Thread: Meet George Jetson!

an interesting speech, to be sure.

I will briefly say that his understanding of the technical aspects of the problem is poor and frequently mistaken. letting that go, his brief, shallow survey of the ECONOMIC component of the problem was much more compelling, because that's the component that is frequently ignored. definitely worth a watch in the future... is his stock publicly traded?


technical rant section:
1. batteries in general are a poor solution because of several things:
a. poor energy density compared to chemical energy
b. battery production is inherently filthy, and quite bad for the environment on its own
c. charge times are awful. people like the model of gas. several hours to deplete the energy, but you can replenish it at a filling station in under 5 minutes, assuming you don't have a semi or something.
d. even the best batteries are quite heavy, and thus make the car less efficient.

happily, there is a very good solution. ultracapacitors, sometimes known as ultracaps. they hold more than batteries, weigh an order of magnitude less (sometimes 2 orders) and can be charged, quite literally, in seconds. (not with plugs at your house... you'd have to go to a filling station that can generate a LOT of current to recharge this fast. you could still trickle charge at home in the evening, but for a quick fillup, you'd need a power station). ultracaps are not dirtier to make than LiON batteries. ultracaps have good staying power, last virtually forever (no practical limit on charge cycles) and hold much more than a battery of similar size, and orders of magnitude more than a battery of the same weight.

2. Moore's law has to do with transistors and is highly irrelevant to what he is talking about.
3. there is no such thing as completely clean energy. there is always waste, and there always will be. solar panels provide continued electricity with no extra carbon, but the byproducts of making them are pretty awful and include a LOT of CO2. this may be solved in the future, but now it's what prevents solar from being a more popular alternative. wind turbines also cost carbon to make, and to maintain. they also don't last forever. they are certainly better than coal plants, by a long shot, but i don't approve of his hyperbole about "zero emissions" because it's not remotely true.
4. the infrastructure he suggests is impratical for a variety of reasons, both economic and physics, but i won't get into that. the ultracap model only needs filling stations, and that's currently within our usage model, i think we're better off sticking with that.
5. his usage model is, i believe, fundamentally flawed. our current usage model is fine and can be supported by EXISTING TECHNOLOGY cleanly. (see above section on ultracaps). it's pretty apparent that to him, this is more about generating VC than saving the earth. which is fine, i'm a capitalist, but let's call a spade a spade. his usage model isnt' about my convenience, it's about him building a monopoly on infrastructure. if we let current energy end-providers (filling stations) retrofit on their own and sell high-amperage current isntead of gas, then the free market can solve this problem competitively instead of with his monolithic lobby group.

Originally Posted by jockeys

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what he said