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            Now, over two hundred automobile manufacturers are making millions of cars, trucks, buses, and other types of vehicles in the world. Thanks to those hundred million of vehicles on the road every day, we are facing climate change, global warming, air pollution, noise pollution, etc. After the global climate conference in Germany in 1995, most developed countries and some developing countries decided to start developing alternative fuel vehicles instead of mass-producing gasoline vehicles. Almost two decades later, more and more inventions and vehicles have been created and there is one term stands out in this historical industry – alternative energy vehicle.

          Second, the number of alternative energies is more than alternative energies used as vehicle power. In the other word, not all alternative energies are able to be used as vehicle energy. For example, wind is a very clean power and the energy created by wind is a type of alternative energy. However, no one has successfully driven a vehicle powered by wind yet. Therefore, wind is not going to be considered as an alternative energy for vehicles.
          By clarifying the term, some people may have changed their mind or corrected their thought, such as types and unique features of alternative energy vehicle. And this is significant for the further understanding of this new industry.

          What is alternative energy? What types of energy are considered as alternative energies? The questions are easy to understand but difficult to answer. According to Wikipedia, “An alternative fuel vehicle is a vehicle that runs on a fuel other than traditional petroleum fuels (petrol or Diesel fuel); and also refers to any technology of powering an engine that does not involve solely petroleum (2017, Wikipedia).” It’s not a complicated definition, but it still has several elements. 
          First, the word “alternative” is considered when comparing with gasoline energy, patrol energy, and even coal energy that used before and currently. So, most participants of my survey thought diesel is one of the alternative energies, which is wrong. Even diesel has more than 30 or 40 mpg, it is still one of the fossil fuel.

          Talking about alternative energy vehicles, people usually think they are existing in modern world and they do not have very long history. In fact, that’s a bias of believing new products have short history. According to the timeline of the electric vehicles made by the energy department, electric car is “not an invention of modern times”, instead, it “has a long and storied history (2014, Energy.gov).” From the history of electric vehicle, the first crude electric vehicle was developed by Robert Anderson around 1832 (2014, Energy.gov), while Edison was still working on invention of electricity. That’s a long history which is longer than the invention of electricity. So, next time when someone says electric car is a new product of the twenty-first century, it is easy to tell that is incorrect. 

          Even with an unbelievable long history, alternative energy vehicles are still standing on the outside of the automobile market. Very rare people would like to take risks of those new technologies and inventions when spending couple hundred thousand dollars. But, why does this situation happen? Why they haven’t been developed well during that long time? The answer is the cost associated with technology difficulties. When the world found large amount of oil, the gas became cheap and car makers used gas as the priority power of their cars. For technology difficulties, “the two major hazards in today’s HEVs are nasty chemicals and high voltage (Allen, 2009, pg. 424).” This is from the summary of safety issues chapter in the book and it mentions the two major hazards of HEVs. According to Mr. Allen (2009) in his book:
Almost every HEV on the road today has a NiMH battery. Each cell of the battery contains potassium hydroxide, which is a strong alkaline chemical that reacts vigorously with several common metals such as aluminum. It is hazardous to all human body tissues (pg. 419).
          Automobile is close to mankind’ s everyday life, and people are even touching vehicles every day, so the safety issues are dangerous for drivers and passengers. If the technology is not stable or safe, it will not be accepted by both manufacturers and customers.

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