Pure electric vehicles refer to vehicles that use only batteries as power sources. It uses the electric energy stored in the battery to provide electric energy to the motor and drive the motor to run, so as to push the car forward. The electric motor of pure electric vehicle is equivalent to the engine of traditional vehicle, and the battery is equivalent to the original fuel tank. Generally, high-efficiency rechargeable batteries or fuel cells are used as the power source. As electric energy is secondary energy, it can come from wind energy, water energy, heat energy, solar energy and other ways.
Pure electric vehicle is not a new type of vehicle. Electric vehicle has been born for more than 100 years. In 1839, Scotsman Robert Anderson built the world’s first “electric car”. But it was not very successful. The main reason is that the battery life is too short and the power is too small. You can only move a very light chassis. In the late 19th century, the birth of long-term batteries promoted the further development of electric vehicles. People only saw electric driven taxis on the streets of London, but the driving distance was very short, and they had to keep charging in the charging station. Robert wouldn’t expect that history will enter the 21st century. With the deepening of the global energy crisis, the depletion of oil resources and the aggravation of the harm of air pollution and global temperature rise, governments and automobile enterprises all over the world generally recognize that energy conservation and emission reduction are the main direction of automobile technology development in the future, and the development of electric vehicles has become the best way to solve these two technical difficulties. Electric vehicles have also become a focus of choice and technology competition all over the world.
However, due to various technical reasons, compared with vehicles using internal combustion engines, electric vehicles have not developed on a large scale. Over the past 100 years, electric vehicles have experienced three major opportunities in the history of automobile development: the first occurred more than 100 years ago. At that time, the development of batteries and motors was more mature than that of internal combustion engine, and the application of oil was not popularized, so electric vehicles played an important role in the early automotive field. For example, the world’s first car with a speed of more than 100km / h is an electric car. It was in 1899. The aluminum body car named La JAMAIS contente, designed by the Belgian engineer CA mile jenatzy, is now preserved in the Compiegne Museum in France. According to statistics, by 1890, of the 4200 vehicles in the world, 38% were electric vehicles, 40% were steam vehicles and 22% were internal combustion engines. By 1911, electric taxis had been operating on the streets of Paris and London, and by 1912, at least 34000 electric vehicles were operating in the United States.
Due to the massive exploitation of oil and the advantages of internal combustion engine, electric vehicles are gradually ignored. Until the outbreak of the oil crisis in the 1970s, it dealt a great blow to the political circles all over the world and began to consider other energy sources instead of oil, including renewable energy such as wind energy, solar energy and electric energy. Therefore, considering from the political and economic aspects, it has given electric vehicles a second opportunity and attracted attention again.
The third opportunity began several years ago. In addition to the existing energy problems in the world, environmental protection has gradually become a major issue of concern to all parties. The emission pollution of internal combustion engine vehicles has a disastrous impact on the global environment. Therefore, the development and production of zero pollution vehicles has become the goal pursued by all countries. The advantages of no (low) pollution of electric vehicles make them the main direction of contemporary automobile development.