It’s 2010, where are the flying cars?! 😉
A family member recently pointed me in the direction of this video about the General Motors Hy Wire concept car. The Hy Wire is basically a drive platform onto which any number of potential chassis can be bolted. Cool concept, but I have my reservations.
Good looking car, and awesome modularity… but I’m still not sold on hydrogen fuel cells… I think plug-in electrics are the way of the future.
Think about it, right now every car out there (practically) runs on gasoline (including diesel). We’re been "sheeped" along with the switch to hydrogen. Why? Control.
Right now people can’t "make" their own gasoline at home. They can’t "make" their own hydrogen. But they can "make" their own bio-diesel which will work in ANY diesel car. A diesel car will even run on plain old vegetable oil! But that still involves some pretty elaborate constructs to actually make your own fuel.
Think about today’s hybrids: what are hobbyists doing? They’re increasing the battery storage capability and allowing the batteries to be charged by plugging them in to normal household AC. Yes, you can plug your car in at night (when electricity consumption is low), charge it up, and be ready to drive 200+ miles. Once you hit that limit, you switch over to the "other" engine which charges the batteries while you drive.
Notice I didn’t say "gasoline" engine. This other engine could be gasoline, diesel, hydrogen, hydrogen fuel-cell, plutonium reactor, crystallic fusion, etc. All the other engine has to do is charge the batteries when their charge level gets below a predetermined threshold. Doing this allows us to shift our entire driving fleet to a primarily electric power-source. This electricity can then be generated by whatever means appropriate. Now, when we want to increase our fuel efficiency all we need to do is upgrade our municipal power plants, which would be substantially easier than upgrading all our current vehicles on the road.
It is this decoupling from fuel sources to electrical storage that will enable technology to move forward. Anything other than a shift to all-electric (or electric with range-extending backup) is simply a red herring to distract us from the direction we should be heading to yet another system of control.
Thoughts?
