Improving battery technology is a big priority of the Federal goverment. One of the National Labs specializes on this and they have an ambitious time table. They even have a fallback strategy: if batteries cannot be improved quickly enough they have to get going putting induction coils into the main highways so that cars can recharge their batteries while driving.
Therefore this breakthrough is potentially an example of how quickly technology can be advanced if society puts its resources behind it. The problem is: why are they doing it? Not because they want to prevent climate catastrophe. They are doing it in order to be able to continue growing although supplies of crude oil are no longer growing but are likely to decline. A rational strategy would view electric cars as part of a complete revamping of the transportation system: they cover the last mile between the home and the train station. This should go along with higher density walkable communities etc. But this is not what the Federal government is trying to do with electric cars. They want to leave intact today's extremely wasteful transportation system with suburbia and everything, with the only change that electric cars are substituted for gasoline driven cars. Because they do not want economic growth strangulated by spikes in oil prices as has been the case in the last several years. In other words, they are using electric cars as a bandaid to continue business as usual, they are trying to avoid stepping on the brakes while the entire system is heading for the cliff. Hans G Ehrbar _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
