We owe auto racing for the seat belts, air bags, and many other safety devices. Auto racing used to have a real purpose. Now, not so much.
What we need today is Electric cars that have batteries that can hold a charge longer and be recharged by a solar array. It needs to be inexpensive to buy so we can get more of them on the road and fewer of the internal combustion engines.
We have so much proof that “climate change” is real and that it is a “man made” problem. The auto companies and NASCAR aught to develop batteries that are interchangeable, easy to replace, and easy to charge. Each Electric car should come with a spare battery. The idea is to have two batteries so you can go further and get back home without having to recharge during the trip. Another advantage to two batteries is you can have one charging while using another.
Instead of a gas station on every corner we could have solar recharging stations with spare batteries all charged up. You drive in and take your battery out , plug it in to the charging port you just emptied by taking a fully charged battery. On your way out to plug the new battery you pay a small fee for the right to trade batteries.
The roof of that charging station is covered with a solar array. The fee for swapping batteries helps cover the cost of setting up the station and array.
To me this is a win win situation!
There is no reason not to do this, except GREED on the part of auto companies and oil companies. I’m willing to bet that there is already the technology to do this. It would bean that all the batteries would need to have the same plug for convenience.
So my question is, why not do this? I challenge the auto industry to start working on this and NASCAR to start racing EV’s to make improvements.
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I hope you guys realize that just about every electric car in this country is powered by coal. Imagine how expensive they are going to be to charge when the new CO2 emission standards kick in.
Jumpingjackflash, I think you are missing the point. We have the technology to use solar to charge electric vehicles.
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It takes as much energy to produce a solar panel as it produces over it’s lifetime. You don’t get anything for free.
Jumping, I have to disagree.My array has made 6 years worth of electricity so far for me and if I could afford an electric car it would still make enough to charge it.
Where did you ever get the idea that “it takes as much energy to produce a solar panel as it produces over it’s lifetime”?
I bet you are wrong.
Excellent points, Nirek. The rich fueled the car industry in the first place, and it will take rich people with vision to make electric cars cool. A good place to start would be to design planned inner-city communities in which you could provide the infrastructure, for maintaining electric vehicles, such as what you described. I park my car on the street. But as much as I would like to own one, an electric car just isn’t practical for me … nowhere to plug it in. Photocells on the car’s surface would help provide some power, when the car is in the sun a lot … rooftop parking levels would suddenly become much more popular, and while I’m thinking about it, mall parking would be a natural place to provide access to plug-in ports.
JJ, you are onto something with the mall parking lots and roof top garage parking. Solar power is the best way to generate clean electric power. We’ll always need some fossil fuel but not the huge amounts we now use.
Europe is already many miles ahead of the US in utilising other energies to move cars, even in Motor Racing. Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini and others are developing racing cars with hybrid engines, Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems, fuel cells and the list goes on. Formula 1 even has new rules for this season. the engines are V6s, single turbo and rev limited. Also they get extra grunt from KERS. The rules are:
‘A Formula One car’s power unit consists of a 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 engine which operates in conjunction with an Energy Recovery System (ERS). The engine must have six cylinders in a 90-degree formation, with two inlet and two exhaust valves per cylinder and a single turbocharger. They are rev-limited to 15,000rpm, have a fuel flow limit of 100 kilograms/hour and produce around 600bhp. They must also have a single tailpipe exhaust.
The other part of the power unit – ERS – provides an additional 160bhp or so per lap via two clever motor generator units (MGU) that convert mechanical and heat energy to electrical energy and vice versa.
The first MGU (known as MGU-K, where the K stands for kinetic) converts kinetic energy generated under braking into electricity. Under acceleration 120kW of this electricity, which is stored in batteries in the Energy Store (ES), can then be used to power the MGU-K which is connected to the crankshaft of the engine and in turn helps propel the car.
The second MGU (known as MGU-H, where the H stands for heat), is connected to the turbocharger and converts heat energy from exhaust gases into electrical energy. The energy can then be used to power the MGU-K or be retained in the ES for subsequent use. In total, ERS has twice the power of the pre-2014 KERS (120kW compared to 60kW, a maximum of 4MJ per lap compared to 0.4MJ per lap) and provide it for nearly ten times as long (approximately 33 seconds per lap as opposed to six).”
Wonder if the gas-guzzling classes will ever adopt common sense ideas where you can still race VERY quickly, but not drain the world of resources while you do it.
PPO, America is a leader in many areas but we fall short when it comes to automobiles. Most Americans want to have lots of power and speed with their cars.
Thanks for the info on how Europe is doing with hybrids. I still think that if done right we could go for electric vehicles and not burn fossil fuels.
Your right America is a leader and to prove look at this amazing fact, Health care America is number 37 and in healthcare cost America is number 1. IU guess that’s about for we used to be number 1 in everything but not anymore, the decline started in the 1980’s under that wonderful GOP president Romney-Ray-Gun and his group of henchmen, who by the way are still in government jobs and advisors to the GOP.
Great idea Nirek, but would they take to the idea when most of those republican voting people attending, with their big “macho” trucks, scoff at those driving a Prius saying it’s a “librul” car? The change has to come from the top in this case, so maybe if enough people asked for them to go electric, they might consider it.
Kalima, you’re correct, there is not the will to do this on the part of the anti environment people. 99% of those are republican.
I heard something similar on NPR recently, and I agree completely that Nascar could make itself a real leader in electric cars, and do a great deal to improve it’s image at the same time which would appeal to the wallets of those in charge (and sadly that’s probably a necessity).
Why stop there though? I don’t know the exact numbers, but I’m pretty sure the sun gives us all the energy we need worldwide every few seconds – maybe it’s minutes, someone can probably find that number. Solar panels everywhere…every flat roofed building (think schools, malls, grocery stores, everything with a large footprint like that), put panels on top of trains that sit in rail yards for days at a time. The only limit is the will to do it, and of course countering the desires of the oil monopolies that want to keep solar/renewable power off the market.
Hopefully we can make the changes before it’s too late to do so – we can still prevent the worst of climate change if we get on the ball soon.
NJ, all good ideas. I like the rail car solar idea.
Sorry to say, but it is almost too late , now.
Certainly we can’t stop all of climate change, but we can stop the worst of it if we get on the ball now or very very soon (I think/hope). We are slow learners though – just hopefully not too slow.