Solving the final issue with electric cars.
For the past few years hyrbids have been all the rage. Now electric cars are coming on to the scene. I realized a while ago that neither of these vehicles is good for the great american tradition of the road trip. Before gas prices started to increase it was fairly common to pack up the family car and head across the country. This is still my preferred way to travel. I hate the uncertainty and the TSA interaction of flying. Driving is nice and relaxing once you get out of traffic.
Hybrids are fine for city driving but they offer no improvement over your typical four-banger once you get out on to the highway or back in the woods. Let’s face it, most hybrids have no business off pavement. In a few years I’m sure decent hybrid trucks will become available. I’m not holding my breath.
The other alternative is electric cars. They’re great for the daily commute. You drive to work and back then plug them in when you get home a night. Electric cars are great because we have so many different clean options for generating power. The typical range is 200 miles so they have plenty of juice to go to work and grab groceries on the way home. If you need to drive outside that range you’re effectively screwed. After the juice runs out the car has to be plugged in for hours before you can make go another 200 miles.
In order to get people to switch over to all electric cars we need to have the range of a gas fueled engine plus the ease of refueling. Since we can’t recharge batteries as fast as we can fill a tank with gas the only other option is to change the batteries out. I think we need to standardize on battery size and have them removed from the bottom of the car. Then instead of gas stations we can have automated robots that will drop all the batteries out of the bottom of a car and place charged batteries in. Think of it like driving through an automated car wash like device but instead of cleaning your car it drops the batteries out of the bottom and puts new ones in. This eliminates two problems with electric cars. First it means we can recharge electric cars as fast as or faster than gas cars and as long as there are battery change out stations we can continue to go on road trips. It also means that there is no longer an issue with the huge cost of replacing batteries after a few years. Part of the recharge cost will also be maintenance on the batteries. It’s like the propane exchange at your local grocery store.