An easily swappable Battery Pack would certainly be a giant leap, but you still need a decent range per Battery Pack. At least a couple hundred miles, otherwise that convenience will just become an inconvenience.
it is possible to mandate universal battery and you just pull into a station, swap out the battery in x min with a mechanised device and pay x dollars for that. Obviously the batteries would be nationally owned.
install cycle pedals hooked up to dynamos as emergency power :biggrin:
An easily swappable Battery Pack would certainly be a giant leap, but you still need a decent range per Battery Pack. At least a couple hundred miles, otherwise that convenience will just become an inconvenience.
well, unless we create electric rails on the road I don't see how else we can get decent range on electric :awe:
I would say 100mi should be good enough no?
That would be plenty for most local Driving, but long distance, not so much.
An easily swappable Battery Pack would certainly be a giant leap, but you still need a decent range per Battery Pack.
this is the question confronting scientists, many of them clad in white lab coats, carrying clipboards, and speaking in guttural german: how is babbery formed?
What is it with this "carbon neutral" crap? We aren't creating more or destroying any carbon. And carbon isn't a poison either - last I checked, life forms are based on carbon.
Repeat after me: Carbon is NOT evil. It is NOT bad.
Repeat after me: Carbon in the atmosphere is bad for the life currently on this planet, and being carbon neutral (not adding nor removing it from the atmosphere) is a good thing for humans and other life. __________________
The Tesla S has a max range of 300 miles depending on which battery you choose. I think we're almost there.
Sure, we're almost there for rich Americans to do, what about everyone else? 70k+ for a car is a LOT of money.
There is no way to answer this question because there are a number of technologies being developed which are promising, but unproven. The production of hydrocarbon fuels directly by E. coli fo rexample.
Personally one of the worst things we can do is get caught in a one size fits all solution, and we need to consider the TCO of any system.
For example thorium reactors could be an ideal solution for energy intensive purposes, but we should be moving away from a grid based system even if the initial cost were higher. Why? A couple reasons and none of it related to the source or destination of electricity, but the means by which it is transmitted. As the grid becomes larger it is of necessity larger and more complex. We have "smart" grids now so we lessen the likelihood of a large power outage. That's great, but it then becomes increasingly expensive and more vulnerable to the elephant in the room, and that's solar activity. This is not something which is sci fi. A solar storm caused some damage not many years ago, and one in the mid 1800' was so powerful that people operating telegraphs got severe shocks. At this time there isn't a good solution to this. That means anything that uses modern technology and plugged in will be cooked. Computers mostly gone. The internet- history. Power? Forget it. That's best case. It gets a lot worse than that. Imagine communications gone, data fried, and more. Back to snail mail and typewriters. In the meantime the logistics of running business or government suddenly become impossible. What can be done to avert this is beyond the scope of my post, but this is not Y2K. It's a matter of physics.
Part of the solution would be to minimize exposure to the grid. It's easier to unplug your home or cluster of dwellings and it's easier to minimize the damage. Spending more money than exists to repair society isn't exactly economical.
There's a whole lot more to it than what's the shortest and cheapest route from concept to reality.
Carbon neutral is in reference to the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere (at least how I meant it). While we aren't creating or destroying any carbon, we are adding/removing it from the atmosphere which is important. Carbon is not "good" nor "evil", it just is. That said, carbon in the atmosphere (in the form of CO2) is generally not good for life as we know it currently on this planet.
Repeat after me: Carbon in the atmosphere is bad for the life currently on this planet, and being carbon neutral (not adding nor removing it from the atmosphere) is a good thing for humans and other life.
Carbon by itself is a solid, so if you throw it into the atmosphere it will end up back on and in the ground again and not stay floating around up there :awe:
carbon dioxide is a gas. it doesn't come back down. or are you joking?
...for the transportation industry today? Cellulosic ethanol? Sugarcane ethanol? Jatropha-derived biodiesel?
Safe or not, we are still producing nuclear waste that will take tens of thousands of years to break down. After the human race has gone extinct, our nuclear waste will still be around.
Not only do we have to think of ourselves, we have to think of those that will follow us.
Probably the best answer so far.
In the long run, I think solar, wave and wind will be the best solutions.
Carbon neutral is in reference to the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere (at least how I meant it). While we aren't creating or destroying any carbon, we are adding/removing it from the atmosphere which is important. Carbon is not "good" nor "evil", it just is. That said, carbon in the atmosphere (in the form of CO2) is generally not good for life as we know it currently on this planet.
Repeat after me: Carbon in the atmosphere is bad for the life currently on this planet, and being carbon neutral (not adding nor removing it from the atmosphere) is a good thing for humans and other life.
...Repeat after me: Carbon in the atmosphere is bad for the life currently on this planet, and being carbon neutral (not adding nor removing it from the atmosphere) is a good thing for humans and other life.