This is the electric car

[Halcyon Daze]

Coming to a government department near you.

http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/601181/n/Electric-Dreams

[Rabaelthazar]

Awesome.

Sounds like this could actually be it.

[hutch]

Unreal....the technology is awesome....We had one at Exide for many years that we would drag out for shows but compared to what the Israelis have built it is a dinosaur...I hope you are right and they are coming to a government department near you. There are only a hand full of politicians currently driving hybrids...I would have thought that all the Greens would be but sadly no....

Thanks for sharing...

[Francois le Danque]

nice to see you on board with green technology hutch

i agree it's pathetic that politicians don't catch the PTs more too, especially since they almost exclusively work in the major centres. a friend saw ted baillieu on the train the other day though which is cool. he saw him through the glass and said "wow it's ted baillieu" and ted noticed this and gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up, to which my friend replied with "gross!". apparently ted is a good lip reader and subsequently appeared dejected. LOL.

also it's a shame good old jools doesnt use her influence to improve her home Altona line. that thing is a piece of crap. so few services !

so yeah basically i think electric cars are perpetuating the problem. similar to "clean" coal. the problem is cars themselves: i mean green cars wont stop traffic will they? they're also still made of a tonne or more of materials which could be put to better use. not to mention the millions of square km that roads take up. we need to shift to a society where public transport and GASP physical transport are the major modes.

[hutch]

nice to see you on board with green technology hutch

 

Thanks Frank, but I have never once argued against green technology. That has never been my issue.

[hutch]

But then you find this in the paper...

ELECTRIC cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetimes than petrol equivalents because of the energy consumed in making their batteries, a study has found.

An electric car owner would have to drive at least 129,000km before producing a net saving in CO2. Many electric cars will not travel that far in their lifetime because they typically have a range of less than 145km on a single charge and are unsuitable for long trips. Even those driven 160,000km would save only about a tonne of CO2 over their lifetimes.

The British study, which is the first analysis of the full lifetime emissions of electric cars covering manufacturing, driving and disposal, undermines the case for tackling climate change by the rapid introduction of electric cars.

 

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/electric-cars-may-not-be-so-green-after-all-says-british-study/story-e6frg8y6-1226073103576

I wonder if the article writer is across what Israel is doing and if that makes any difference to his story.

maybe we should just go back to "shanks pony"....for those too young it means walk....

[Francois le Danque]

shit like this^^. stupid cars.

i wonder if the same would be true for those tiny little cars that only go at 50km/h and are just for getting around the city/to the train station etc. in canada they are allowed to go in bike lanes, which is cool.

and surely electric technology will only get more efficient over time? still as i said, 'green cars' is a concept that's completely missing the point.

it would surely still be good to keep the pollution spread out, instead of concentrated in the city. now, i rarely get up in time for peak hour, but cycling to my exams today and yesterday i had to cross the freeway at around 9am. MY GOD the smog. fucking foul, i could barely breathe. today i wore a handkerchief over my face like a train robber of old. got some strange looks from motorists. considering making a sign on my bike that explains that im wearing the thing because of them.

just for the record i completely understand that some people need cars because of disability, working strange hours (like the guy who leaves my apartment complex every morning just as i'm going to sleep at 245 on the dot), trade or who live rurally. i even own a car myself but i only use it to visit my family in the country occasionally. even then, sometimes i catch the bus. it takes longer but is also a lot cheaper than 20 bucks on petrol. so basically i believe that driving in a major city (melbourne at least, can't speak for those with inferior public transport systems ) is morally reprehensible and should be banned, or at least heavily restricted, and road funding diverted to public transport funding. because if every road was a tram or train track, what would you need a car for anyway?

sigh another rant over...i just cant help myself

[Mycot]

Not particulary fond of cars myself. Carting all that weight around just to transport one person.

Multiply that by millions of cars on the road and its quite a nightmare with huge energy wastage.

Electric superbikes may be a preferable option in many ways including less materials and less batteries in manufacture. They've come a long way staking up well against gasoline machines.

I think they're pretty neat though still too expensive.

http://theelectricsuperbike.com.au/

[Slybacon]

Google Mission One electrify bikes......... Way Cool

[C_T]

electric motor bikes should be alot easier than cars, and make alot of sense!

i personally ride every day (don't have a car) and would love to have an electric one as well as petrol

[Francois le Danque]

i was going to get a motorbike license but then my parents bought me a car...suddenly i couldnt be bothered. also motorbikes arent much for transporting stuff, besides people, which they are perfect for, and cars are not. particularly those hideous SUV monstrosities. bler.

[ThunderIdeal]

i dunno if motorbikes are the answer although they are put to decent use in asia.

electric bikes scare me because they are very quiet, and motorbikes are already extremely dangerous.

you can carry a fair amount on even a small bike if you buy the packs and racks and so forth, but obviously no very large items.

personally the inconvenience of motorbikes (freight limitations, weather, clothing, and in my case not being able to lock the luggage or helmet on the bike but having to carry it) is getting pretty old.

[Halcyon Daze]

Weather or not they produce more greenhouse gasses is debatable, besides, not all electric cars have batteries. These early battery models might be carbon emitters, but as technology advances things like that will be overcome.

The way these companies make money is they slowly feed the new technology out in there latest models over 50 years or so, I guess if we had started 50 years ago we would have a real winner by now.

Also, the whole point of an electric car is so you can source the energy from renewable sources.I guess this applies to the energy used in construction of the car too.

Once you are using carbon neutral energy, it doesn't matter how much energy you use to construct or run the car because they would still be carbon neutral, especially if a portion of that energy is used for carbon sequestration.

I personally like the air powered car and I reckon we should be building them out of hemp but any start is a good start IMO,

[hutch]

Such a shame that once mass production of such a vehicle gets under way the majority will be built in countries just like China. And they wont be built using green technologies. It is a wonderful vision you have there HD but I can't see it ever happening as you say. Unfortunately we live in a real world and in this real world China will soon be king. They can't believe their good fortune. They build it and we consume it and an ever increasing pace. We want it cheap as has been shown in the boom in online shopping sites. We don't want to pay full price for anything any more and we don't. How many people in this real world tick that box on their power bill indicating they wish to use and pay for green generated power. Not many. Who can bloody afford it anyway? The majority of people are price driven. Australia still has a couple of automotive/industrial battery manufacturers operating. Their ability to compete with cheap imported products is on a razor edge now. Bet they won't be around for much longer. Doesn't mean those batteries wont be built it just means they wont be built here. There will be no manufacturing in this country as has been the trend in the last 30 years. Goodnight Australia....

[Francois le Danque]

hey hutch, i hope you know that ticking that box on the power bill is useless anyway. all it does is take the energy away from people for whom it was green anyway. for example if someone lives next door to a hydro plant, they normally get hydroelectricity as standard. however if you then tick the box and they don't, their electricity gets diverted to you and they end up with coal fired instead. this is a simplified explanation but it sums up the situation. this is why there is this guy in the UK running his own green electricity (i think it might actually be called 'green electricity') company to stop this futile game of musical chairs with electricity suppliers. he also built an electric car that can do like 300km/h. pretty cool guy i guess.

halcyon, electric cars were actually invented before internal combustion engine cars. oil companies sure can be persuasive...

and of course im sure everyone here knows about henry ford's 100% hemp car....yeah