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It is hard to comprehend but the current popularity for cleaner vehicles and newer engine technologies means that the life of the traditional diesel bus and coach is very limited.

Saving money and the health of our environment is now the main considerations for everybody that is connected with the world’s transportation businesses. And newer technologies to assist transport companies to reduce costs such as eCoachManager are now highly popular.

Perhaps the alternatives to diesel as a fuel have a little way to go before we see the complete phasing out of the popular diesel engine currently being used for transporting people and goods all over the world.

Problems for Alternative Fuels

The first issue to address is that of fossil fuels, while it is possible to run compression-ignition engines on vegetable oils, there have been several studies that have come to the conclusion for this to happen most of the world’s farmland would have to be devoted to fuel cultivation.

With the world’s population growing in numbers year on year, the current farmland is stretched about as far as it can go to feed the world’s population.

Supporters of diesel fuels as the only current method of realistically running our transport also are keen to point out that CO2 emissions are growing faster than made-made carbon dioxide contributions. The CO2 in the air that we breathe is increasing at a far greater rate than any global or cyclic change.

The second reason for ditching diesel and petrol is an economic one. The current four-cylinder IC engine is complex and has over one thousand five hundred parts. The new electric engines only needs about a dozen parts so are much more efficient and therefore cheaper to run and service. Imagine an engine that does not need a gearbox!

Fuel Costs

Even at the most expensive rate, electricity is far cheaper per mile than diesel, and then there is the cost of transporting the diesel to where it is needed. Taking all what we said into consideration, there does not seem to be many negatives of electricity being the fuel of the future.

Apart from that is when it comes to batteries. The best that can be said about the battery situation at present is that it is work in progress. Lithium is the present favourite, but that particular element is in short supply. The Lithium batteries are also problematic to recycle and fuel experts are trying to find ways of still utilizing partly-spent batteries so they do not have to be recycled. Perhaps one way that they can be used is as static charging points, to act as a storage bank for solar energy.

To be fair on battery technology there is major investment on the developments of batteries, these developments are giving the battery many gains over the recent times which eventually help win the argument for electric power, and not any political reasoning.