At 03:13 PM 01/29/2003 -0800, Tim May wrote:
On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 02:24 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Tim May wrote:
Nonsense. What "political science" do you think was stopping Ford or
Honda or Volvo or GM from introducing a hydrogen fuel cell car by 1980?
What I meant is lack of lots of fat federal grants for research on fuel
reformers, hydrogen separation, proton membranes, alternative catalysts,
and the like. The fund allocation (or, rather, lack thereof) was sure
politically motivated.
Well, in your country (Germany, IIRC), perhaps such funding is permissable.
I haven't seen radical energy-efficiency products coming out of
German or French or British engineering companies either,
in spite of the funding possibilities available under Socialism.
(There have been some good wind-power things done in Scandinavia,
but their car companies seem to go for durable-and-safe or
sports-cars-instead-of-simple-sub-Volkswagens, and I suppose
they've done lots of things with building insulation or whatever,
but that's simple necessity up there... Similarly, there's been
some good solar-energy work done in Israel, where it's warm and sunny
and surrounded by Arabs who may not always sell you oil.)
We've gotten much more efficiency gain out of the Japanese car companies.
I'm not sure how much of that benefited from government research funding
(their computer industry didn't accomplish much with it),
but a lot of it was from lighter-weight lower-cost cars,
which are not only a good match in crowded, poor cities,
just as Volkswagens were efficient, but it also benefited significantly
from less restrictive laws on car designs - the US has a huge amount
of regulation on car design ostensibly in the name of traffic safety
or consumer protection.
In the U.S., it really is not. Constitutionally, that is.
The government exists to do certain things, not to pick technology winners.
Not that that's bothered them much :-)
