Car of the Future
Wow, anall-electric car, what a concept! No need to stand in line for gas, no fumes to taint the air, just get in and drive. What’s wrong with that? There’s nothing wrong with that idea except it’s ahead of its time. Driving one of these is the next best thing to being a kid again and opening up that Christmas package and finding a remote control toy car.
Not so fast, eager public. When the debts have been paid, when the technology is refined and finally when the public mind-set lets go of its hesitation, when the economy is more secure and, most importantly, when the price is in with what people can afford, electric cars will be the next best thing to a horse driven carriage.
What then is the holdup? Why isn’t everyone driving an electric car instead of a gasoline powered car? The price is out of reach and since few all electric cars are on the highway there’s not enough incentive to add these as a business venture. On long business trips or across country vacations they aren’t as yet practical. Manufacturers have tried to ease this problem by creating hybrids. These have gasoline motor that takes over when the car battery runs down. It works pretty much like a laptop in that there’s a warning light that tells you when to plug in. In the case of a hybrid electric car, the driver will know when to switch fuel sources. These are the next best thing to an all-electric vehicle, but they do emit a certain amount of exhaust fumes. And of course, they’re more expensive than a regular gas powered automobile.
Production will follow sales. And that appears a few years away, not light years as one might have thought twenty years ago. At that time getting thoughts and ideas and messages out fast was the talk of computer whizzes that opened up fast lanes for ideas to circulate. No longer was it necessary to be there in person to discuss the future. Email and the World Wide Web took care of that.
Getting the physical body into that realm and with that speed poses problems. Yet, even with its plodding nature, an all-electric car—via its mind controlled promoters—is slowing down and evaluating the correctness of the eventual ecological importance of a no car exhaust future. It asks questions: Which is more valuable, getting there quickly or getting their safely where safely translates into cleaner air and less noise and disturbances along the way; is the cost out of proportion to its usefulness; is it really necessary in a green environment to be everywhere at once? With the speed of the superhighway are the ideas travelling these illusive pathways worthy of the concept that created this multi-faceted global economy?
And finally what’s the rush? Why not settle down and enjoy the delight of lightweight over heavyweight if you can afford it. Keep your physical body close to home and drive short distances with your electric car and when you need to know what’s going on the other side of the world, let your mind travel the superhighway. Yes, it’s all a dream; or is it?
Back to reality:
Life is not cheap and separating its delights from high priced living is only a thought away. Getting back to nature does not mean buying a Leaf from Nissan, an Avenger from Dodge, a Chevy Volt, or any other car that is too expensive; it means being glad that technology has advanced that far. And it’s in knowing that with a good education and a good job your grandchildren and great grandchildren may be collecting gasoline driven cars as an antique. All these things are thought as you sit in your cool living room and reminisce about the delights of visiting your grandparents via Greyhound Bus lines. When there you all would gather on the porch at sun done and listen to their tales of bathing in the creek nearby and how one day grandpa caught grandma bathing at the old watering hole with nothing on but her birthday suit.
What’s old is new again and some things never change and among those are the delights of childhood and the toys that made them happy. Therefore the future of the all-electric automobile is no further away than wanting a to create a playground where plug and play is as easy as plugging in your automobile in supermarket parking lots while on vacation. It’s also no further away than what your paycheck will allow.
