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156 comments on The electric wheel - a breakthrough in car efficiency
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Actually a very elegant wheel powered electric car was developed in the USA in the 1960s. It was collapsible and weighed only 208 kg. They worked perfectly even in a challenging offroad environment but were never marketed to consumers.
Technical data here: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/apololrv.htm
My son has a DVD set called fire power which features an 8 wheel drive diesel hybrid with in wheel motors. A very impressive concept developed for the US military, the dating on the DVD suggest that it is current or fairly recent. This suggests that someone in the US is taking things seriously.
The above scurrilousness may well be true (or not), but it has nothing to do with production and use of energy.
I'm not the moderator of this group, but such comments do seem inappropriate, and should be discouraged
I thought swiss cheesers were neutral like there holy cheeses,[that is to say; they dont bite ] and seppo's, [as we affectionately refer to u.s.americans in oz] like the nationalist armies of Europe they helped us defeat in ww2 were always right [even when its blatantly obvious to the rest of us they dont have to win to be right].ANYHOW...Consider the BAKER ELECTRIC automobile of 1911 vintage .It looked very similar to granny's car in the sylvester tweetie pie cartoons re: that stereotypical seppo maroon; bugs bunny.It was a large heavy 5+seater of sound rubust pedigree and technology [relative to the era and if truth be known,right up till the 70's ]and returned remarkable mileage from its cheap bank of deep cycling lead/acid batteries under its floor boards .In fact it was so good that it embarrassed a shed load of prodigious auto heavyweight seppo's the likes of William Crappo Durant,the dodgey brothers,old henry et.al . To make sure this innovative method of propulsion was embraced publicly,they relegated the technology to there [not the consumer's] benefit. The BAKER ELECTRIC CAR COMPANY was bought off and its innovative patents were licenced in the form of all those little shuttle carts we still see in the big factories/airports today.And amazingly the 1911 baker electric car [Ive driven one],100 odd years later still returns similar mileage stats to its progeny.Sure its not reverse polarity energy cycling or redox elecrolite powered or super conductive technology,but it worked and it had the potential to decentralise a fair whack of 'c'word.Just imagine where we would be if the seppo dollar had embaced BAKER et.al instead of buying into watt ,otto,atkins miller and alike.NOT REAL SMART IN RETROSPECT UNCLE SAM.
No single individual, company or government ever decided that the internal combustion engine had to become the dominant technology in the auto industry. At a certain moment in time this technology just became dominant because of a number of different types of economies of scale in the auto industry and in related industries. This was just a historical accident; coincidence. Evolution plays a game of chance at all times. Therefore, in retrospect a lot of technological developments are suboptimal. In potential an electrical propulsion system is superior to the internal combustion engine. This was true 100 years ago, and it still is true right now. We're locked into the technology of the internal combustion engine. The problem we have to think about is how to get out of this lock-in.