportation can contribute to cleaner air. Though the invention of the first electric cars dates back to the nineteenth century, the popularity of this transport has not reached its peak until now.
There still exists a heated historical debate regarding the inventor of the first electric automobile. On the one hand, Moss suggests that the first person who contributed to the development of electric cars is Anyos Jedlik. This Hungarian inventor managed to create an early model of the electric motor in the late 1820s (Moss). On the other hand, Garrison notes that a real breakthrough in the industry happened later, in 1859, when the French physicist, Gaston Plante, introduced the first rechargeable electric batteries (275).
Both Moss and Garrison agree that Plante’s invention provided a sustainable basis for William Morrison’s work, who created the first electric vehicles for a series production in the early 1890s. As followed by Vepachedu, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the quest for accessible electric automobiles was joined by Thomas Edison and Henry Ford (2). While Edison worked on the development of a more efficient, long-lasting battery for the vehicle, Ford thought about how to incorporate electric cars into the massive production (Vepachedu 2). At that time, neither Edison nor Ford managed to implement their theoretical ideas into practice, shifting their focus from electric to gasoline automobiles.
With the twentieth century’s boom for gasoline cars, electric vehicles slowly lost their popularity, until numerous environmental issues, connected with air pollution, gained severity. As explained by Sprague, Americans use approximately 19 million gallons of petroleum daily, which results in an extremely high level of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere (72). According to Vepachedu, to address this problem, large car manufacturing companies in the USA started promoting electric automobiles as early as the 2000s (7).
Now, as noted by McDonald, General Motors, Fiat, and Ford Motor Company actively develop electric vehicles in the different price categories to meet user needs. Notwithstanding this fact, the current precedence in the industry belongs to Tesla, a car manufacturer company specializing in the production of electric automobiles. As mentioned by Vepachedu, in 2016, Tesla started selling electric cars globally, expanding its market from North America to Europe and Asia (7). With affordable and premium versions of automobiles available, the business hopes to make electric vehicles accessible to everyone.
The future status of electric cars remains favorable due to recent technological advancements in the area of renewable sources. However, according to Sprague, many Americans are still skeptical about the pollution aspect of electric automobiles, claiming that they use coal-generated electricity as power (72). In response to this statement, the researcher argues that the US does not rely much on coal for electricity anymore (72), searching for alternative ways of generating power.
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Furthermore, new long-lasting batteries appear more energy-saving than those of previous generations, producing less harmful emissions (Sprague 73). As written by Hall and Simpson, in the next five years, more than ten world-known car manufacturing companies, including Peugeot, Audi, BMW, and Honda, plan to present their new electric vehicles for sale. The common goal of all the companies, according to Keating, is to provide the utmost opportunities for car users to recycle batteries and charge them efficiently, using renewable sources of energy.
The author also mentions implications of smart charging of vehicles overnight (Keating), meaning that businesses attempt to balance the usage of shared electric grids outside during the day to prevent accidents. While the effect of electric automobiles on air pollution has not been adequately studied yet, recent technological developments give hope to assume a positive outcome in the future.
Ultimately, today’s speech briefly covered the history, current status, and future state of electric vehicles from various perspectives. Despite the controversial opinions on the effect electric cars have on the environment, most researchers note considerable advantages of this means of transportation over gasoline automobiles. With electric vehicles rapidly entering the market, this talk intended to familiarize the audience with the benefits of choosing such a car in the future.
While the change from traditional automobiles, run on petroleum, may seem challenging for many people, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, insists “in order to have clean air in cities, we have to go electric” (Vadari 205). Choosing electric cars will not only reduce the level of gas emissions in the air but also provide opportunities for recycling and usage of renewable sources of energy instead of gasoline.
Works Cited
Garrison, Ervan G. History of Engineering and Technology: Artful Methods. Routledge, 2018.
Hall, Chris, & Joe Simpson. “Future Electric Cars: Upcoming Battery-Powered Cars that Will Be on the Roads Within the Next 5 years.” Pocketlint, 2019. Web.
Keating, Dave. “Batteries on Wheels: In the Future, Electric Cars Can Power Homes.” Forbes, 2019. Web.
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McDonald, Loren. “Current & Future State of Electric Vehicles from the US Big 3 Auto Companies.” Clean Technica, 2017. Web.
Moss, Darren. “History of the Electric Car.” What Car, 2019. Web.
Sprague, Ryan. “An Analysis of Current Battery Technology and Electric Vehicles.” Journal of Undergraduate Research, vol. 5. no. 1, 2015, pp. 70-75.
Vadari, Subramanian. Smart Grid Redefined: Transformation of the Electric Utility. Artech House, 2018.
Vepachedu, Sreenivasarao. “The History of the Electric Car.” The Andhra Journal of Industrial News, no. 160, 2017, pp. 1-9.
