On Thu, 01 Aug 2013 12:39:52 -0700, Andrei Alexandrescu
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 8/1/13 12:05 PM, Adam Wilson wrote:
If we've learned anything at the shop it's that people can't be bothered
with the facts. They seriously don't care if you have studies backing up
the environmental damage, they believe they are green and will take
those beliefs to their graves. Ideology is funny that way. :-)
You betcha. Related, you destroyed the myth that engine braking is any
bad, but I bet money nobody changed opinions.
Indeed. :-)
About green driving, Prius, and Tesla - it's all about what industry you
want to sustain. Everything that stands behind the Hummer as a road car
is an abomination, pure and simple. Of course I'd agree plenty of Prius
drivers are as snooty as it gets in a different way. Yet the reality
remains that the Hummer is an evolutionary dead end, and hybrids are a
stepping stone to a better future.
The most efficient/effective method would be to power the roads and then
have cars draw energy from that. With battery storage for where the roads
are unpowered. That way you could draw on the power generation capacities
of Fission or Fusion devices without needing to stick one in every car.
That would greatly reduce the amount of battery capacity needed for the
average trips.
My current car is a nice and economic Honda Fit. It is the very last
internal combustion engine I'll ever own - I hope my next car will be a
Tesla (regardless of what anyone thinks about it being a status symbol).
Buying a dinosaur juice-based engine at this point is as much fail as
buying a carriage with horses in 1915. I predict that internal
combustion engines will be seen in less than a hundred years as weird
inefficient contraptions, like we think of steam engines today.
Personally, I am hoping for Zero-Point Energy powered cars, or if not
that, then at least a Mr. Fusion (apologies to all who don't get the
somewhat dated cultural reference).
Also, there is a beauty about electrical engines - their theoretical
efficiency is 100%, they are simple, principled, entropy-neutral, and
work on conservative laws. (Batteries are more unwieldy though.)
Andrei
--
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/
