So you want to help the environment. You hear Al Gore talk about how much trouble the environment is in when you watched his famous documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. So you go out and buy yourself something that you know will help the environment and save you some money in the long run: a hybrid electric car. Maybe if you were really hard core or perhaps lived in Japan, you bought a completely electric car.



Funnily enough, electric cars aren't really a new phenomenon; electric cars have been around since the 19th century, but the expenses of making an electric car have prohibited innovation because of the car manufacturers' inability to afford the research and development. However, with a new push for more green technology, electric cars are coming back in a big way.



Except now there's one problem: it broke down! How do you repair electric cars? It's a tough spot to be in because of the limited availability of people who actually repair electric car problems, but hopefully this will help you learn more about your electric or hybrid car.

How does an electric car work exactly? Since the electric car doesn't use a common internal combustion engine, rather relying on electric motors and motor controllers to propel the car. So the electric motor replaces the internal combustion engine, the motor controller powers the electric motor, but what powers the motor controller? Well, most likely your electric car gets its power from some sort of rechargeable battery.

What kinds of batteries are out there? Well there are lead-acid batteries, nickel metal hydride batteries, and lithium-ion batteries. Lead-acid batteries are an old technology, first invented in 1859 and have been used since the 19th century to power electric cars. The advantages to these batteries are that they are cheap to produce and the technology behind them is well known and understood. Nickel metal hydride batteries are a fairly new technology, coming into popularly in the late 1980s. They have what is known as a high energy density, which allows more energy to be put into a smaller battery compared to a lead-acid battery. They also have the additional benefit of being easy to recycle because of the lack of toxic metals. Lithium-ion batteries are even newer, coming into commercial use in the early 90s. They have the highest energy density and have the additional benefit of not losing their charge when they aren't in use.

So how do you recharge that battery? Commonly you use a power grid to recharge, but there are new technologies that may change that. The inconvenience of this is the time it takes to recharge, a few hours, and the fact that many gas stations lack a charging station, so it makes doing something like a road trip almost impossible.

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