Like I said before. I am a big fan of electrics. Currently drive a Volt and plan on getting a Tesla eventually, but am not blind to it's faults.
If we were talking about what lead to using leaded gasoline there is a different argument because that could have been avoided.
Given the lower population density and the fact that in the early 1900's a large percentage of the population did not have electricity to charge the batteries.. when you factor that in with the other issues of electric cars vs ICE I can see why electric cars did not take hold at that time.
Actually, no. Given the state of the tech at the time and our knowledge about pollution and the effects of various types of exhaust gases on the atmosphere it wasn't true 'all along'.
There were levels of vehicle use that were perfectly acceptable. But now that transportation is a world wide commodity instead of a luxury those effects are inescapable.
So there was some point in time where the balance shifted, and then it took a long time for the reality to set in (and some part of the world are still in denial). And it will take some time still to shift to electrical vehicles, but those too have their own waste and risks, some of which will only become apparent when their adoption rate crosses certain thresholds.
People usually think cars are the biggest sources of emissions but it's not even close. All transportation (car, planes, trains, etc) represent 14% of global emissions.
Globally the biggest source of emissions is energy production which represents about 35% (25% of direct emissions and 10% of processes like refining fuel).
Electricity required combustion to produce at the time, and still does today. Battery waste is also not negligible, and battery mining is as dirty as oil.
Electricity required combustion to produce at the time, and still does today. Battery waste is also not neglible, and battery mining is as dirty as oil.
Interesting that the concept is based on steam engine. Would there be a way to recondense the steam for reuse, or did they plan to just release all of them? Then they would need to run on water, much like the steam locomotives of the past.
given that the "fuel" was set to be replaced every 5,000 miles, i'm going to guess that it was going to be reused, but likely the need for weapons grade plutonium and the amount of shielding required made it not feasible to even think that far, so no idea what the end product would have entailed.
You’re right, otherwise we’d all be powering our cars with with zero point energy reactors.
Clearly feasibility has a big part to play as well and everyone driving around little fission reactors would be ridiculously impractical from both an engineering standpoint, as well as a safety one too. Not to mention it becoming a terrorists wet dream because of all the waste material. (Not that I’m normally one to play the “terrorist” card)
Terrorists currently utilize cars for destructive acts all the time - it hasn't caused us to abandon them.
I wouldn't be surprised if, had we gone down that path, automobiles had less fissile material in them than platinum. Currently fissile materials and high explosives are purchasable, we just keep an eye on purchases and follow up on suspicious buying patterns.
We still don't know the full extent of the environmental impact of the Fukushima disaster. Can we afford more incidents of that nature? I'm not certain.
That's nice, but we do know that burning fossil fuels kills a huge number of people [0]. Moving away from fossil fuels will require some form of nuclear power. Much of Europe has successfully transitioned most of their power to nuclear [1], so it's not like the concept is some experimental sci-fi dream. From an environmental standpoint, nuclear is by far our cleanest option based on all the information we have.
