Former Time Man of the Year Promotes Electric Cars
OK, we get it. Gas is expensive and electric cars sound like a great idea. We’re not sure if we need to read about every person out there advocating alternative means of transportation, but we found this story about former Intel head-honcho Andy Grove kind of interesting.
The 71-year-old former executive is advocating that the government take the lead and push for the introduction of electric vehicles into the mass market. “The most important thing I would like to do is light that almost half-assumed truth up in neon lights: Electricity in transportation has to be done. It is urgent. It is important that everything else is secondary," Grove said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
We’re not sure what he means by “everything else” being secondary, but we do agree that electricity can be generated from more sources than gasoline. That certainly makes sense.
To achieve the goal of an all-electric United States, Grove says the government needs to subsidize the outfitting of existing cars with electric hybrid systems, a task almost anyone in the industry would point to as being both expensive and probably dangerous to current models that were never intended to support such systems.
He also suggested utility companies subsidize the powering of new electric vehicles for the first 12-18 months of ownership to help defray costs to consumers. Sorry, we’re a bit too busy laughing at that one to offer insightful commentary.
We will say, though, that if the government, utilities and auto industry all got on board we could certainly see a rapid rollout of electric vehicles happening. City-dwellers and other street parkers will also need safe places to plug in at night, though, which would be an entirely different set of subsidies and government spending.
Other noteworthy folks backing electric transportation include former CIA director James Woolsey, former Secretary of State George Schultz and Google Inc.'s philanthropic arm, Google.org.
Let us know what you think of Grove's ideas in the comments below.
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electric car- forget about it
there is no way a battery for at least 200 miles run could be developed in any near future terms
under the mass affordable price
it is a hoax, stop fooling yourselves.
The only way to go is flex-fuel conversion: each car must be converted to run on methanol. It means it will also be able to burn ethanol
Methanol could be mass produced and renewable if produced from wood or any kind of biomass or trash like dry leaves, paper, anything like it
Well, just get some education, find out simle things about chemistry and minerals:
you were supposed to learn something in school or you did drop out?