Battery that 'charges in seconds'

True, turbo diesels may be great, but theres not many out there and people tend to go with what they know. If there was an EASY way to get rid of fatty acids in frier oil/grease it would be even better.

As for electric car being light, I would rather be in a light car then on a bike. They just need a battery that has a huge lifetime and an energy that can compair to gas and then electric cars can be "made" heavy. Personally, I think there should be separate lanes for heavy trucks and shipping if we want real change, don't think its going to happen though.

Shipping should be done by rail, these giant trucks shouldn't be on the road, except when going to construction type projects, or small deliveries. Our current transportation structure is supposed to be more versatile, but mainly it creates sprawl, and is an obstacle to efficiency. The system in place in the U.S. is designed for one thing, generate revenue for the oil companies, car companies, banks, insurance companies, and local governments in the form of traffic tickets, not to mention an easy excuse to eliminate our rights. Under current laws, when you drive on the road, you have surrendered your rights, and forget about a fair trial, it doesn't exist.

We could do far, far better. Just think, with a rail or tube system where people put their private vehicles on computer controlled system where many aspects of driving were computer controlled, the need for traffic fines and traffic stops by the police would be virtually eliminated.

Originally posted by poet1b
Shipping should be done by rail, these giant trucks shouldn't be on the road, except when going to construction type projects, or small deliveries.

I was not necessarily referring to diesel trucks. VW makes an efficient turbodiesel passenger car and station wagon.
Our rail system is efficient but deteriorated. The only less expensive way to ship is via waterway. A large fraction of rail traffic is coal. We are addicted to trucks because of point to point transport with no trans-shipping. The best of all worlds might be rejuvenated rail and barge systems that accept standard containers with truck flatbeds available for shorter-range and local deliveries.

No energy will ever be sufficient for CPG (consumer packaged goods) based civilization. We have to make our own food, travel much less.

Concentrating people in big cities is wrong. People should create their own energy at their own homes, and produce their own food. They should also work AT home, or some of them FROM HOME.

The traffic should be reduced by 99% as unnecessary.

The way we live should be changed, according to the nature.

reply to post by greshnik


It will be difficult to work in a steel mill or manufacturing plant from home but many business trips and meetings can be accomplished by sending electrons or photons instead of people.

reply to post by XL5


Yes but what you are saying there is just the popularised view on them. Yes the power generators may be 30-45% efficient however that is just the start. Plenty of power is lost while going through cables. It is also hard and inefficient to store that generated power. So in the long run there is only a marginal benefit. Also we would need to build all sorts of new buildings to accommodate mass use of electric cars. We would need power plants, new power lines, new fuel stations and huge areas to store the energy for when it is needed. Plus making the cars is bad for the environment as well, a lot more plastics and chemicals compared to the metal in a normal car.

Cauch1, yeah there is some loss when transmitting the power, about 8-12%. You will also have losses transporting and driling for oil as well.

As for needing new infrastructure, that was needed to get where we are now. If they had said that before the industrial revolution...

Popular view or not, powerplants are supplied with energy from wind, falling water and a bit from solar. When 40% eff solar cell are cheap enough, we will be making energy at home to power the electric cars. You can not make gas at home like you can make energy, if anything it will nake gas cheaper to buy.

Now is the time to rebuild infrastructure. Now is the time to consider a new approach to transportation.

Rebuild a new advanced electrical rail system where people own their own personal vehicles that can travel on the system, or can lease vehicles for trips. This system would control steering, speed changes, and navigation, thereby vastly decreasing the numbers of accidents, need for speeding tickets and traffic cops, and reliance of everybody keeping their eyes on the road, starting and stopping at their own discretion. In high traffic areas cars could be linked together like railroad cars, vastly decreasing the space needed to accommodate large numbers of vehicles.

Redundant systems could insure safety to a high degree, not only redundant safety systems in the rail control, but on the vehicles themselves. The technology is available, all we need is a public effort to make this sort of thing happen.

Imagine how nice it would be to read, play games, study, work, or watch the scenery as you go to work or travel on vacation. With a rail system like this we could travel between cities at 200 MPH, cross the entire U.S. in 15 hours, all the while napping, or doing whatever we want to do.

XL5
I still disagree with you on the efficiency and power lost etc. point but I will let it drop. However another point is this. Electric cars are quite simply impractical. They have a short range, low speed and they take a very long time to recharge. To practically use them in every day life you would have to have two and use them on alternate days, use one while the other charged. So now that you have two cars per person that is an awful lot of plastics and chemicals going into building them. So now in the long run even if the energy use this way is more efficient you have on the large scale harmed the environment.

-Cauch1

The energy lost in a car engine is alot more then a powerplant, its a fact. Also, if we were paying the same money per KW/H between gas and electricity, a gas car is ALOT less efficient then an electric car, so you pay the same to go further in an electric car. Electricity costs less then gas

en.wikipedia.org...
It still costs less to run an electric car.

You don't need two cars, maybe two batteries, but with a battery that "charges in seconds" I don't think that would be a problem.

www.youtube.com... They can make fast electric cars.

When they get battery tech to a certain point, the range and speed will increase but is you are only going for 20-30km trips, they are the better COST choice and are better for the environment just because of great powerplant efficiency over gas engine efficiency.

Yes but as you yourself has just said they are only good for very short distances. That is just not practical. Even when they perfect these speed charging possibilities it will not be practical for long distances. You would have to keep making short jumps between stations. Also as I said they would need to build the infrastructure with which to store these vast amounts of energy. You could not jump the energy straight from the national grid. This would require advanced and complicated storage systems that would need regular maintenance. This would limit the use of these cars to N America, W Europe and Japan. The only way that these cars would ever be practical would be for short distance work commuters.
Over to you.

-Cauch1