French made Air Car

Caroluna · Post by **Caroluna** » Mon May 21, 2007 2:55 pm

Tyler Morris wrote:
djm wrote:Trust me, they're a joy to drive. I wouldn't go back to squatting in a sardine can if you paid me.

djm
What say we have a fundraiser, eh?
Who'll donate to see djm squat in a sardine can?

Don't talk that way! It just makes him surly.

er.

Rod Sprague · Post by **Rod Sprague** » Mon May 21, 2007 6:00 pm

When I first saw the title of the article, I thought it was about flying cars made in France.

Tyler · Post by **Tyler** » Tue May 22, 2007 5:48 am

Rod Sprague wrote:When I first saw the title of the article, I thought it was about flying cars made in France.

<tangent="hey, look what I found while looking for pics of a DeLorean!">

</tangent>

Kevin L. Rietmann · Post by **Kevin L. Rietmann** » Tue May 22, 2007 9:02 am

Oh, lots of crazy cars out on the road.

Tesla Motors is another intriguing startup company, building electric sports cars that use something like 750 cell phone batteries, that do something like 0 to 60 in 9 seconds and get something like 140 "MPG." They're marketing the $80,000 sports car now but plan to market something more affordable if the sportser sells well enough.
Main thing that needs to be done if we want to go EV is to beef up power grids - US grid got a D- grade in an assesment of infrastructure. Also we'd need an awful lot of fresh juice.
This applies to air cars as well - production and cost of running innumerable compressors. Whether they'd be more of a burden than oil refineries (which use hideous amounts of electricity) I couldn't tell you.

missy · Post by **missy** » Tue May 22, 2007 9:36 am

and at least in this area, electricity is produced by coal - so you are just trading one unrenewable fuel for another.

Rod Sprague · Post by **Rod Sprague** » Tue May 22, 2007 9:12 pm

We have more than enough coal to give us time to develop alternatives, energy wise. I think the big issue will be what burning coal does carbon dioxide wise. Also, coal mining in not one of the more benign activities, ecologically.

If I remember correctly, a power plant using the efficiencies of scale, combined with the fact it can be built to be energy efficient without being too heavy due to the fact it doesn’t have to move its own weight about, makes it much more efficient, unlike a car. Coal fired electricity electric cars are actually less of a carbon dioxide source than standard cars, from what I can recall.