Future challenge to Top Fuel.

[ZOA NOM]

I'll be glad when the electric fad runs out of juice.

Denial takes many forms.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/uk-and-france-end-diesel-petrol-car-sales-2040

The headline should say "UK & France start buying foreign diesel and petrol cars by 2040"

The electric vehicle fad is a steaming pile of shit and denial about the realities of its limitations. The only good thing is the old "instant torque" mantra. Nobody EVER talks about how the electricity still needs to be created. Most of it is by coal. So much for the "cleanliness" of electricity. It's horseshit. Wait till the batteries start to fester in piles at your local dump.

[Pat Conlon]

In your anger you've managed to mis read the news article

The headline should say "UK & France start buying foreign diesel and petrol cars by 2040"

Feel free to read it again.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/uk-and-france-end-diesel-petrol-car-sales-2040
Hint: No, they won't "start buying foreign diesel and petrol cars", because they won't be allowed to be sold.

Re: Dirty electricity and electric cars, if the Trump fan boys had their way, all electricity in the US would be generated by burning coal. However, they can't recind the law of economics. (Let alone Obama Care)
Good news is : Coal is dead and "Clean Coal" has been proven to be an illusion.

[ZOA NOM]

In your anger you've managed to mis read the news article

The headline should say "UK & France start buying foreign diesel and petrol cars by 2040"

Feel free to read it again.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/uk-and-france-end-diesel-petrol-car-sales-2040
Hint: No, they won't "start buying foreign diesel and petrol cars", because they won't be allowed to be sold.

Re: Dirty electricity and electric cars, if the Trump fan boys had their way, all electricity in the US would be generated by burning coal. However, they can't recind the law of economics. (Let alone Obama Care)
Good news is : Coal is dead and "Clean Coal" has been proven to be an illusion.

Buying and selling are two different things, Pat. I'm talking about the consumers. Unless you're suggesting those countries will ban imports.

Got any ideas about where to dispose of all the spent lithium?

[JPaganel]

The headline should say "UK & France start buying foreign diesel and petrol cars by 2040"

The electric vehicle fad is a steaming pile of shit and denial about the realities of its limitations. The only good thing is the old "instant torque" mantra. Nobody EVER talks about how the electricity still needs to be created. Most of it is by coal. So much for the "cleanliness" of electricity. It's horseshit. Wait till the batteries start to fester in piles at your local dump.

78% of French electricity is nuclear.  They don't have their head up their ass about it like US does.

EV batteries are very recyclable. The stuff they are made of is too expensive to be put in the dump. "Spent lithium" really isn't a problem.

[red]

The headline should say "UK & France start buying foreign diesel and petrol cars by 2040"  The electric vehicle fad is a steaming pile of shit and denial about the realities of its limitations. The only good thing is the old "instant torque" mantra. Nobody EVER talks about how the electricity still needs to be created. Most of it is by coal. So much for the "cleanliness" of electricity. It's horseshit. Wait till the batteries start to fester in piles at your local dump.

78% of French electricity is nuclear.  They don't have their head up their ass about it like US does. EV batteries are very recyclable. The stuff they are made of is too expensive to be put in the dump. "Spent lithium" really isn't a problem.

Batteries are not the only way to go, either.  You can make very clean electricity at home, from solar cells or wind power.  I got a kick out of a guy in Denver, which is about as poor a wind-power site as you can find.  In the 1980s, he was running his car entirely on the hydrogen that he cracked from water, using a common US$1000 homestead windmill.  They had an article in the papers about him.  He told them something like "Oh, yeah, they tell me my set-up wastes energy all over the place, lousy system, all that crappola.  Hey, everybody, all of my hydrogen is FREE, and the windmill and equipment have paid for themselves several times over, so far."

I can imagine that people like him will be running their hydrogen into fuel cells, powering everything from the house to the car with home-made electricity.  With the advances in hydrogen generation, solar cells, and windmills lately, this would be a very efficient way to go. 

Home fuel cells, about the size of a washing machine or refrigerator:

https://www.h2-international.com/2015/09/21/ene-farm-installed-120000-residential-fuel-cell-units/

Fuel cells in cars:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/news/a26867/hydrogen-cars-toyota-murai-honda-clarity/

People who say it can not be done, should please stay out of the way of people who are doing it.
      

[Bill_Rockoff]

Nobody EVER talks about how the electricity still needs to be created.

My wife wouldn't let me put a "POWERED BY COAL" bumper sticker on her Leaf when she got it; coal was the largest source of power in Georgia then. As of April 2017, though, coal-fired generation had been supplanted by natural gas as Georgia's leading source of electrical power, now >36%. Coal is 29% and nuclear is 26+%. (Amusingly, renewables are over 5%.)  I would have to make my own bumper sticker that says "POWERED BY CHEAP ELECTRICITY THANKS TO FRACKING - SORRY ABOUT YOUR TAP WATER, RURAL PEOPLE!"

An electric motor may not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck the way a fun IC engine does as it pulls toward redline, but a 2-stroke's smoke and racket never really added anything to my dirtbike experience; that would have been even more fun if I could twist the grip and jet off silently. And even my exciting IC engines aren't doing anything exciting much of the time; they're sort of slowly cooking themselves to death waiting for traffic to move.

[FJ1100mjk]

Wasn't this thread supposed to be about an electric-powered dragster? I mean God damn!

[Pat Conlon]

...and that's why we call it a digital campfire.....

[FJ1100mjk]

 

[ZOA NOM]

I've said my piece. Enjoy your silly battery powered toys.

[PaulG]

Remember that modern aviation started with a machine made from twigs and canvas with a motor barely able to create enough lift to get off the ground.

Within 50 yrs the sound barrier was broken. Then 20 yrs after that we were on the moon.

The rate of technological change is going so fast now that most of us cannot comprehend the possibilities coming down the pipe.

EV technology will accelerate at an even faster pace.  The IC engine is a marvel of human ingenuity that has basically remained unchanged for almost 150yrs.  But it's time has come.  This is lamentable by most of us here as we have experienced nothing else.

I just hope it's a gentle passing of the torch.  Considering the ability of people to keep the oldest of vehicles still running safely, even if IC engines were banned tomorrow, they could still be on the road for another 50yrs - in gradually dwindling numbers.

Unless the Motor Police come and take it to be crushed.    But until then get as many klicks in as you can. 

Maybe even the wheel will become redundant one day.

I think Neil Peart summed it up best in Red Barchetta.  (Trigger warning for all you Rush haters out there  )

My uncle has a country place, that no-one knows about
He says it used to be a farm, before the Motor Law
Sundays I elude the 'Eyes', and hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire, where my white-haired uncle waits

Jump to the ground
As the Turbo slows to cross the borderline
Run like the wind
As excitement shivers up and down my spine
Down in his barn
My uncle preserved for me an old machine –
For fifty-odd years
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream

I strip away the old debris, that hides a shining car
A brilliant red Barchetta, from a better, vanished time
Fire up the willing engine, responding with a roar!
Tires spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime...

Wind in my hair –
Shifting and drifting –
Mechanical music
Adrenalin surge –

Well-weathered leather
Hot metal and oil
The scented country air
Sunlight on chrome
The blur of the landscape
Every nerve aware

Suddenly ahead of me, across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air-car shoots towards me, two lanes wide
I spin around with shrieking tires, to run the deadly race
Go screaming through the valley as another joins the chase

Drive like the wind
Straining the limits of machine and man
Laughing out loud
With fear and hope, I've got a desperate plan
At the one-lane bridge
I leave the giants stranded
At the riverside
Race back to the farm
To dream with my uncle
At the fireside...

[JPaganel]

I've said my piece. Enjoy your silly battery powered toys.

This "car" fad will never take off. All a man needs for transportation is a good mare.

[Bill_Rockoff]

Bah! Everyone knows you need to build a fire, tend the fire, boil water with the fire, and then use the steam for power, like a locomotive. This "internal combustion" fad will never take off. How are you gonna control the fire, when you can't even *see* the fire, for Pete's sake?