Hybrid Cars are for Losers; or Electric Cars are for Winners
Written by John Rozewicki   
Saturday, 12 August 2006

Hybrid Cars Aren't Worth It

Electric-gasoline hybrid cars have been in vogue now for a few years. They provide excellent gas mileage, and they make people feel like they're doing something good for the environment. It's just too bad they're completely worthless. Hybrid cars still have emissions and require gasoline. I've not heard of one that allows for direct charging of the system. Which means that you're still a slave to the pump, but since their mileage is okay you're more of an intern to the pump. Either way, you're not being compensated.

Just Okay, Not Spectacular

I'm being generous here by saying the mileage is okay. The Honda CRX, internal combustion non-hybrid, got 52 MPG in 1989. Technology has progressed leaps and bounds since then. Yet, the best we can do is a Toyota Prius, in 2005, that gets 55 MPG. What gives? Hybrid cars are a worthless stop-gap measure. Their mileage is not as good as the amount of technology involved might dictate, and they still burn gasoline. They are not an acceptable solution.

The Only Sensible Smart Solution

The real solution to our oil-dependency problems are fully electric cars. It's not new technology. The EV1 was released in 1996, but killed off prematurely. General Motors released the vehicles as lease-only with no option to buy. People who wanted to buy the cars outright at the end of the leases were not given an opportunity to do that. You couldn't have kept an EV1 if you had wanted to. I think that's a market failure. The cars were already produced. They were on the roads. Many drivers were happy with them. Yet the company specifically denied the sale of the product, and in the majority of cases junked them!

Sustainable, But Not Perfect

Pundits say that the battery technology wasn't up to snuff; that they didn't have the range of gasoline cars. I don't understand how that could be. There were many happy owners of EV1's in 1996. Battery technology has progressed since then just as everything else has. There's no reason why many many more people wouldn't be happy driving electric cars a full decade later. Electric cars are not, in and of themselves, a perfect solution. It is true that we're simply moving the source of energy out of the automobile and into the power station. That is a separate issue, and in fact, I think is one of the positives of the electric vehicle concept. Not being reliant on any one source of energy means that electric cars are the only sustainable, super long-term, solution. In this way we can fix our energy problem at the power station, instead of in the driveway of every American home. According to the co-founder of GreenPeace, Patrick Moore, only about 22% of power in the US comes from nuclear sources. The overwhelming majority of the remainder comes from antiquated solutions such as fossil fuels.

Nuclear Power Failure

Nuclear power is as close to a perpetual motion machine as we can manufacture on such grand a scale. It can provide stable energy right now and into the future because the nuclear "waste" products still have 95% of the energy left in them. Yes, nuclear waste can be recycled just like almost every other form of waste. That is also information courtesy of Patrick Moore, a professional environmentalist. It took 3 things for this country to turn its back on nuclear power. First, the Three Mile Island incident in 1979. Second, the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. Third, and most importantly, a reactionary angry hippie movement that convinced the nation that nuclear power was dangerous. Three Mile Island was not a disaster. There was only a partial meltdown of the core, all safety and emergency systems functioned properly, and people living in that area were not exposed to any more radiation than a chest x-ray for a very short period of time. The important thing that Three Mile Island showed us is that the plans we had put in place worked! Chernobyl, on the other hand, was a disaster. Chernobyl was a nuclear reactor setup in an airplane hanger located in a horrible, technologically gimped nation. It's amazing the project didn't kill everyone involved before it produced any power. If anything, it shows us how bad things have to be before there is a disaster that affects people in a major way. It's shocking to me that we don't use this today, and I think it's because I'm so young. I haven't been wrapped up in the controversy. I can look back, weigh the options, and be appalled that we're not doing the easy things we could be doing to solve our problems. Three Mile Island happened in 1979. It would take a great deal to convince me that the technology isn't better and safer today, 30 years later.

In With The New, Out With The Old and The Problems

Fuel cell technology is great, but still years off. Battery technology was here 10 years ago, and is even better today. Technology marches on. Let's use it. Locomotives have been electric for a century because it's more efficient. Why are we still relying on antiquated internal combustion technology that is inherently antiquated. Internal combustion is direct power. You explode the fuel in the cylinder and have to use all that power right then. It's wasteful! It's just logically better to get as much energy as you can out of a fuel, store it for later, and use it as you need it. The only thing you're using the leftover energy for, in most cars, is the cd player; never the movement itself. Between nuclear power and electric cars, we have the technology and know-how to completely kick the ass of our energy problems. It saddens me that we're not really using any of it. Hopefully hybrid plug-in conversion kits will take off.
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written by David , January 28, 2009

It's about the earth and the answer is
Nuclear power and electric cars electric trains, electric homes, electric businesses. Why can't people see this?
Tell your friends, Nuclear power and electric cars.




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