Turn out the lights on the EV
- Will technology leapfrog depletion and save drivers from the cost of triple-digit oil?
Every auto producer in the world has an electric car in the works; General Motors, of course, will start producing its Volt later this year.
But in actuality, the car of the future is really a throwback to the past.
In 1899, an electric car was clocked going over 60 miles an hour. And a little over a decade later, a Detroit Electric managed to travel 211 miles on a single charge (by comparison, General Motors' Volt will go just 40 miles on a single charge before its back-up gasoline engine kicks in).
In an ironic twist of fate, it was the invention of the electric starter that all but killed the electric car, since you no longer needed the physique of a weightlifter to crank-start your internal combustion engine.
Related News
Scientists generate 'electricity from thin air.' Humidity could be a boundless source of energy.
WASHINGTON - Sure, we all complain about the humidity on a sweltering summer day. But it turns out that same humidity could be a source of clean, pollution-free energy, a new study shows.
"Air humidity is a vast, sustainable reservoir of energy that, unlike solar and wind, is continuously available," said the study, which was published recently in the journal Advanced Materials.
“This is very exciting,” said Xiaomeng Liu, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the paper’s lead author. “We are opening up a wide door for harvesting clean electricity from thin air.”
In fact, researchers say, nearly any material…
