Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007 Status: offline
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Not exactly something new. Hybrid cars have been around for a while. They run off the batteries unless they need to go fast, until the batteries run low. Then they use the engine for recharging or driving quickly. Hell, they even recharge the batteries when you push the brakes. Simply no emissions while gridlocked in traffic, and you can use them like any other car. With the modest and easy-flowing traffic around here, they do about 80 miles per gallon. As for purely electric cars, those happen to have another, major problem: the power supply grids can't accomodate them. Particularly with the low voltages in the US, requiring massive amperage to be delivered to a charging station. There are supercap batteries out there that can take the full output of a 500MW coal power plant while charging (which they do pretty quickly at that speed, mind you). I have a few solutions to that problem, but if they work as intended, I plan on applying for a patent, so I can't very well describe it here. Another problem is the time it takes to adopt it. Even with a world dictatorship, it would take about 50 years to change the basic transport infrastructure (i.e. shipping and logistics; the stuff we need to get food, mail and medical supplies to where it needs to go) to electric power. In a free market economy, it takes even longer, because there is a major hit to the bottom line until you're actually done rolling it out and ironing out the kinks. Consequently, we will probably run out of oil before the basic infrastructure has been switched. Never mind personal transport. By the way, there are other technologies out there, too. Germany and Japan are experimenting with Zeppelins again, for instance. France has built a car based on compressed air. Electric power really isn't the be-all and end-all of getting off oil, nor of improving the climate problems (leaving aside the debate of whether those are relevant or not, which is immaterial in this context). Health, al-Aswad.
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"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way. We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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