The discussion resulting from the last Technosophy item got me to thinking about a couple of things. One of them was the whole gas/electric hybrid car concept. I really do think this is a technological dead end, the kind of thing that future generations will look back on and say, “They seriously thought that was worth bothering with?” I honestly believe that, if all the money that’s been wasted developing hybrid drive systems had been spent instead on improving the efficiency of the normal ones, everyone would be getting better mileage now, not just the tiny, smug, self-important Prius minority – resulting in a much larger net gain in fuel economy worldwide with much less silly faffing around.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that piston engines have reached the limit of what can be wrung out of them. That what’s really needed now is a whole new concept in automotive powerplant technology, something that will make cars with piston engines seem as antiquated and quaint as fighter planes with propellers.
Well, funnily enough, I think that something already exists. In fact, I think it’s the same something that left propeller-driven fighter planes behind at the end of World War II… and it’s a something that engineers first seriously took a crack at putting in automobiles in the early 1960s.
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