Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Electric Car Drag Racing

Posted by emmett on from the 1.21-gigawatts dept.

rumba writes, "The National Electric Drag Racing Association (NEDRA) exists to increase public awareness of electric vehicle (EV) performance and to encourage through competition, advances in electric vehicle technology. This organization's first big event of the year is coming up next weekend. Anybody in the Phoenix Area going to this? There's no slots on these babies. Still, I'd hate to see the utility bill."

1 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Why can't anyone see the obvious? by mangu · · Score: 5
    There's some mental block at play here. Most threads here are reminding us how terribly inefficient batteries are. So, what's the obvious solution? Get rid of batteries, of course. With what, fuel cells? No way, too expensive. The obvious solution to the high cost of batteries has been implemented for a hundred years now. It's electric rail transportation, of course.

    Public transportation may not be the best solution for some cases, people will still want their cars to drive wherever they want. But trains and subways do have their own advantages. Have you tried to read or sleep as you drive your car every day to and from work? I compare the transportation problem to computers. Public transportation is like a big mainframe. People want to have a personal computer on their desks, but mainframes are still the best solution to many tasks. We need a well planned, well integrated, public transport network, which we will use on a day to day basis. We also need roads and cars, for special trips, like what we do on weekends, for instance.

    The reason why public transportation systems have been so neglected is mainly a question of bad pricing regulation. You don't need to explicitly pay anything to drive on public roads and streets. You do need to pay to ride on trains. This makes roads and streets seem to have a much lower cost than they really do. A well planned transportation policy should get rid of this subsidized personal transportation policy and make people pay the real cost for the use of cars and trucks over public roadways.