cross-posted from: https://kbin.run/m/technology@lemmy.ml/t/553659
A decline in fossil fuel power is now ‘inevitable’, the report’s authors say.
cross-posted from: https://kbin.run/m/technology@lemmy.ml/t/553659
A decline in fossil fuel power is now ‘inevitable’, the report’s authors say.
I think the point they’re making is electric technology / batteries haven’t been very good until recently, so we’d have a lot fewer cars out there if we didn’t have fossils fuels in the first place since they can store more energy than batteries.
The counter argument, and I’m not saying this is correct, is that we had electric cars over a hundred years ago:
“Over the next few years, electric vehicles from different automakers began popping up across the U.S. New York City even had a fleet of more than 60 electric taxis. By 1900, electric cars were at their heyday, accounting for around a third of all vehicles on the road. During the next 10 years, they continued to show strong sales.”
https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-electric-car
If we had pursued the electric car at the same rate we pursued advances in ICE engines, perhaps they would have been better by now. They made resurgences in the 70s and 80s during the energy crisis in the west.
Clearly burning hyrdo-carbon rich fuels was easier, but it’s hard to say how much the pursuit of fossil fuel driven vehicles and machinery was influenced by both momentum, and the manipulation and interference of the fossil fuel industry. It’s possible that we could have had electric cars and still all the of the traffic, infrastructure and urban societal issues that we do today.
Yep, I agree! Just saying I think that’s what the original question was about. Seems like an interesting question to ask.
We had the opportunity. Remember the EV1?
Big oil got scared and convinced GM to scrap the entire EV line and set EV innovations back by a fucking decade