Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Why electricity is the energy of the future.

105 Years ago the motor carriage was an emerging technology.As I have mentioned before I have a collection of periodicals dating from the 1850-1910 including the Scientific American.Reading them the emphasis is on technological and scientific innovation the reward being the commercial success.

In the motor carriage reviews the energy source is mostly electric,with some petroleum and steam.Electricty was the favored energy supply.Even with the technology of the 1890's plug and play vehicles that could outperform petroleum was the mainstream.

The Columbia having a range of 100km.speed of 20kmh(twice the speed limit) and a 2 hour charge from the domestic supply.This gave a running cost of 1c per mile.

We have the Government here trying to create a biofuels market that has constraints and high running costs of fuel exceeding existing oil costs,and coal to oil production by 25%.

In the US an innovation refugee from New Zealand shows what innovation and imagination can achieve in a developed technological market.

Ian Wright has a car that blows away a Ferrari 360 Spider and a Porsche Carrera GT in drag races, and whose 0-to-60 acceleration time ranks it among the fastest production autos in the world. In fact, it's second only to the French-made Bugatti Veyron, a 1,000-horsepower, 16-cylinder beast that hits 60 mph half a second faster and goes for $1.25 million.
The key difference? The Bugatti gets eight miles per gallon. Wright's car? It runs off an electric battery.


Wright, a 50-year-old entrepreneur from New Zealand, thinks his electric car, the X1, can soon be made into a small-production roadster that car fanatics and weekend warriors will happily take home for about $100,000 - a quarter ton of batteries included. He has even launched a startup, called Wrightspeed, to custom-make and sell the cars.

But Wright isn't some quixotic loner. He's part of a growing cluster of engineers, startups, and investors, most of them based in Silicon Valley, that believe they can do what major automakers have failed at for decades: Think beyond the golf cart and deliver an electric vehicle (EV) to the mass market.

Plug and play EV are indeed both technologicaly proven,operating cost more efficient,quieter.
The benefits of existing in a technological oasis with availability of R&D funding are obvious.

In Russia the technology parks for start up industries are being created around existing research institutes and universities.Plug and play is the recipient of 450mUs$ this year.

In Todays budget I expect no sign of innovative thinking as they identify the wrong future once again.

Watch the future racing 11mb

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