09-08-2022, 10:27 PM
(03-11-2022, 11:12 AM)David Horn Wrote:(03-11-2022, 06:26 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't think recharging takes so much time that it makes extra motel stays necessary. But I hope electric car recharging will get faster and distances travelled on a charge longer. There are already differences depending on the car make.
If we really want to convert to electric cars, subsidies should be offered to poorer people so they can buy them. I don't see much future for gasoline-powered cars. Other kinds of renewable-energy cars may be invented or further developed, but electric cars have the momentum right now.
We still have a battery problem, and newer technology needs to solve that. Getting enough lithium to make batteries is already a challenge, and the energy density, good as it is, still inadequate to uses like aircraft and ships -- both huge users of fossil fuels.
We have legitimate questions about the durability of the batteries. How durable are they? Fewer moving parts sounds like a portent of longer survival. I expect some parts of a car (the drivetrain) to outlast some others (tires, most obviously). By the time that electric vehicles fully supplant gas buggies, most cars will be self-driving (and that could be the cause of mass replacement of older cars. The insurance companies will price you out of doing most driving on your own.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.