With so much misinformation uttered about electric cars and so many claims and counter-claims put forth about their environmental friendliness, it’s important that if you want to enter the market for an electric car, you have all the information and all the facts. It’s a fast growing market in developed nations, with thousands of plug-in and all-electric vehicles sold in the United States alone every single month. And there are compelling reasons why electric cars are proving so popular, given their value both to the individual driver and to the wider environment.

Efficient Transportation

As the number of makes and models of electric cars keeps on rising, it is becoming increasingly clear that vehicles powered on electricity are widely perceived as the future. Sales are rocketing and there are many good reasons why this is the case, with consumer demand racing higher and higher, and the interest put into electric cars by manufacturers consistently high. Most fundamentally, electric vehicles have the enormous benefit of being a highly efficient mode of transport, with as much as 80 per cent of the battery’s energy transferred directly to the power of the car. In traditional gas-powered vehicles the figure is dramatically lower, lingering at around 14 to 26 per cent. Furthermore electric cars emit no exhaust pollutants when they are running on electricity, making them far cleaner for the environment than petrol-powered vehicles.

Cost Savings

While electric cars are notoriously more expensive than their petrol-fuelled counterparts, this is becoming less and less the case. The battery is of course one of the most expensive parts of an electric vehicle, however technological advances have seen the cost of the battery decline at a significant rate. A 100-mile range electric battery has decreased in cost by over 60% in the United States in the last five years, and with more research going into this field that trend looks set to continue. However what many consumers who feel hindered by the price tag on an electric car often forget is that electric vehicles are not all that expensive to maintain, meaning they will be able to save money over the life of the car. Even the brake pads last longer in electric cars as they use regenerative braking to decelerate, converting energy used to reduce the car’s speed into power which is stored in the battery. The cost of electricity is moreover far less damaging to the pocket in the long run than the cost of gasoline, making for even bigger savings. Most electric vehicle owners also take steps to reduce their costs, such as charging their cars overnight at home when the electricity costs are lower.