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*Shakes James Dean shaped finger at Fixed.
@Brian: I like your thinking. Don't forget the 6,831 laptop batteries though. They've gotta go somewhere, and you can't just stash them all in the trunk. Unless...you can also integrate the Hydrogen fuel system from a Honda FCX Clarity. Now that would be pretty darn cool.
Well, so long as we're scooping everything out anyway, they can end up in the floorboards like the Leaf or I imagine most other electric cars (including Tesla?).
No hydrogen; hydrogen is as much an intermediate step as hybrid gasoline. The end game in terms of no pollution, maximum efficiency, and renewable energy is 100% electric. Any other alternatives have to be recognized for the stop gaps that they are.
I love electricity. That's the future. We're just gearing up research worldwide that will change electricity storage immensely in the next several years.
And Fixed, there's a little company called Special Edition in my little home town that will build you a Spyder or Speedster replica about as authentic as you want (albeit fiberglass instead of aluminum) for 35 grand. They'll leave it hollow, too, if you want to make it a battery electric.
And I agree with Brian about hydrogen. That's a whole other infrastructure to build (supported primarily with hydrogen stripped out of natural gas). By the time that could be put in place, batteries will have improved to the point that anything else is pointless.
I'm all for electric mobility, but here's my problem. Our current model for the car goes like this; drive until you need fuel, re-fuel, continue driving, repeat. This allows us to do things like drive cross country over the period of several days, and several re-fuel stops. This is simply not possible with the electric cars we have now. They may have enough juice to get you to work and back, but no one will be visiting their distant relations in them anytime soon.
IMHO, all the hybrids out there are the real stopgap, because they still run on gasoline. They use less, sure, but even if you learn to drive them properly you're still only going to use about half that of a normal car.
As for the electric cars we do have now, let's not forget that power has to be generated somewhere and we're already having trouble generating enough power to meet our needs worldwide.
What about pleasure? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume whoever has lent their voice to this thread enjoys driving on some level. While I won't deny that driving something like a Tesla would indeed be a joy, I think we're a number of years from that being a realistic reality for the masses.
When we get to the point were Tesla like levels of performance are readily available and affordable, and they can be recharged in about the same time it takes to fill a tank of gas, I'll be right there.
This is of course assuming there even needs to be a stopping over station to recharge in the first place; there's a lot of really cool stuff out there right now for pumping up solar capturing technology and if that could be pushed to it's maximum there might not even be a need to stop to recharge ever.
(And yes I do realize the limitations from weather and the like, and that's something that will just have to be worked around. I think if we ever want to go %100 electric, it will have to be a combination of techniques anyways, and like Matt said, the electricity we use now HAS to come from somewhere.)
I'm all for electric mobility, but here's my problem. Our current model for the car goes like this; drive until you need fuel, re-fuel, continue driving, repeat. This allows us to do things like drive cross country over the period of several days, and several re-fuel stops. This is simply not possible with the electric cars we have now. They may have enough juice to get you to work and back, but no one will be visiting their distant relations in them anytime soon.
IMHO, all the hybrids out there are the real stopgap, because they still run on gasoline. They use less, sure, but even if you learn to drive them properly you're still only going to use about half that of a normal car.
As for the electric cars we do have now, let's not forget that power has to be generated somewhere and we're already having trouble generating enough power to meet our needs worldwide.
What about pleasure? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume whoever has lent their voice to this thread enjoys driving on some level. While I won't deny that driving something like a Tesla would indeed be a joy, I think we're a number of years from that being a realistic reality for the masses.
When we get to the point were Tesla like levels of performance are readily available and affordable, and they can be recharged in about the same time it takes to fill a tank of gas, I'll be right there.
couldn't agree more, there's a long way to go before they become feasible (especially in Aus where we tend to do big miles..) and there is a certain feel to a V8 under power that the electrics, hybrids even turbo 6s don't have. main reason I drive (and more often ride) is the feeling of freedom you get on the open road, worrying about whether you can recharge your car would detract significantly from that...
For those of us who do most of our driving Monday to Friday, to and from work, electric makes sense. A 150 mile range is more than adequate when you just plug it in at night. Arguments about distance ignore the huge amount of fuel we wouldn't burn on short hops. Keep a fun one for weekends and a leccy for the grind.
At which point it would top out at about seven miles an hour, since a Tesla weighs just slightly less than a black hole of the same size.
+1
Our current model for the car goes like this; drive until you need fuel, re-fuel, continue driving, repeat. This is simply not possible with the electric cars we have now.
Battery technology was stuck in the Stone Age for decades, so the Tesla was the real start of practical EVs. And every new technology sucks at first: firearms, washing machines, televisions, computers, calculators, cell phones, laptops, cars themselves....
As for the electric cars we do have now, let's not forget that power has to be generated somewhere and we're already having trouble generating enough power to meet our needs worldwide.
At noon—in the summer—in some places—yes. But there is huge capacity at night, when most charging is done. If only we had a place to store power made at night that could be tapped later to smooth out demand peaks... How about millions of electric cars plugged into a smart grid? Conveniently, that ALSO solves the unreliability of solar and wind from hour to hour.
Unless NONE of the numerous promising battery breakthrus pan out, we'll have much, much better batteries in a few years. And the VERY DAY a battery is developed that is light, inexpensive, holds enough energy to drive 200 miles, and can be recharged in 10 minutes or so, virtually all gasoline and diesel vehicles will be obsolete.
There is an argument that says that electric vehicles don't actually reduce any pollution because you're still using fuel to generate that power, you're just doing it in the power plant instead of inside the car. As a result, you're not actually reducing pollution, only shifting where in the pipeline it happens. But that's not actually true, since EVs are much more efficient. Every time you're sitting at a stoplight and your car is idling? Wasted energy. So even if every car was magically replaced with an EV tomorrow powered by coal plants, the total amount of pollution would still go way down.
Of course, the ultimate goal is to replace the coal plants as well with clean sources: wind, solar, tidal, (nuclear), etc. so you have clean cars running on clean energy.
Ooh, do I smell another Asylum film...? 2014: Solar Death Ray!
A solar energy system is lofted into space by private company Solaray. But damage from a chunk of space debris (specifically, a tool kit lost on an EVA—thanks Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper!) causes it to beam its energy in a high-intensity microwave death ray all across somewhere inexpensive to film!
Zarban, the Wikipedia plainly says the tool bag has already reentered the atmosphere and burned up. Using it as a plot point would completely destroy the hard earned realism of the film.
'71-'78 Cadillac El Dorado. Matte black, with black rims.
OR, a '65ish Lincoln Continental. Glossy black, with chrome everything else. Suicide doors.
- Branco
I wish I could "like" posts on this forum, if so Jeffery's post would have a "like" on it.
What was that?
(I'll remove it later. I promise.)
Ooooh!
Liked.
+2
This shall never be removed, ever! Is that understood?
I...well...
...
Fine.
..unless, you know, you really want to.
In which case, I really am powerless to stop you.
I honestly didn't think Teague would go for it.
Shows what I know.
Add a matching Un-like feature and I'm sold.
Please be removing the 2 minute time out, I have to like more.
+1
I NEED A SPECIAL BUTTON TO CLICK TO INDICATE MY INDIFFERENCE. PLEASE ADD A "Meh" BUTTON.
Please be removing the 2 minute time out, I have to like more.
Please to agree and allow to like more.
Also "Karma" ranking should go away. That's.... bad karma.
Last edited by Zarban (2011-07-22 16:36:26)
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