A rising issue of the twenty-first century, the fueling of modern vehicles has raised many environmental concerns, particularly in the past decade. While oil has dominated the powering of automobiles since the early 20th century, we now find several alternative fuels that may be more sustainable and efficient. Traditional internal combustion engines emit large quantities of greenhouse gases. However, alternative fuel sources emit limited or negligible amounts of greenhouse gases and are proven to use “clean” sources of energy. There are three types of non-internal combustion engine vehicles: hydrogen vehicles, electric vehicles, and hybrid vehicles. It is clear that we must develop innovative techniques to completely replace the internal combustion engine with a clean, renewable energy source. The only question that remains is which renewable fuel holds the most potential.
Primarily, hydrogen-powered vehicles have been first developed in the early twenty-first century. Using fuel cells to power automobiles, hydrogen may be a future alternative to oil. On the one hand, hydrogen has several advantages such as efficiency and lack of harmful emissions, as compared to oil. In addition, hydrogen lowers the need to rely on foreign oil that must be imported from regions such as the Middle East. On the other hand, scientists face certain challenges in making hydrogen a practical alternative for oil. These challenges include but are not limited to, low storage densities aboard a vehicle, high costs of catalysts – which reduce oxygen to water in fuel cells – , harmful emissions during production, and the unavailability of large quantities of hydrogen from renewable sources. In the future, I believe that, in order to convert hydrogen to a convenient fuel source, we should develop inexpensive catalysts as well as expand the hydrogen storage capacity on board a vehicle.
Furthermore, electric cars pose a viable solution to the issue of modern transportation greenhouse gas emissions. Similar to their hydrogen-powered counterparts, electric vehicles do not emit any harmful gases. The internal combustion engine is also completely replaced with an electric motor, which consists of a single moving part. Among the advantages of electric automobiles is the efficiency of the electric motor which uses much less energy than gasoline automobiles. However, much like hydrogen, the battery which produces electricity has a small storage capacity, often too small to permit long distance car journeys. Also, electric vehicles have high energy costs during their electric production and generation phases. In forthcoming years, we should seek to increase the storage capacity of the electric battery and decrease the energy costs associated with the production.
Lastly, hybrid cars are the closest alternative to the gasoline-powered car. Unlike electric and hydrogen vehicles, hybrid vehicles depend solely on gasoline for power. Additionally, hybrid automobiles include an additional electric motor that functions only when the gasoline engine operation starts to falter. Hybrid vehicles may be conventional, using a gasoline engine then an electric motor, or plug-in, using both gasoline and the electric grid for energy. The hybrid car battery not only drives the electric motor, but it also accumulates electrical energy produced by regenerative braking technology. Although hybrid vehicles rely on gasoline to function, hybrids have several advantages, including energy efficiency and increased driving range. A few disadvantages of hybrid vehicles include the fact that conventional hybrids extract all of their energy from gasoline and none from the electric grid and the complexity as well as the additional cost of the plug-in hybrid’s gasoline engine technology. In the future, hybrid vehicles should come to rely more on the electricity grid for energy and less on the gasoline engine, hence reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions.
In conclusion, I see that the electric vehicle is most likely to improve environmental sustainability in the coming years. While hydrogen production emits significant amounts of harmful discharges and hybrid vehicles depend on gasoline, electric cars are the cleanest source of transportation, emitting no greenhouse gases, whether at the time of production or during use. These technologies shall most definitely help the general public create more environmentally sustainable day to day decisions. Furthermore, during the past few decades, many emission standards have been put in place to regulate air pollutants emitted into the atmosphere. An example is the 1968 National Emissions Standards Act. It is but logical that legal practices and regulations should continue in the future, ensuring that our automobile use and production is clean, green, and sustainable.
Ayah Gouda
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