Originally Posted By: DoubleWasp
Originally Posted By: Trav
Originally Posted By: PeterPolyol
Originally Posted By: Trav
As long as the range is good and recharge times are short I for one am all in.
Of course, but unfortunately they're not so we're back full circle.
Not quite, things are changing quickly. The rest of your post IMO is just typical nothing will replace the horse and cart stuff from more than 100 years ago.
As I posted I cant see it happening in my lifetime. Right now EV's have limited use but it wont always be that way. IMO this is technology we need to invest in heavily so the US is a leader not just a end user of the technology where everyone is driving some little Chicom or Japanese EV.
Those who felt the horse and cart would never be replaced had no valid argument. Although the ICE was not in full swing on automobiles, the power or combustion was already clearly in effect and already vastly superior to organism power.
The fact that combustion defeats organisms was clear from the first moment a person pointed an arrow at a man carrying a gun hundreds of years ago.
By the time the ICE first started up, steam power had already put a lot of animals and people out to pasture for good. The idea of a ship being towed by people taking on a steamboat was completely dumb at that point. The idea of using horse teams rather than steam engines in an industrial plant was equally ludicrous. The idea of going up against a gunship using a war boat full of javelin throwers was insane.
There is no such precedent in battery/electric vs. ICE.
Beyond that, combustion/fossil fuel has one area where electric will never touch it: Aviation.
Electricity has no ability at all to produce thrust outside of direct mechanical manipulation of the air. An electric plane is capable of being an outdated propeller plane at its absolute peak of development. This is a major setback that only changing the laws of physics can overcome. Also, a motor made of giant magnets will never be as light as one made of hollow lightweight alloys. Electric motors may do a passable job of taking on the piston engine, but they will never come within a fraction of equaling the gas turbine.
Same with marine. Try pulling up to the less developed parts of the world and attempting to charge a battery the size of a Ford Excursion. You'll probably put out every light in a quarter of the town.
Battery/Electric is the opposite case. It's never had the advantage over combustion, and nobody exists who can draw a logical picture of how it ever will.
But ultimately, the biggest problem with battery/electric is that
it only works in the presence of a competent, strong, and reliable electrical grid. That's why battery/electric will never be able to replace this when the power goes out:
Great post!
I will say that for large-scale marine, like the container ships, I can see them adopting small nukes, somewhat akin to a modernized version of the US nuclear fleet. A container ship that doesn't burn obscene amounts of bunker fuel would be beneficial to the health of our air and oceans. The problem will be regulating the safety of them. It's one thing for the NSC to monitor power plants, its quite another for them to monitor mobile sea-going vessels in private hands.