27 Apr 2008

Who will give birth to the electric car?



I have to come clean....yes I have had driving lessons (the test did not go well back in 2003 !) and when there is no bus, last one at 7.19 pm which neatly misses the train coming into Windsor at 7.22 ish, I have been forced to get a taxi to Cranbourne!

Sin!

Seriously I guess electric cars fuelled by renewables have to be good and while I hate the usual biofuel (I was chanting sink the biofuel boat long before the rest of the world) I am keen on the concept of a chip fat oil mini cooper or a kebab house grease fuelled run around.

So I am interested in this email from Chris HOWEVER I still want localisation and tele work (instead of commuting) and good cheap public transport...hulking bits of metal on the road need to be minimised.




The Phoenix Motor company http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com of America are about to market an electric SUV that can do 95 Miles Per Hour and over 100 miles per charge. The normal charge takes several hours but a special 250 KW external charger can do it 10 minutes.

They are cheaper to run as they do more miles per pound and the servicing is less intensive as there is no oil to change nor filters to change. The only servicing is to keep the battery and the commutator or slip ring brushes up to scratch and one or two other things like windscreen wipers.

One advert says that batteries will soon be up to 1000 miles per charge.


I suggest now that electric cars are beginning to take off that we back standardisation of the external charging unit and their introduction into gas stations in this country.

They need to be about 40 miles apart to allow people to stop on longer journeys to charge their cars. I suggest that initially the price to charge the car is discounted and the cost of installing the charger subsidised by the government.

The first thing is to standardise the charger interface, the connector, the current and potential delivered.

Once this is done the popularity of electric cars will rise.

Additionally we could press for a guaranteed trade in price to scrap the petrol car and a subsidised electric car during the initial change over from petrol to battery car.

If we leave it the likelihood is that bio-fuels will come to dominate the market. We need to act before the biofuel disaster really takes off.

Remember money rules the world. Capitalism rules OK! Very Happy



Chris

http://www.myphilosophy.eu

1 comment:

Chris Hyland said...

Is there any data on working from home? Such as how much carbon would we save if everyone who was able to work from home did, at least a few days a week. Not to mention the fact that some of those business parks would make quite a few decent affordable homes, or even regular parks.

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