Who killed the electric car?
June 5th, 2006 | general |
About Me
Dr. Joel Pitt is part scientist, part software engineer, and fascinated with artificial intelligence and consciousness. He spends most of his time as a lead developer on the open-source AGI research framework OpenCog, but is involved in ecological modelling, bioinformatics, data visualisation, and assorted other projects too.
8 comments ↓
very interesting, makes me want to buy a Prius but then again they cost 16k for a 1999 model :/
Yeah, I’d love for them to come up with more alternatives to fossil fuel cars.
I was thinking fusion powered, but I’ll probably be out of luck (at least for the next 50 years I’m guessing)
I always thought a fusion powered car would be a bit of a liability in a crash…
Closing quote: “I think this will go down as one of the biggest blunders in the history of the automotive industry”
(No idea in what context)
At first I thought no way as a crucial industry like this (transport) it really doesn’t matter what they produce, whatever makes the most $$$ works for them.
But then I thought what if the same thing happened that it happening to the music industry. If an automotive Apple comes along could they lose their control of the industry?
Yeah, it is very sensationalised. But I heard about the whole “we had electric cars YEARS ago story”, thought it was nice to find they are making a story on it.
Yeah I kind of think that if one of the automotive companies do create a feasible alternative to fossil fuels then they may have a jump-start once all the rest are forced to follow. On the other hand, they may all be waiting for one of their competitors to take the plunge so that they can learn from other people’s costly mistakes.
Still, I’m reserving my judgement on whether our economy will be able to push us through the end of oil. I’m not as cynical as I was about peak oil, but I’m not completely convinced we can convert our entire industrial society to alternative resources. Not just fuel either, but plastics, manufacturing etc. Without which we might not be able to make the transition in the first place.
Yeah I don’t think we can take the plastics industry etc off oil. Thats why it’s crucial to stop wasting it now.
Make cars run off electricty and replace fossil fuel power plants with microgeneration. Then there’ll be loads of oil to keep cheap production going.
exactly! plastics need oil and if we are burning it all off as an energy source we won’t have any plastic – and we use plastic in everything!
but we can always dig up all the old plastic we have dumped in the ground and recycle it
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