Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The shape of things to come?

Read this story from Wired.com.

The American love affair with the car comes with one really bad side effect, a need for tremendous amounts of oil. Sadly, we just don't have enough oil to satisfy demand. Even worse, our example has proliferated world wide and oil is becoming more scarce every day.

There are lots of acronyms for electric cars these days; NEV, PEV, EV, HEV....but they all equal the same thing. The idea of people replacing their existing gasoline powered cars with some kind of electric powered vehicle. The problem is that existing battery technology cannot support a vehicle flexible enough to replace the easily "rechargable" gasoline powered car. The auto industry's answer so far has been "hybrid" vehicles that feature either gasoline engines or fuel cells that work in conjunction to power the vehicle for distances that can compete with legacy cars.

An alternative to carrying around a heavy gasoline engine (and the fuel) to recharge/power you depleted hybrid vehicle may be to outright replace the thing that makes our existing gasoline powered cars so convenient....the gas station.

Sounds feasible to me, you're simply replacing the commodity involved from gallons to watts.

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