After a heated debate with the right honourable Mr Jaggy on the merits of electrically powered vehicles in the future, I'd like to back up my case by showing you the Quantya FMX.
It's an electric powered motocross bike with zero emissions, no noise, and no petrol. Powered by a lithium polymer battery, the FMX will ride for around 2.5 hours after a 2 hour charge with a standard 220 v mains socket, and it costs £5,100.
My argument is that yes, electrically powered vehicles probably are the future, but they'll look, drive, and feel pretty much exactly the same as the vehicles we drive at the moment. A Ford Mondeo, for example, is the shape it is not because of the type of engine it has or the fuel that it uses, but because car design has evolved over the last hundred years or so, and is the most efficient shape for a four-wheeled vehicle capable of transporting five adults.
"Form follows function"
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Put this on the gadget show!
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7 comments:
You'll find that this bike is about as much use as a Segway. It's not street legal. You might as well have a mini moto.
People have been putting "zero emission" electric motors into everything from bikes to sofa's to comedy garden sheds on wheels for years. But until legislation changes to allow them to be insured and road legal then they can only go on private land. Zero Emissions or not.
It's the government that needs to change road legislation and taxation, not the vehicles.
But then, it depends on what your goal is. Is it to have less congestion, or less pollution. Because as we agreed before, they both don't necessarily go hand in hand. Convert every car in the land to run on water and we will still have congestion. However, change every car with one occupant on a short journey into a zero emission, convenient single person vehicle (be it a bike, electric scooter or some sort of next generation device) and you will kill 2 birds with one stone.
Jaggy
All motocross bikes are not road legal as they are classed as competition vehicles. I was using this to highlight that form is dictated by the desired use.
We already have solo passenger transports, they're called motorbikes, but I don't see too many on our roads. For your 'one man vehicle' utopia to succeed, you would need to ban all vehicles that carry more than one occupant. Nobody is going to shell out cash for yet another mode of transport specifically designed for short journeys when they have a perfectly good five seater one sitting in the drive. There is also the safety aspect to consider. It is orders of magnitude more difficult to make a small solo passenger car as safe as the three ton SUV.
It'll NEVER happen. Full stop. The End. Forever.
Ah well, we're all doomed then, if the green party is to believed.
I wasn't for a minute suggesting that I would give up my 4x4. Giving up cars is for "other people".
Jaggy
Oh. I see, so you're asking me to buy yet another vehicle to add to the three that my household already has? Bearing in mind that a Segway is little more than an electric motor, a pair of wheels, and a stick, and costs £4500, how much is this luxurious single-seater going to set me back?
As usual Mr Inch, your tiny brain is unable to grasp the concept of the "bigger picture". It's no use looking to trends in the next couple of years. 100 years ago, the idea that almost every household would have one or even two cars was unthinkable. Looking forward another 100 years and the shape and use of personal and public transport will undoubtedly change beyond yours or my own recognition.
As usual, Mr Jaggy, you resort to insults. I disagree completely with your last statement. If you were to jump forwards in time, a car will still look like a car, a road will still look like a road, and people will still drive about like they do just now. Mass transit systems will be far more commonplace, but the car, in whatever form it takes, is far too firmly entrenched in human society to be discarded. People will ALWAYS want to get places, and they will ALWAYS want to do it in their own personal vehicle. Be it a horse, a cart, a penny farthing, a Ford Mustang, a Toyota Prius, or a Knight Industries 2000.
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