Posted on 08/04/2008 8:54:30 AM PDT by Coffee200am
Might as well buy a kiddie pedal powered car ...
This was a truck. I cannot imagine what this little blue thing would look like in the same scene..............
I think it’s great to have R & D into electric cars. But, and it’s a big but, while the car itself is pollution free, the batteries have to be re-charged. And if millions of people had electric cars and plugged them in at their houses every night to re-charge, then drastic new amounts of electricity would have to be generated to re-charge. And power plants fueled by coal produce pollution. I wonder if the power plants would produce more pollution when they are called to produce more electricity to re-charge electric cars, than today’s lower polluting cars produce. Remember today’s cars produce much less pollution than the cars of 30 or 40 years ago.
I also figure that we’ll have to rely on conventional power plants, because the enviros won’t allow big scale development of nuclear power.
The car has a few problems:
http://www.topgear.com/content/news/stories/1832/
By the way, how are you going to generate the electricity necessary to charge all those batteries? Coal? Nuclear? Dutch windmills?
They’d be drilling a hole in the bottom to drain the driver out.
You wouldn’t even see that little blue thing in the same scene.
It's actually LESS safe than an electric golf cart!
Well, the guy from the pickup is probably dead anyway, so it would actually be BETTER for this little “car” to have been involved in the collision on the grounds that it would have done less (no?) damage to the semi.
I’ve got to admit I have a affinity for these small cars. That being said, I don’t think I’d ever own one unless it was a very sturdy little car. Even then, how sturdy can you make it, at that size.
Death trap doesn’t begin to describe these things, although I’ve seem some rather impressive stats on the Smart Car.
Here is an interesting article from the UK. It addresses the G Wiz’s failure to pass a crash test.
What’s even more interesting about the article, is that the authorities were inclined to see what the EU stance on these cars was, rather than simply devise rules in the UK to deal with them. They are doing some of that too though.
Very strange.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1764088.ece
They just install a second set of wipers down on the front bumper. Just turn them on with the requisite wash fluid and move on down the road.
There used to be an old joke. It went something like this.
What’s the last thing to pass through a bugs mind when it’s about to hit a windshield? It’s ass.
Welcome to the G Wiz.
Sure ... LOL. As if I have $20,000 lying around to replace the batteries.
I’ll stay with gasoline until diesel hybrid electrics come out.
How about $109K for the car! Its a sweet looking ride.
IT’S THE STUPIDITY, STUPID!
This may come as a shock, but life is both full of dangers and consequently full of conscious compromises. I could (but won't) find images of a semi's resulting appearance after a similar encounter with a bridge or overpass abutment.
A choice of vehicles is the results of many factors, among which is the knowledge of one's own competence, as well as the capacity to understand and practice simple concepts --- like defensive driving, and not doing truly stupid things like passing the wrong vehicle at the wrong time in the wrong place.
If you want the best shot of living forever, crawl into a closet and make yourself into a little ball...
Great comments. This kind of “it has to be stupid proof or it won’t be a solution” mentality has got to change. We need transportation that deals with our constraints rather than just our wants. We may have to learn better driving skills, be less reckless, more careful. Keep telling them.
And one or two in the laws of thermodynamics and material and energy balances.
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