>From Terry Blanton > And it's electric! > > http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060809/AUTO03/608090317/1149 > > http://tinyurl.com/o88tu
This reminds me of when I purchased my first home computer back around 1978. I was fresh out of college and had just landed my first real full-paying job. I was going to be a reasonably high-paid computer programmer for the state of Wisconsin. With a steady source of income guaranteed I went to my bank and took out my first loan. With a fist full of loaned dollars in my hand I bought Radio Shack's first incarnation of the TRS-80, or "Trash-80" as besmirched by the "other competitor" in the market. My TRS-80 came with one floppy drive (80k storage) and a whopping 4k of RAM. I think its clock speed was hovering somewhere around 1 - 2 MhZ. I think I could play Solitaire on the flickering 14-inch black and white monitor. Those were the days when the BASIC programming language actually looked like BASIC with each turgid line of code prefixed with numbers. My TRS-80 cost me approximately $2,400 in 1978 dollars. I could have bought a decent used car with that amount of cash. Tells ! you where my priorities were back in those ancient days! Today we have the sexy Tesla all-electric Roadster, delivering the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon with a 250 mile range per charge. Without a doubt the snappy sports red color puts my 1978 all-plastic gray TRS-80 chassis to shame. The suggested retail price for the sexy Tesla model is around 85 - 110 grand, just a tad above what I can presently afford. Well, maybe if I re-mortgaged the house. Meanwhile, according to the article that Terry supplied us with, there are other contenders in the market, like the Xebra, a "city car" made by the company Zap, a 3 wheeler that goes as fast as 40 mph and can go as far as 40 miles per charge. The cost: A much more reasonable $8,900. There are improvements on the drawing boards soon to be revealed. Even Zebra's humble statistics could easily drive me to work, to the grocery store, to dental appointments, as well as my spouse and I to the theatre. We could even afford to go out to a moderately priced restaurant on a weekend - because we aren't spending all of our discretionary entertainment budget trying to keep the gas tank filled. One can clearly see an equivalent innovative technological trend beginning to evolve in innovative new electric car designs, the equivalent of what we previously witnessed in the PC industry over the past several decades. It really did take decades for the home (personal) computer to evolve into the micro super computers we now have sitting on our desks these days. It seems to me that we are witnessing the same scenario in the beginning stages of unfolding in the auto industry as well. It will happen, I have no doubt. A footnote. There is no guarantee that Detroit will be the primary beneficiary and main manufacturer of all-electric cars, the future "affordable car" manufactured for the common man & woman who must survive on modest fixed salaries and wages day-in and day-out. Silicon Valley, with all its formidable brainpower in electronics, may actually turn out to be the true winner in the early 21st century "space race." RIP Detroit. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.Zazzle.com/orionworks
