Opinion: All vehicles should be electric

Most of the vehicles on the road these days are driven by internal combustion engines run on petrol (gasoline) or diesel. It works, and it has done for a long time now. It also causes noise and pollution. It requires constant maintenance in the form of fluids (oil, coolant, etc).

I'm not here to debate global warming or the harm of pollution on the planet or our own health but the truth is, those issues could be lessened if all vehicles were converted to electric.

"Electric vehicles are not feasible at the moment."

That's not entirely true. Electric motors capable of driving vehicles can be easily purchased. The downside and the reason people don't believe they are feasible is the battery technology is rubbish. Meaning to get any reasonable distance out of a battery powered vehicle requires lots of batteries. The more batteries, the heavier the vehicle gets and the more power is required. It's a problem.

There is, however, an interim solution. One that has been touched on by not only popular car related tv shows, but also some car makers.

The vehicle uses an electric engine with a suitable battery configuration, supported (when required) by a generator that runs on petrol.

Yes. I realise that a petrol generator requires oils and fuel. That being said. It's possible to run a decent generator for many hours on a relatively small amount of fuel. It's more efficient to run an electric vehicle from a small petrol generator than it is to run it with an internal combustion engine.

If you added the ability to have solar panels on the back, roof and bonnet that charge the batteries. Regenerative braking, etc. Those go a way towards keeping the vehicle running on battery power rather than the generator.

A vehicle like this could make longer distance drives using the generator when required with the overall effect of producing less pollution, making less noise and being less costly to maintain. It would be capable of doing short distance drives without the generator at all.