On 21/01/14 08:51, John Williamson wrote:
On 21/01/2014 07:17, harryagain wrote:


The interesting places, you have to fly.

No you don't. Anywhere on earth can be reached by ground transport, The
*only* reason to fly, while producing 10 times the CO2 of ground
transport, is to save time on the journey. The last time I flew anywhere
was when I needed to get to Venice within 6 hours of leaving
Stoke-on-Trent to drive a coach back when the driver broke his ankle.
The time before that was to get to South Africa for a funeral and back
for work.

All the land transport links used by Phileas Fogg still exist, and the
same journey can be made in the same time, as Michael Palin proved a few
years ago.

Electric cars are in their infancy.
They will get better.


Electric vehicle technlogy is mature. Batteries are already close to
their theoretocal limits for energy density and charge/ discharge
efficiency, as are electric motors. The technology is mature, in some
ways more so than internal combustion. Any improvements in electric
vehicle technology in the foreseeable future will be incremental rather
than revolutionary. Unless someone invents Robert Heinlein's "Shipstone"
power store, in which case all bets are off.

Until 1902, the fastest vehicle in the world (At 105.882 kph) was an
electric car. Since then, they've only doubled in speed, whereas IC
engined cars can now do over 700 kph (707.408, if you want to split hairs).


No one has bothered to go for a speed record in an electric car.

400MPH should be easily possible.

AS I said, lithium air batteries are the ONLY technology that has a HOPE
of making what we would feel was a 'decent' battery electric car, and
that's at least ten years off any potential battery, and 20 off wide
scale adoption.

All the other technology is there already as you can see from e.g.
Tesla, which is a perfectly decent car except you don't get more than
100 miles out of its 'tank'.

If it could be developed to 600 miles and the battery was less than
£5000 it would be a market changer.

Unfortunately its existing technology is more like £25,000 and 100 miles..

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.