> >I've always wondered if people that favored electric cars so much
> >realize how toxic batteries are, and that the electric plant burns
> >coal to generate the electricity to power them.
>
> This statement could not be more true. However, one has to
> speculate as to where battery technology would be today if companies
> had spent even one percent of the money they have spent on improving
> IC engines or oilfield techniques. Likewise on solar power.
Or external-combustion engines. These can burn pretty much anything
flammable. Potentially they can burn *nothing*, if an efficient and
sufficiently portable alternative heat source is provided. They are
in principle vastly more fuel-efficient than rankine-cycle (ordinary
4-cycle internal combustion) engines, because you aren't turning each
heat source off and on several times a second.
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