Research Pathway

Shajesh and I are grouped together for the reader response assignment. We both researched and tried to think of a specific topic to start our assignment. After various discussions, we concluded that we wanted to focus on electric vehicles that runs on an electric motor rather than the conventional internal combustion engine. We decided to choose this topic as we believe vehicles are the future.

We believe the electric vehicles are the future for many reasons in which we will be stating some of them here. One of the reasons is that having an electric car can lead to saving maintenance costs. We found an article in KIA Singapore`s website titled "Are electric cars cheaper to maintain?". There is a part in the article that stated "No oil to change, no gaskets to replace, no valves to clog up, electric cars do not have internal combustion engines, so these costs disappear". This quote tells us the issues a typical vehicle that runs on an internal combustion engine has but not on an electric vehicle. Thus, this makes an electric car cheaper to maintain as it eliminates all those typical issues as it does not run on an internal combustion engine.

Table 1

Note. This table was compiled by Ingrid in 2016, comparing the cost price of the maintenance of a traditional vehicle and electrical vehicle. From "Quantifying the Societal Benefits of Electric Vehicles", By I, Malmgren, 2016, World electric Vehicle Journal, 2016, p. 3.

Figure 1

Note. This figure depicting  the components of a electrical vehicle. From US Department of Energy(n.d). How do All-Electric Cars Works? [Photograph]. DOE. https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/how-do-all-electric-cars-work

Figure 2

Note. This figure depicting  the components of a traditional combustion vehicle. From US Department of Energy (n.d). How do Natural Gas Vehicle Works? [Photograph]. DOE. https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/how-do-natural-gasc-cars-work

Additionally, driving an electric vehicle certainly reduces carbon emissions and thus, resulting in lesser air pollution. The article "Quantifying the Societal Benefits of Electric Vehicles", written by Ingrid Malmgren (2016), shared in his article that driving a Nissan Leaf electric vehicle over a Honda Civic gasoline powered vehicle result in carbon emission of 4096 pounds per year.

The huge reduction in carbon emissions certainly tells us how an electric car can help to better the air pollution in our environment. All in all, with these reasons, we believe that the electric cars we see in our modern world today are the future due to its benefits it brings to our world.

For our reader response assignment, we had to boil down to a certain component of an electric vehicle. For that, we had to pick a certain model and we decided on the Tesla Model S. We decided to research on its electric motor as we were amazed oh how vehicles transition form using gas to now having electric vehicles that used electricity instead.

References

Malmgren, I. (2016). Quantifying the Societal Benefits of Electric Vehicles. MDPI. https//dx.doi.org/10.3390/wevj8040996

KIA Singapore. Are electric cars cheaper to maintain? KIA. https://www.kia.com/sg/discover-kia/ask/are-electric-cars-cheaper-to-maintain.html