ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a discussion on liquid fuels and internal combustion engines (ICEs) versus electricity and battery technologies/electric motors. Information about the world energy supply and consumption is abundant and well known. The total number of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles in 2015 is given, respectively, in round numbers, as 950 million and 335 million. The vast majority runs on ICEs powered by fossil fuels. Electric cars, presently, come in several flavors: pure electric running exclusively on battery power, hybrid plug-in, hybrid, and fuel cell vehicles. According to an IEA Report, 4.7 million hybrid electric vehicles and 0.7 million hybrid plug-in and pure electric vehicles were in circulation in the world. In other words, a very small fraction of hybrid and electric cars compared to the estimated 950 million were in circulation. Lithium batteries are the predominant power source for electric vehicles, although there is a lot of research on alternatives.
