Sunday, January 13, 2008
Hybrid Nonsense!
AFS Trinity, remember that name if you want to buy a plug in Hybrid that will cost you only about eight or nine thousand more than what is presently available. Purported to get extraordinary mileage, notice I didn't say fuel mileage, it is, by my lights, no solution to our transportation/energy challenges since a large part of the "extraordinary mileage" comes as the result of plugging in. Why is that a problem you may well ask? Well, where does electricity come from, class? Please don't say hydro-electric. That's right, fossil fuels. Do you see the problem? Just because I, a virtuous driver of a new super hybrid am not visiting the pump as often as I once did, does not mean the pump, as it were, isn't being visited. What's more, the electricity that I'm tapping into from the grid doesn't come to me free, let alone cheap. As I don't wish to be a total wet blanket, (really I don't) I'll allow that while the AFS Trinity represents something of an improvement, a far better innovation would be a car that could recharge from a source that is truly inexhaustible, like the sun.
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2 comments:
I haven't seen the car, but your argument is valid. Plug-in hybrids (and electric cars in general) are only as clean as the electricity used to charge their batteries. The potential here is that if the power source the driver is getting their electricity from is eco-friendly, then they're fine. For example, the French get 70+% of their electricity from nuclear power (no carbon emissions), owning a vehicle like that there would be a good thing. If someone in this country had solar panels or a wind turbine, they could use those technologies to recharge their batteries and truly be greener for it.
The nanotechnology for solar is getting close to the point where one should, in the not too distant future, be able to cover one's entire car or roof in a manner that allows for unprecedented harvesting of solar power.
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