In its obsessive desire to promote the virtues of electric cars, the BBC proudly showed us last week how its reporter Brian Milligan was able to drive an electric Mini from London to Edinburgh in a mere four days – with nine stops of up to 10 hours to recharge the batteries (with electricity from fossil fuels).
I'll let you read the piece for the 1830's tech that beats that time; my own comment is:
I checked, and London to Edinburgh is 332 miles, roughly the distance from my house to a friend's house in Waco, TX. In my truck, doing a little over 60 for best mileage, I can make that trip in 5-6 hours(depending on how often I stop to get rid of excess liquid or if I stop at Cabela's on the way). So the electric Mini took FOUR FREAKIN' DAYS, with NINE refueling stops... And let's note that the vaunted windmill 'green' energy isn't much available(especially when it's really cold) so they're still dependant on coal, oil, gas or nuke plants for electricity; but they still think these battery-powered roller skates are the future?
I've said it before, I'd love to find some fuel or form of energy generation that would make the oil ticks once again the lords of nothing more than the world's biggest litter box, but we ain't got it yet. And windmills and other 'green' energy(since the eco-jerks refuse to even consider nukes green) won't make up what we need, whether they like to admit it or not.
Bleah. I've got to go computer shopping, among other things. In a vehicle that uses gas but won't need refueling during the running around.
4 comments:
Check out ACER computers, I am on my second ACER laptop and I love it.
No frills in the video card department, but plenty of processing power and ram for everything else.
Available at WalMart for cheap.
I don't think that the British roads support quite those speeds for any length of time, but still.
I'd think probably more like 7 hours.
(Just checked and Google Maps directions say 7h 13m, fastest. Yay me?)
Sigvald is right,
Get a little bit north of Newcastle, and the A1 becomes just two lanes with a white line down the middle. You're likely to get stuck behind a tractor and trailer.
This is the road linking 2 European capitals.
Last time I was across, they were upgrading the A1 through North Yorkshire to 3 lanes a side dual carriageway. Trucks are limited to 55 MPH, and you'd usually average about 45 on that stretch.
It generally comes to a complete standstill from about the Dorty Angel, along past the Metro Centre, and up to the north side of Newcastle during rush hour.
There are a couple of processes for using cracked natural gas with coal to make gasoline and kerosene (possibly diesel and lube oils too).
The Germans developed it in WWii and the South Africans commercialised it during sanctions.
Similler processes are used to de-sulphurize fuels
What did britain do with its natural gas?
Closed the coal fired power stations and burned the gas in new gas fired powerstations - it was lower in sulphur and gave less carbon...
and now they're screwed.
How smart central planning is (NOT!)
SWMBO has an acer. their laptops seem to have much better battery life these days. They used to be terrible.
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