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.
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Chief Scientist: we need to transform our world into a sustainable ‘electric planet’
LONDON - I want you to imagine a highway exclusively devoted to delivering the world’s energy. Each lane is restricted to trucks that carry one of the world’s seven large-scale sources of primary energy: coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, solar and wind.
Our current energy security comes at a price, the carbon dioxide emissions from the trucks in the three busiest lanes: the ones for coal, oil and natural gas.
We can’t just put up roadblocks overnight to stop these trucks; they are carrying the overwhelming majority of the world’s energy supply.
But what if we expand clean electricity production carried by…
