A Bright Energy Future is Possible

Bright Energy Future is Possible. This week I was pleased to see Bob Lutz and Elon Musk on the Charlie Rose Show. Charlie Rose Episode  They were speaking of The Electric Car: Then, Now and in the Future.  We have come a long way since the EV-1.  The Chevy Volt is being produced and sold in limited markets and it is selling well.  It has a range of 40 miles on battery, but it also has a backup in the form of a gasoline engine that will allow you to continue your trip when the charge is depleted.  For those who do not go more than 40 miles you never have to stop at the pump.  However, if you are going to be going several hundred miles for a family vacation, for example, then you can get there even if there are no charging stations on the way.  Just purchase, as an exception, some gasoline. However the really good news is that work is being done in the research lab that may lead to a new battery type that will allow a car like the Volt to go 400 miles between charges.  The new soon to be introduced Tesla can already do 400 miles.  The second generation of this vehicle is a bit expensive but a lot less than the first generation.  It will start at $50,000.  It will roll off the production line in Freemont CA starting in August of 2012. The factory is an abandoned Toyota plant. These new cars are a step up from the Toyota Prius in the sense that they are designed from the get go to be electric cars - not sometimes gasoline cars. Also on the news is the fact that a German Aeronautical Engineer has built and flown a prototype electric plane. You should see the electric motor.  It only weighs about 2 or 3 pounds!  The plane will fly for up to 1.5 hours. I think that it is great news that these developments are under way.  We really do need to get off of our addiction to fossil fuels and we also need to back up these wonderful cars and planes with nuclear power plants so that the complete cycle will not involve fossil fuels.  We ought not be burning petroleum for several reasons: That supplying countries are often hostile; that burning fossil fuels such as coal causes asthma and causes about 30,000 premature deaths in the US every year.  And yes, the is also the issue of anthropomorphic carbon release into the atmosphere accelerating global climate change.  Global climate change deniers are uninformed or misinformed people.  There is a lot of evidence that GCC is real and it is undeniable that human activity is responsible for a part of this carbon - enough, it seems, to throw us over the fence. A bright energy future is possible but only if we rise to the occasion. What do you think?