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by gargoiler00
4680 days ago
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I don't believe electric cars are technologically better. Lugging a half ton battery around, then waiting for hours for it to charge doesn't seem that clever to me. Of all the things that are banes of our lives these days, surely it's everything that runs on a battery. Remember when phones would last a week or so on a charge? Now you're lucky if a smart phone lasts a day on standby. And people call it progress... So no, I think the idea of having a massive battery in my car is horrible. |
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Early internal combustion engines were also rather embarrassing, but this didn't hinder their adoption -- at the time they were a better choice overall.
Imagine the reverse situation -- imagine that electric cars took hold when they were first introduced in the early 1900s and saw a century of improvements. Then someone comes forward and says, "We have an idea! Instead of charging your battery all the time, you carry a tank of explosive liquid fuel with you wherever you go, and you burn the fuel as you drive."
Present battery technology is pretty terrible -- not very efficient, too heavy, low energy density, short life. But widespread adoption of electric cars will force technological improvements, just as happened with internal combustion engines.
If batteries improve -- greatly -- it will become self-evident that carrying a battery around is a better choice than carrying and burning liquid fuel, both for the environment and in a simple economic sense. At the moment, electric cars aren't an obvious improvement over an internal combustion car, but I think that will change.
In a hypothetical future with more wind and solar energy sources, and possibly fusion power in the long term, electric cars will make more environmental sense as well.