It’s a wonderful thing, electricity: so powerful and yet so quiet. For many, the first time they get into someone else’s electric car, and it moves off, it seems weird. Even with classic cars, drivers are looking to an EV future. We are so accustomed to the internal combustion engine, with its loud, urgent voice, that when a vehicle moves forward silently, it almost feels like something is wrong. The point is, though, that everything is far from wrong. Not only is the engine producing no sound, or noise pollution, but it is producing no exhaust fumes, what we might call normal pollution. Yes, we’re so accustomed to the behavior of petrol and diesel engines that we have been turning a blind eye to their harmful actions all this time. But no longer. Electric vehicles are becoming increasingly commonplace on our streets. Even classic cars are installed with electric gears, blending the appeal of the classic with the fuel-efficiency of the modern technology. Here’s how classic cars and modern vehicles differ from one another.

You can read an ultimate guide to EVs and perhaps the most surprising thing is that for all these years we have been using electricity for so many things inside the home, yet we have ignored what it can achieve outside. Any further than the garden and we forget about it, and of course that is because we’re used to having to feed electrical devices through cables. The cable, though, is on the way out. We’re moving towards charging our cellphones without plugging them in, and although that may be a bit hard to comprehend, do we really understand how it happens through a plug and a length of plastic-encased wire? Like many things in this world of technological sophistication, we don’t need to understand something to use it.

Charging Ahead on Batteries

Charging a vehicle does, in fact, still involve plugging it in, but it won’t be long before the techies find a way of making it happen contactless, just like a credit card. It is often the specialized industries that make these sorts of breakthroughs: the space travel pope, and the motorsport types who have a greater sense of urgency, for reasons of safety or profit, and their progress filters down to day-to-day life.

Fleets to the Rescue

Operators of fleets of vehicles stand to gain most from electric vehicles, and they will do the best, too, by reducing pollutants in the atmosphere as well as making the roads quieter. Battery technology is improving all the time, to increase the miles an EV racks up between charges, while charging stations are cropping up in some surprising places, but the world still needs more. It will happen because governments are committed to phasing out fossil fuel vehicles in the next decade or so. To make this happen they will have to provide the infrastructure to keep EVs moving.

How Much Will it Cost?

The cost to charging an electric car may vary considerably at the moment, depending where you are, but standardization will come, so we all have to have faith in the technology and keep moving towards a world where all vehicles are electric. There will be other issues to address, such as safety, since currently we are alerted to the approach of a vehicle because we can hear it. Again, the breakthrough may come from professional motorsport, even though they see the issue differently. For Nascar and F1 buffs, noise means excitement, so they are looking at finding a substitute for the natural roar of an internal combustion engine. Maybe they and the civic authorities can find a middle ground with an acceptable decibel level.