From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Tue Aug 26 2003 - 23:01:57 MDT
On Tuesday 26 August 2003 07:32, Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
> Emlyn:
> <<Decent electric cars would do the job. Then we could use any generation
> method that we could dream up.
>
> Emlyn>>
>
> We can't make our cars run on dreams. After more then 100 years, we have no
> all-electric vehicles that can compare in utility, and performance, then
> vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine.
In what terms? Some of the fasters dragsters on the planet are all-electric.
The limiting factors here are not in the fact that it is electric per se.
In many measures of performance an electric is quite competitive. And dig
those maintenance cost differences! 100 years ago we did not have the
knowledge to even produce dependable electricity or even have electricity in
many parts of the country. Battery technology is an important aspect of
electrics. Battery technology did not do much new until relatively recently.
Light weight materials are also a plus. It is hardly a worthwhile argument
among extropians to put down something just because it hasn't already been
done!
>Comming up wih "decent
> electric cars" is like saying 'if we can come up with a decent fusion
> reaction system.."
Sigh. I wish analogies would be banned. An electric car is orders of
magnitude simpler. We are literally down to engineering problems and fine
tuning and, of course, building the infrastructure for fast charging of
electrics. For personal transportation at least there is nothing I know of
that makes an electric unviable.
> Making an all-electric vehicle, and setting up fast
> re-charing stations, is more difficult then it seems. I realize that it is
> 'anti-intuitive' that this should be so, but it is how the world is.
In what way is it anywhere near as difficult as getting a working fusion
reactor though?
- samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Aug 26 2003 - 23:09:56 MDT