For years, I'd dream it was the last day of finals and I'd missed so many classes I didn't know where the final was going to be. Finally, I outgrew it. Apparently, a lot of people have dreams like that.
Then, I started having electric car dreams. I'd dream that I had a car with a huge battery. I'd drive to an "energy" station and drop off the mostly discharged battery in my car and pick up another, fully charged battery. I have no idea why I've had that dream again and again. So, this articles is not about the ideal car I would love to have... it's about a car I actually have dreamed about a bunch of times.
Thinking it through, the way the system would work is we'd have an electric car with one or two or three big batteries. Each would be rented. Each would have it's own microprocessor that would tell you the charge it had left. When you were ready to "gas up," you'd go to an energy or battery station and swap out batteries. Your car would tell you how much charge you had left, which you'd get credit for, and would show you how much of a charge the replacement battery you were picking up would have-- and software would make sure that you were only charged for the difference in what you were trading in and picking up, which would include swap charges.
Diagnostics in the battery microprocessor would make sure that you were handing in a healthy battery and diagnostics on your car would assure you that you were picking up one. Insurance would cover problems in-between.
Bigger vehicles might carry a few batteries. Smaller, more efficient vehicles might just need one.
Think of all the jobs that could develop around servicing changes. This is a technology that should be developed in the US, not China or India.
And this is technology that should be buildable now. Once this technology starts to become available, there's no doubt that batteries will get better-- lower cost to charge up, lower weight, smaller size, lasting longer... and as these develop, cars will need adapters to run them. Prices for the batteries will change. Big, heavy, faster discharging batterie will be rented for less. The govt. will run subsidy programs to re-cycle them. If the technology is built in the US, then everyone will win as batteries become obsolete as new, better ones replace older ones.
We need a can-do attitude that focuses on ending our dependence upon oil, that sees use of oil as a bad-for-America security risk that is less patriotic.
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com and is a columnist with Northstarwriters.com. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.
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I live in Europe. Saturday mornings, when everbody goes shopping for groceries, most people are one car per person, or one person per car, which ever way you look at it. Traffic jams to get to the shops and traffic jams getting your fresh eggs and milk back to the fridge are common. Stuff like this sets my brain in gear. I think anf think and think and get tired of thinking and eventually fall asleep. I wake up and ...thanks to a little training and meditation back in the early 70s I carry my wildest dreams on into the next day...thinking and thinking.
Science fiction films and modern day documentaries help, of course. Nothing I have ever thought about is really original, but here goes:
IF we survive the next few decades, there will too many of us. We'll all have cars. Those of us with loads of bucks will have big, impressive cars, probably HumVees. In traffic, it's gonna be rough. It'll get to the point where we all will have to resort to a more efficient means of getting to the store and back.
Fließband.
Nobody should own a car. All should pay the same rate. Cars should be uniform and run on a Fließband. No one car can be faster than another because they run sequential. It doesn't matter which car you get in at the Sammelstelle because the cars are all alike. The complete system is electric, powered by electricity from solar panels and the like (foggy dreamer, I). Seperate transystems will evolve to keep rural trans seperated from middle trans and distrans but all three will be interconnected, somehow. Hell, I don't know how, I'm just the dreamer.
For those of us who would like to have it another way, we can always kill eacj other off until there's room enough for the HumVees. Mad Max stuff.
One thing is certain, we cannot go on this way. The way we now get to the shops and back is primitive. We fight and we use our elbows to get to the milk on the shelf and to get it back home before it spoils. Not good. Must change.
by
Tony Forest (7 articles, 18 quicklinks, 166 diaries, 1429 comments)
on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 2:41:28 PM
Neil Young got tired of waiting too, so he took his 1959 Continental to a Kansas retrofit company and had it turned into a hybrid. He also got tired of seeing our nations businesses sent offshore so he bought a major portion of Lionel Train. We dont all have a hundred grand to spend on an electric car,so we will wait for the big three to pull their heads out,and wait,and wait. Hopefully we can drive green before armageddon,its coming down to the wire.
by
john riggs (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 441 comments)
on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 3:48:58 PM
I like what is happening with the compressed air cars. You can google and see videos of them. They aren't impressive at the moment but when you consider that this is the first generation, they are off to a good start. These cars emit no pollution have no radiators or mufflers and give off very little heat. It seems like the motors would last a long time since there is no carbon abrate moving parts or heat to cause wear either. The motors could probably be made of plastic and snap in place. If they were made into "hybrids' where they used gas to compress the air, they might be able to go across the country on a single tank of gas.
by
vidiot (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 247 comments)
on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 6:25:13 PM
Hopefully, some version of your dream will become reality, but we can actualize part of it now. Electric vehicles available today are great for local travel. An electric golf cart is environmentally friendly and convenient for trips within a few miles of home. I have an electric scooter (egovehicles.com) that I've had for 5 years. It's fun and functional to ride for errands around the neighborhood. Live the dream!
by
Paul Jacobs (13 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 11 comments)
on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 10:53:43 PM
Compressed air cars do make a lot of sense. There are several ways of compressing under way and they are constantly improving (to eventually make them nearly self-sustaining), and there are now special Bernoulli-type valves that allow low-pressure air to be added to a high pressure tank. One nice thing about air cars is that the expansion of compressed air inherently causes cooling, probably enough to run an air conditioner for free.
But one thing that i believe will come along eventually (if allowed) is using plain old tap water as a fuel in our existing modified ICE's (internal combustion engines); exploded by high voltage plasma spark. This is an exciting and very interesting path of experimentation and development that is being worked on hard now by many intrepid and brilliant people of the Open Source Energy movement. It may used in conjunction with Hydroxy (HHO / Brown's Gas.. Disassociated H and O from water) or simply by itself if all the hurdles are solved. Much more on this subject in the next installment of "Free Energy and the Open Source Energy Movement" ;)
by
Steve Windisch (jibbguy) (15 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 233 comments)
on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 11:48:53 AM
9 comments
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