Quote:
Originally Posted by Giller
Who knows what the future holds when it comes to R/D. What you are scared of now, people where scared of way back when when it came to what we have today. TImes change, technology improves, many parts become dramatically cheaper (heck, look at big screen tvs). The Prius has been out for some time and it sells quite well in resale. Batteries are expensive....but will quickly drop in price as technology and more demand (and therefore, a most likely drop in production costs) continue. When you can save a thousand or two in gas over the course of a year.....the batteries ain't so expensive anymore.
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Personally I'm not scared of this technology, I just think it's essentially a complicated sticking plaster solution to what is basically non problem.
Batteries are always going to be less efficient than an engine that burns fuel directly. Until a car can run completely on recovered energy
they're not really doing very much apart from increasing the cost of manufacture, and using up rare earth metals at a rate of knots.
Now that oil fracking is here, there is not likely to be an immediate shortage of oil, and as for global warming, ha!
You are right about technology moving on, and long term I expect Fusion Power to come along, which will make an alternative fuel to petrol (when needed) possible to synthesise, or maybe the hydrogen storage problem will be solved, who knows. Either way, all this investment in batteries and renewables is just dead money IMHO.