EVs explained: How do electric cars work and are they really better than petrol or diesel cars?

euronews (in English)

Ever wondered how electric vehicles (EVs) work and what makes them different from the vehicles we drive today? Here’s everything you need to know.

Transcript

00:00This is Elon Musk.

00:02You know him, or let's say you've at least already heard his name a few times by now.

00:07Recently, he made the headlines during the Musk Twitter saga.

00:13And he even joked about buying Manchester United.

00:16And he also sends stuff to space.

00:19But most of us discovered this busy man with his electric vehicle company Tesla,

00:24the company that made EVs cool to the public eye, and even more than cool, sexy.

00:29So yes, that's him and his company.

00:32But he didn't invent electric cars.

00:35It could be attributed to this Dutch professor Sibrandus Stratting of Groningen,

00:40who designed this electric vehicle in 1835.

00:44And at the end of the 19th century in London,

00:46you were able to ride an electric taxi with a lovely nickname,

00:50The Hummingbirds.

00:54Now that we know that electric vehicles were around a long time ago,

00:57and that after disappearing from the scene, they're now making a comeback,

01:01it's important to understand how they work,

01:04where they beat fossil fuel vehicles,

01:06and where they still lag behind.

01:09To understand how an electric vehicle works,

01:11you have to understand how its motor works.

01:14To have a point of comparison,

01:15we'll start by looking at how an internal combustion engine works.

01:28And that is done following the principle that fuel plus air,

01:32when compressed and ignited, causes a little explosion.

01:35By using the energy released by the explosion to move a piston in a linear motion,

01:40and by mechanically transforming this linear motion to a rotary one,

01:44we can make the wheels turn and our vehicle move.

01:49On the other side, the electric motor is using electricity and magnetism to work,

01:54or to be more precise, electromagnetism.

01:58We've all seen at some point that opposite poles of a magnet attract,

02:02and alike poles repel.

02:04Car manufacturers have used this principle to build their motors.

02:25And make the rotor rotate.

02:28But for this to work, the motor must be supplied with electricity.

02:31And this electricity comes from another extremely important element, the battery.

02:55A small problem here is that the battery delivers direct current,

02:59and the motor needs alternating current to operate.

03:08And that's the job of our last major part, the inverter,

03:12to transform the direct current from the battery into the alternating current,

03:16to power the motor.

03:17But not all electric vehicles are purely electric.

03:21There are also hybrid vehicles that combine an electric motor

03:24and an internal combustion engine.

03:26One takes over from the other, depending on the type of use of the vehicle.

03:39And the last type of electric vehicle is those that run on hydrogen.

03:43And this time, there's no battery.

03:51Now that we understand how EVs are working,

03:54we can look at all the benefits they offer

03:56when compared to internal combustion engine vehicles.

04:02The first, and surely the most important, or at least the most promoted,

04:05is the absence of pollution.

04:07No exhaust system equals no emission.

04:09And no emission equals no pollution.

04:13The second concerns the noise, or rather, the silence of electricity.

04:18The silence of electric cars.

04:49But not everything is rosy in the garden of EVs.

04:53There are also some downsides to this type of vehicle.

04:56Due to their novelty and low production, they remain expensive vehicles.

05:00The driving range covered on a full charge is still limited,

05:04even if progress has been made in recent years.

05:07Finding a place to recharge can also be a real pain,

05:10especially outside cities.

05:12And even if you do find this charging station,

05:14you'd better not be in a hurry.

05:16If it takes a few minutes to fill your tank with petrol,

05:19it can take a few hours to recharge your battery.

05:22The last big drawback is once more linked to the battery,

05:25and this time, to the minerals that it's made of.

05:28Lithium and cobalt are needed to build a battery,

05:31and these minerals are known to have a huge environmental impact.

05:35EVs aren't perfect, and probably never will be,

05:38but at the moment they're the best individual vehicle option that we have.

05:43If they can't be the only solution offered to mobility problems in today's world,

05:47at least they're here, and they're getting better every day.

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