Electric car journey by the BBC - reality check

There's always horses...


I think (and this is going to resonate for the techies) that the difficulty is we've been constantly upgrading the transport system for hundreds of years, as and when a given problem gets too bad.

You start off with the track made by the path the cows take to the river and then you make it bigger, wider, flatter, change the end point, make it wider again, link it up to another track, and before you know it, the whole mess is too big and too unwieldy and you're working flat-out just to try and keep the holes patched up.

A completely new system might provide a solution. We could probably come up with some incredible ideas, like maybe a public transport system for longer journeys which teams with automatic rental rights of an electric car for poddling about town at either end. But that would be far too big and expensive to ever start.

Teleport?

Make trips to Australia easier

Right, off to start tinkering with 2 microwaves and a fly....

Speaking of all this, I remember reading this article ages ago, on a website called listverse.

See what you think..

'You have probably never heard of him. Tom Ogle invented a vapor-fuel intake system, in 1977, for all automobiles. His system could be affixed to any existing car engine, and would enable the car to travel 100 miles on one gallon of gas. He claimed that the emissions were clean enough that you could dry your hair with the exhaust. He astounded the auto industry with his invention, and was, in fact, approached in 1978 by a representative of Shell Oil, who offered him $20 million, on the spot, for the patent and plans to his invention. He refused, stating flatly that Shell would simply shelve the idea and it would never see the light of day.

Tom Ogle was found dead from an apparent overdose of Darvon and alcohol poisoning on 19, August, 1981. He had been known to drink, but never so heavily that he had to go to the hospital. The Darvon is the weakest link to the report that his death was an accidental suicide: Darvon is an opioid painkiller. It does nothing else, and Ogle had no history of using it. He also had no immediate history of pain requiring an opioid analgesic. The theory states that he was murdered by a Shell-hired assassin, who made it look like a suicide. He actually got his fuel system patented, on 11 December, 1979, with patent number 4,177,179. He was shot and wounded outside an El Paso, TX, bar earlier in the summer of 1981. He claimed that people were after him for his patent. Three months after his death, his original schematics and blueprints went missing from the Patent Office in Washington, DC. Some of his schematics have turned up on the Internet, but not enough have surfaced to actually build his device.'

Strange..right?

Blimey!!! Proper proper conspiracy stuff. People have been saying for years the fuel corps have been suppressing non fossil fuel technology... I wonder how much truth there is in this..

It does seem odd, with speed of progress in general from I.T. to Medical Science, that an alternative power source hasn't been designed and marketed for the masses that will replace the combustion engine. With the market share on offer, you'd think it would be every large companies R&D holy grail...

An entertaining thread, but just to get back on track ;-). I know plenty of people who commute 20 miles or so 5 days a week and these cars would work well for that purpose. Perhaps the car clubs need to grow to allow people to use for longer journeys?

The problem with both battery and hyrid cars is still the "carbon footprint" from making the vehicles.

In my opinion the Hydrogen fuel cell is the only viable alternative giving near to ice performance and distance. Stupidly high prices at the moment in the development vehicles but will drop rapidly

Cann't link to articles yet but just use Google.

I wouldn't hold your breath, even if they do tweak electric cars, the government will put the duty up on electricity once we all start driving them!

...maybe by then, we will get in our cars, find a lorry ("Road Train") to get behind, and then relax take our hands off the steering wheel, read a newspaper and drink coffee to our destination!!

Hmm imagine "eco-terrorists" hacking into those systems, or the "lan" goes down

Oh gawd, I can see it now... Microsoft Road train services...

Imagine the chaos on patch Tuesday At least if it stopped working all you need to do is switch your car off and back on again!

Then again we have google driverless cars. At least you can have a swift pint and not worry about driving