So one thing I have not been able to wrap my head around is this current push for electric cars and even venture capitalists financing electric car startups. What makes anyone think that electric cars are viable? With the current technology, there is no electric car capable of driving the same distance as a car powered by an internal combustion engine. And the ranges of the current electric cars that do exist, those are assuming you aren't using the air conditioning or heater, along with other features, which is unrealistic considering one will usually have to use one of those during long parts of the year.
In addition, because the car is electric and powered by batteries, if you say mash the accelerator to go from 0-60 fast, you can really drain the batteries rather quickly. And then of course there is the charging. The quickest an electric car can be charged is about four hours (and that's pushing it; it takes more around five to six hours or longer). Who wants a car like that?
But let's assume that they developed an electric car that has the range of a regular internal combustion vehicle and takes about five minutes to charge. Okay, well what happens if you run out of charge? For example, during the Hurricane Katrina evacuating, there were quite a few cars that got abandoned on the sides of the freeway because they ended up running out of gas. The thing is, with a fuel-powered vehicle, you only need to get a gas container, put a few gallons of gas in it, put the gas into the tank, and you'll be on your way. Even the most fuel-inefficient truck getting around say ten miles per gallon could go 40 miles on four gallons of gas from a gas container. Most vehicles today get better mileage than that. A small fuel-efficient car could go really far on just four gallons.
But with an electric car, if this happens, you've got no way to quickly partially charge the car up. If all those abandoned cars were electric powered, you'd have to bring in trucks to haul them all away. Now maybe if battery technology advances to the point that the batteries of electric-powered cars are smaller, lighter, last a LOT longer, and can be charged quickly, then they will also have say charge packs that you could buy. Basically it would do the same as a gas container, except instead of putting gas into it, you take it to a charge station, charge it up, then take it to your car and it gives the batteries a partial charge to get you to a charge station.
But the thing is, investing in electric cars now in the hopes of such advancements in battery technology in the near future strikes me as just silly. Same with solar panels. The technology isn't viable enough. Both batteries and solar technology need breakthroughs similar to the transistor and how it replaced the vacuum tube in computers. Transistors revolutionized computers and electronics. Then the microprocessor was invented, because they figured out you could create the equivalent of thousands of transistors on a tiny little chip through special engineering and manufacturing.
Hopefully, we'll see some type of similar breakthroughs for batteries and solar technology in the future, but until then, electric cars make absolutely zero sense to me. One thing interesting to think about is how will consumer electronics be influenced by such new battery technology? I mean think about it, batteries that can last a looooooong time and that also can be charged nearly instantly, that would mean cellphones, laptops, etc...with batteries that last days. And when the charge depletes, it takes only a few minutes at the most to re-charge it. As an aside, I'll bet the battery industry sure isn't going to like that!
Some environmentalist types talk about how the oil companies supposedly have a conspiracy to prevent any major research into something like electric cars or solar technology, but has anyone ever quesitoned what the stance of the battery industry is towards revolutionary batteries that would make electric cars viable? Such batteries would also have application in everything else, meaning you wouldn't need to buy batteries nearly as much anymore, which would hurt their profits.
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