Page - 22 - in Our Car as Power Plant

22 The change to electric transport is evident. It causes no local air pollution and no noise. Therefore fork lifts, bikes, scooters or tourist boats are rapidly switching to electric. And now the focus is on our cars, cars with an electric engine and batteries to store the electricity. Indeed, we are now wit- nessing the introduction of the electric vehicle – so defined by the existence of an electric motor and a large battery pack, but with the remainder of the car largely unchanged – which is already giving us some efficiency improvements. The electric motor runs at an efficiency of 95%, and charging and discharging the battery has an efficiency of 80%. Which, combined with an average power plant efficien- cy of 40%, means that the electric car engine has an over- all energy efficiency of 30%. About the same as an effi- cient combustion engine, although this electric car has no standby or idle losses (15 to 20%). Of course the rest of the energy efficiency is the same. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN TRANSPORTATION