Jim via PLUG-discuss said on Sat, 30 Dec 2023 20:50:59 -0700
>I don't like electric cars.
>IMHO they're not ready to replace the internal combustion engine.
>They don't have the range of a car with a gas tank and it takes hours
>to charge one.
I like the idea of hybrids that charge the battery with a gas engine or
by plugging in at night. My neighbor gets something like 50MPG with his.
I'm for the most part a California Liberal. Because I have kids who
might have kids, future weather is a huge concern for me. I very much
want to quit spewing junk into the air, both the kind that lets the sun
come in but not let infrared back out, and the kind that just takes five
years off our life expectancy. So you'd think I'd be a fan of
all-electric cars.
Well, I will be, just as soon as we don't use coal, oil, jet fuel and
the like to produce that electricity. And before you talk about nuclear
*fission*, that would be a good temporary bridge, but it has gone on
too long, and we're accumulating too much radioactive waste that's going
to be hot for thousands of years.
I said it in 1973 when the Oil Cartel sought to change the US foreign
policy by withholding oil, and I've been saying it ever since: Nuclear
*fusion*. It's clean, the fuel is fairly well available to the US
(Tritium type hydrogen from heavy water). And for every one of those
fifty years since I first said it, my oh-so-wise friends have chirped
"grow up Steve, fusion is thirty years in the future!". That's been
said for fifty years. And during that whole time, OPEC, Putin, and
various oil and coal tycoons have gotten filthy rich while we choked on
our air and climate change has skyrocketed insurance rates from
fire-prone west coast to drought and flood cycle plagued middle America
to hurricane-ravaged east coast. Who is spreading FUD about nuclear
fusion? Follow the money.
Now, for the first time, that 30 years could be down to 15 or 20. Read
these:
https://www.inverse.com/science/best-innovation-2023-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-ignition-gain-of-1
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/12/26/inside-the-worlds-first-reactor-that-will-power-earth-using-the-same-nuclear-reaction-as-t
https://www.world-energy.org/article/39280.html
Imagine a world 40 years from now when every apartment parking space
and every home has 220 volt or 440 volt 3 phase energy coming in, to
charge your car. Or perhaps by that time all that cheap energy can be
used to produce compressed hydrogen to use in our cars. 2H2 + O2 = 2H2O
plus energy. Water as a byproduct. No need for an expensive catalytic
converter, or all the other pollution devices we now use on cars.
Cars might even be cheaper. 400 MPH mag-lev trains to replace the
horrible airline industry. Flown lately?
The old energy interests will fight like hell to prevent this, because
their wallets are more important to them than their nation, their
world, or their descendants. But short of nuclear war they can't stop
it, it's coming. I don't know whether I'll live long enough to see it,
which is a shame because I've been looking forward to it since the age
of 24, but it's coming.
SteveT
Steve Litt
Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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