All Excited about the Electric Cars, Now

The more I think about how cool it would be to ‘perfect’ the electric car, the more I long for that to happen soon. I mean, estimates for the reduction in air pollutants hover around 40%. Think of that: If we could create Battery Exchange Stations (link) tomorrow and get it all rolling by next week… that’d be an instant 40% reduction.

There are other cool upsides, as well. Noise pollution would almost disappear. No more “VROOOM!” right by your ears. Also, no more need to warm an engine. You go out, you put your key in (to turn it on: also, NO IGNITION!), and press the pedal. Since it doesn’t have an operating temperature to reach, there’s no fear of premature wear – press the pedal and go.

And did I mention no more ignition? Yes, yes I did. May not sound like much, but think about how cool that really is. Right now, you rely on a battery to start a gasoline/mechanical motor, that then needs time to properly warm up in order to get you somewhere. Now, however, you would just hop in & go. The battery is the motor, and it’s not an old rusty one, either: It’s the latest technology, Lithium-Ion. No more Coke & toothbrush, y’all.

Everyone keeps talking about the plugin hybrid. But seriously, if we could get the stations going, get the power sources mostly standardized*, then yeah, you could plug it in overnight and not worry, but you could also stop along the way and change it for a fresh one when yours is out of juice. Which is way more convenient, and even if they abandoned home charging (or relegated it to 220v or something so it was less prevalent), everyone could still be properly serviced.

And has anyone bothered to think what this would do to our ties to Oil? Seriously? Buh-bye, Saudi Arabia: hope you like your desert, cuz that’s all you gonna have no mo’, fools! America would finally be free (FREE!) of the tyranny of big oil and OPEC. A truly free nation. Finally.

Go electric, huh?


*Note that there would need to be different classes. A battery powering a commuter car isn’t going to power a pickup truck for long, I don’t think nor is either of those going to work well for a Big Rig. Also, things like ATV’s and motorcycles would need a small source for the couple hundred pounds they are. This could be gotten around to some extent by running sort of a parallel system with the smaller batteries, wherein the big rig uses the same ones, but just more of them. However, that would really limit the convenience of fast changeouts if you had to change 4 or 5 for a regular car, and 9 or 10 for a truck, etc.