The day we go electric!
Written by Walter
I've told this story many times to friends in the past. We should be able to reduce the unnecessary burning of fossil fuels but the oil companies do everything to stop this from happening. Why? One sole reason: Money!
NOT CONVINCED? Well, allow me to explain:
Cars on fuel constantly need maintenance and on top of that pollute our air. So why do we keep on driving them?
The common assumption is that there is no alternative. But wait, those little electronic RC cars run fine and don't pollute at all and need no maintenance! I had one back in the 80's as a kid, why has nobody built a bigger one? That was what I was thinking back then. This might sound funny but that's the way I thought about it as a kid. What's not so funny is that this was a totally correct idea! We could have done this 20 years ago with some more funding (better battery technology was required) but it had to come to the time that the oil prices became high enough for people to actually work on finding alternatives (or were allowed/paid to do that work).
Luckily that time has come, and we have those alternatives now! Yes not in 10 years, but today already the electric car beats those loud gasoline monsters hands down. Not convinced? Look here, ferrarri and porsche vs electric:
Thanks to paypal's inventor we also have the commercial Tesla, the first electric car that is in production today:
Here in Belgium we have 3 times the amount of small dust particles than the maximum european norms allow. So why is there still nobody working on a real solution?
You know what they do now, make everyone drive 90km/h instead of 120km/h on the highways! Totally hilarious, as if that will solve our pollution problems!
Guess what, we are all misled by the big oil companies. Experts claimed for decades solar power isn't viable, yet in Germany they have finally broken that myth and they are building huge solar power farms (interesting side note, germany started government funding on research for solar power technology right after the Chernobyl disaster. This way that disaster, despite taking many lives, actually also had a positive effect):
What's even more interesting is that these farms produce many times more power than biodiesel would. ( here they even claim 100 times more). It is more profitable than using the land for farming and on top of that produces clean energy! No dust particles, no fumes! But also, no more money for the oil countries/barons. It's solely this last part that upsets the powers that be. See these oil companies have grown so big they have influenced politicians (or worse, the politicians are oil barons, like President Bush) and it is a commodity that countries use to have a strategic advantage (cfr Russia<-gass->Europe). It is in these countries interest to keep things as they are, money seems more important than our health?
It is only now, when we notice what power Russia has over Europe : when they close the pipelines, we are in cold. That we start to think seriously about wind and solar power! Most might have forgotten, but I remember when Belgium used to be a leader in wind power technology but their funding got cut by our government and eventually the wind power technology companies moved to germany, again ;).
Even worse, when you want to install 100% clean electric heating in a new home you can get a big fine from our government:
Boetes voor electrische verwarming.
Short summary of this dutch page : basically a man was fined 16000 euro for using electric heating. Reason given: he uses too much electricity according to the regulations in place. But is that the real reason? Or is it scare tactics? Should we not be passing laws to allow people to cleanly heat their homes if they want to? Or is it because if everyone would do this in their new homes, we would become less depended on gass/oil/Diesel and it would make the switch to solar/wind power too easy once the pannels and windmills are in place? When you connect your electricity you get the option to have green (meaning produced with solar/wind etc.) or normal energy. Why is the green energy more expensive? Since we have such bad air should our government not use funding to make them equally cheap? (Actually they do it in a cunning way: when you call to connect your new electricity, they offer you a plan of green electricity which is a contract of 10 years with fixed price. Only catch is, the price is higher than the current regular electricity price, so not many people will actually do this. Giving them an excuse in the future to say: well we tried to give alternatives but people did not take them... ).
How crazy is this situation? There are actually laws against using electric heating? There are even laws against putting enough german solar panels on your roof in the manner that they will not approve your home construction if you put too much solar pannels on your roof (because it does not look good/conform with the neighbouring buildings, again is this the reason or... ?).
Is everyone seeing the big picture here???
The good news is that we will become the generation that changes these facts. The oil barons know this, this is why we have Dubai! This is why the oil barons are buying real estate all over the world on prime locations: So that when the day comes, we finally look further than our noses and switch to electric cars and electric heating and solar/wind power, they still have enough buildings to keep their capital secure. Anyway, I'm anxiously awaiting the day we go electric!!!
Final note, before I forget, we can look at toys again to see what is coming in the near future: LiPo batteries (Lythium Polymer instead of the common Lithium Ions used in cell phones and laptops today). The successfull silverlite company uses this new battery technology to produce cheap remote control airplanes. More info on LiPo's here : lipo on wikipedia
And its exactly these type of LiPo's that will revolutionize our car industry, mark my words ;). UPDATE: After looking a bit further into lipo technology I found out that Hyundai's hybrid car is actually already using it!