Electric Cars And The Future
In the 50s the Soviet Union made Thorium reactors and put them in buoys and lighthouses that provided electricity for years with no maintenance. It is inconceivable to me that, if the current hysteria against nuclear power were to subside that there could not be a superior technology developed. I noticed in today’s news two items. One, there are going to be brownouts in the middle and east of the country due to air conditioning use in the current heat wave. Two, I noted that Mayor Bloomberg of NYC contributed 50 million dollars to a group whose goal is to stop electric power generation from coal, which is currently our major energy source for electric generation. I can not be sanguine about current trends and technologies resulting in not having enough power to recharge millions of inefficient car batteries.The answers to our problems are technological. We are currently in thrall to a political movement that threatens to cause shortages in electric power generation. If new technologies are retarded by political action, I fear that electric automobiles will not be successful now, any more than they failed to provide mass transportation in the last century.
Electric automobiles are an older technology than gasoline or diesel. We need something new. While projecting current technologies as the answer to our future transportation needs is all fine and well, it is entirely too pessimistic for this optimistic, ever more wealthy society, it seems to me that, rather than societal poverty, our tremendous wealth will continue to increase, once our modern Luddite political movement towards energy poverty will be circumvented. If America does not step forward into the future, China will surely continue development of new technological answers to our current problems.