The March of Progress
Caveman: What? And give up walking?!
Man: What? And give up my whale oil?
Man 2: What? And give up my horse?
Man 3: What? And give up my fossil fuel?
Any of you anti-electric people know anything about the early internal combustion automobile? The Mount Washington race was founded in part to show off cars. Electrics and steam cars made it up, gasoline cars didn’t. Gas cars also required huge infrastructure (GAS stations every few miles! Complex, processed petroleum-based fuel!). They got better, in part because people kept buying them. You cannot judge a first-generation technology by a fiftieth-generation technology. Hybrids are instructive here. Toyota is on its fourth generation of its hybrid engine. Every generation is more powerful AND more efficient. The Prius has improved in performance, size, and efficiency in each generation! Why? Because it is new, and there is still plenty of room for innovation as we learn more. We definitely need more work on battery tech, but in fact there are a lot of people doing just that — finding ways to store power in large amounts and discharge it and recharge it rapidly. Compare the lead-acid battery with lithium-ion, for example.But if you simply abandon it and do no research into it, it will NOT get better. That is what happened to the electric car between after Reagan cut all the research funding back in the 1970s. Had we kept that up, we would not be having this discussion now!
Any of you anti-electric people know anything about the early internal combustion automobile? The Mount Washington race was founded in part to show off cars. Electrics and steam cars made it up, gasoline cars didn’t. Gas cars also required huge infrastructure (GAS stations every few miles! Complex, processed petroleum-based fuel!). They got better, in part because people kept buying them. You cannot judge a first-generation technology by a fiftieth-generation technology. Hybrids are instructive here. Toyota is on its fourth generation of its hybrid engine. Every generation is more powerful AND more efficient. The Prius has improved in performance, size, and efficiency in each generation! Why? Because it is new, and there is still plenty of room for innovation as we learn more. We definitely need more work on battery tech, but in fact there are a lot of people doing just that — finding ways to store power in large amounts and discharge it and recharge it rapidly. Compare the lead-acid battery with lithium-ion, for example.But if you simply abandon it and do no research into it, it will NOT get better. That is what happened to the electric car between after Reagan cut all the research funding back in the 1970s. Had we kept that up, we would not be having this discussion now!