The cost/energy density ratio of liquid fuels beats anything - anything - the Luddite Left can come up with. The ones who are smart enough to udnerstand that simple fact hate it. They hate it along with the very civilization that provides them their comforts.
They already have these—trolleybuses, hybrid buses with a gas or Diesel engine that also have an overhead pantograph allowing them to use power lines like an old-style streetcar or tram. The technology exists, and has worked well in Europe (and here) for decades, but it’s only practical in high-density areas for high-density vehicles like buses.
It’s an interesting idea from Captain Slow, but nothing that will happen anytime soon. In the meantime, I’ll take a Ferrari 458 Italia like May was driving the last time Top Gear came to the US, please.
}:-)4
The rolling blackout happening in Texas ought to be proof that our current energy and environmental policies would not allow any significant expansion of rechargeable electric vehicles or even the electrified motorways envisioned in this article. We have wasted billions building wind farms, solar collectors and ethanol plants while environmental regulations have stymied the building of new fossil fuel plants, hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants. Now we have to import electricity from Mexico just to make ends meet. While the US has more oil than Saudi Arabia, we must import most of our oil because of government regulations, now these regulations are forcing us to import electricity too.
A system such as that has a high level of potential (no pun intended).
Can’t we just get along and call the electric car the “Tiny Coal Powered City Worker and Mall Shopper Summer Transporter” or by its shorter name “Truck Food” and resign ourselves to using it only when “appropriate” (like 1/4 of the time)?
If electric cars are outfitted with links to overhead electricity, will the manufacturers also include the “clang, clang” trolley bell instead of a horn?
Build more nuke plants now!