Eclectic Cars?

The problem posed by living in rural areas is how to get around without cars. There will come a time in the near future when availability of gas for the masses will be sharply curtailed by price and acute spot shortages. A situation exacerbated by hoarding and having to burn lots of gas to get gas. Even self sufficiency has limitations when one has to take care of a root canal or need something 50 miles away or go to a transportation hub, hopefully like a light rail or bus station, so you can go visit your kids or parents much further away.

Which leads to the question why we are not driving plug-in electric cars by now? The usual answers are that they are too slow with inadequate power and that the storage battery technology is not up to par, resulting in too short of a driving range before requiring a long re-charge. Surprisingly those arguments were false, for a very brief period of time the major auto manufactures rolled out viable plug in electric cars in the mid 1990s. So what happened? See the film "Who Killed the Electric Car". A report on the film by Wikipedia.

Who Killed the Electric Car? A documentary film probing that question and more importantly, why. Written and directed by Chris Paine and released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in 2006.

The great news is that the electric cars are coming at last despite all the unfounded negative arguments since its inception. Lotus Engineering, the venerable British automaker specializing in exotic high performance sports cars, is introducing an all electric SUV called the Zap-X Crossover Electric Car in 2008 with astounding specifications. An all wheel drive SUV with a total of 644 horse power capable of reaching 155 mph with zero emissions. This vehicle has a range of 350 miles and the amazing part is that the batteries take only 10 minutes to re-charge at a cost of approximately $3.50. The realities of this car and technology make apparent all the aforementioned “solutions” the bad joke they are for the consumer.

There is a hefty price of $60,000 to pay for this vehicle but the good news is that the basic technologies to make it work are there and scaling down for general use at reasonable price should not be an insurmountable problem. After all, the average person will not want to go 155 mph in a SUV or require 644 horse power, I sure don’t. The price may seem high but it really isn’t if you consider that a new hybrid 2008 Lexus RX 400h can approach $50,000 for a lot less performance and lots more in cost than a penny a mile to drive.

This next generation hybrid cars, being touted as the answer to our energy dilemma, propose to run on ethanol and electricity. Well it just does not sound like a next generation idea to me, rather more like Kirk and Scotty’s idea. The frequently proposed alternative fuels such as hydrogen, bio-diesel, fuel cell, hybrids and ethanol are all false solutions in the long run. The average person does not need or want solutions that require them to be MIT graduates or MacGyver just to drive to work. To be effective an energy source needs to be converted directly, or close to it, to a usable form like air propulsion, solar and wind power. Growing the source, corn in the case of ethanol and needing multiple processing to convert it into a usable form implicitly makes the whole process an exercise in futility. It takes more energy to make ethanol than energy contained in it. There are no advantages in ethanol for the end users or the environment.

©Jozef Beckley Electric police van in Switzerland.

Biofuel demand makes food expensive BBC 23 March 2007 Cheap food will be history.
"...food companies are warning that high corn prices will feed through to everyone's grocery bills."
"In Mexico, there have been street demonstrations about the rising cost of tortillas, which are made from corn."

Biofuel raises global dilemmas BBC 17 January 2006 "...any foodstuff used for fuel is taken out of the food chain, in a world where many people are starving."
"There's simply not enough foodstuff available and not enough land to grow it on..."