In the book A Brief History of the Future by Charles Joynson the next topic is electric cars. This surprised me because electric cars have been around since at least 2008 and this book was published in 2016. As concerns grow about vehicle emissions and oil resources, electric cars become more and more feasible.
The problem has been the battery: the amount of charge it could hold and the weight of it. The bigger the battery, the more charge it holds, but the more it weighs. The two all-time best selling electric cars, the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Model S, have EPA-rated ranges reaching up to 151 mi (243 km) and 335 mi (539 km) respectively, according to Wikipedia.
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| Nissan Leaf electric car |
The solution suggested by A Brief History of the Future is the carbon sandwich battery. This is what it says:
In 2060 researchers looked again at electric eels and were able to develop carbon sandwich batteries which not only held more charge than traditional batteries, but were far lighter and less polluting. Electric motors quickly replaced liquid fuels in the 2060s in both the developed and the developing worlds. World demand for led and oil plummeted as carbon batteries became cheaper.
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| carbon sandwich battery (topgear.com) |
I Googled it and this type of battery already exists but all the articles about it were too technical for me. Here’s a couple of links for anyone with the training to understand them! From theengineer.co.uk and from sytner.co.uk.
Charging points were also a problem until enough people were convinced that electric cars were the coming thing and set up charging points in enough places. A chicken and egg situation indeed.
But it seems that this will be a reality a lot sooner than 2060.
Ann Marie Thomas is the author of four medieval history books, a surprisingly cheerful poetry collection about her 2010 stroke, and the science fiction series Flight of the Kestrel. Book one, Intruders, and book two Alien Secrets, are out now. Follow her at http://eepurl.com/bbOsyz