good shot

There are plenty of viable alternatives that could be developed, but whilst certain companies make huge profits from IC powered cards it won't happen. It is not a question of such development being difficult or unfeasible, it is simply that the will to do it is not there. The environmentalists are trying to change this.

For example, I'm sure that there could be a market for a small electric car, rechargable from the mains, for use in cities. This would cut pollution in city centres, and perhaps everywhere if we get our act together and incvest more in hydro-electric and nuclear power stations as the French have dome.

The problem is that such a small car would be simple and cheaper to make and buy than one with an IC engine, so proft per unit sold would be reduced. Since a driver can only drive one car at a time, the city car market ids fairly inelastic, so lower prices would not necessarily increase sales very much. This would hit the profits of the car companies, not to mention the oil companies. That is why such cars will never be developed whilst there is any oil left. The nearest we will get to it is "hybrids" like the Toyota Prius, which is more complicated and more expensive than a pure electric car, and deliberately cannot be recharged from the mains, so the oil companies are happy. A pertol-electric hybrid BTW, still used more fuel than a good modern diesel with similar performance.

I'm all in favour of developing cleaner and more efficient technologies for transport. What annoys be though is the constant use of the climate change argument to justify it. This is pure propaganda, since there is not the slightest real evidence that anything we can do to reduce emissions will make any significant differerence. What it will do is cost a huge amount that could be better spent elsewhere. Not even the strongest proponents of Kyoto expect it to do more than delay the effects of global warming for a few years. So the stance taken by some environmentalists is dishonest IMO. Reducing emissions will not "save the planet".

If they have their way, by the time the effects of climate change hit, we will be too inpoverished to be able to do anything to manage the situations that it causes, by relocating populations, building defences, irrigations schemes etc.

Martin

-- Created on the Iyonix PC - the world's fastest RISC OS computer.