Need Longer Extension Cord
link Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret.
We see this often these days. People are so smart that they are actually dumb. From the very first time that Cro-Magnon man picked up a stick to beat up an adversary, necessity has always been the mother of invention. That’s the way it works. People will always tinker with things just for the intellectual amusement of tinkering, but for the most part, inventions make it to general usage because there’s a practical and commercial utility to it. Some inventions are really of marginal utility; they exist only because someone sold the idea of its usefulness. The electric toothbrush is such an example. I’m sure many would be lost if they had to manually brush their teeth. Up, down, up, down, oh the humanity. Still, it does fulfill some consumer need.
For this reason, my invention of a gas powered pillow fluffer never took off as I had originally anticipated. Neither did my solar powered dog polisher, or hand cranked nose hair plucker. Because of the mass delusion that has been foisted on a naive public by global warming zealots over the past few generations, vast resources have been given to people preaching the quixotic vision of green power. While it’s hard to argue with the general intent of this vision, the free market has not adopted the results of the “innovations” thus far. In the case of many consumer items today, the populace have come to embrace the whole notion of green/sustainable/organic/natural items. It’s only a matter of time before they start selling shoes made of seaweed at Whole Foods. They’re only good for about 300 steps, but at least they are green. In the case of battery powered green cars, the resources put in compared to the results achieved are truly dismal despite what the optimists claim.
Spending $40,000 to buy an electric vehicle with the lofty range of 60 miles would have no commercial takers unless you were a) an idiot, b) a zealot, c) too rich for your own good, or d) all of the above, the worst possible combination. Instead of spending untold billions of taxpayer dollars to fund technology that is inherently flawed, the simplest solution is right in front of us.
Buy cars with smaller engines. The internal combustion engine has been around for a long time and has gone through numerous refinements by all manufacturers. They have never been more efficient in power transmission and continue to be cleaner burning as well. Porsche goes as far as to claim that the air going in to their engines is not as clean as the air coming out of their exhaust pipes. That may be a stretch, but if you’ve ever breathed the air in Beijing or Shanghai, it’s somewhat believable. Regardless, the technology already exists for fuel sipping small displacement engines that are as efficient as some so called green electric vehicles, especially when factoring in the cost of battery production. More importantly, the biggest advantage of existing gas powered cars is that people can actually afford them and are able to plan trips beyond the range of what their eyes can see. A road trip in an electric car is essentially a ride to the city limits.
In this day and age, with a gas station every mile or so in most cities, idiots still manage to run out of gas. What makes people think there will be charging stations available when the battery goes kaput while on their way to a doctor’s appointment? The irony is that they will call the automobile club for a rescue. They of course will show up with a gas powered car. If people really want to push the green powered nonsense, maybe they can bring back horses and covered wagons. We know horses are good for at least 60 miles, although acceleration is nothing to brag about.