ROAD RAGE: Segway to Nowhere
YATES, BROCK
BROCK YATES Automobile), sales have been less than spectacular. powerplant for normal, reasonably-priced automoThe price tag has no doubt contributed to the limit-biles lays far in the...
...Therefore Brock Yates is author, most recently, of Hot Rod: the possibility of the fuel-cell becoming a viable Resurrection of a Legend...
...The fevered opposition by the normal volumes), but gasoline powered by Greenies (who of course advocate exists within a highly efficient electrics) to build anything resem-a gasoline or production and distribution netbling more power plants, be they work...
...Both Honda and Toyota have efficient plying the highways of the nation...
...Nirvana...
...But a few caveats remain...
...powerplant for normal, reasonably-priced automoThe price tag has no doubt contributed to the limit-biles lays far in the future, if ever—unless that revoed volume of 6,000 units...
...celebrated as a viable alternative to the hated car, In the short term the so-called hybrid engine—a which to the anointed is reviled at the same levels as simple combination of a conventional internaltoxic waste dumps and R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...This with every major automaker soon to follow...
...ide, but modern computer engine Most automakers are hard at work on management systems and better research to create these magical foreseeable designs have radically reduced the power sources that convert dangerous emissions to a point Hydrogen and Oxygen into electrici-future...
...car has been abandoned for a multi-lea ding...the Some units may employ high-effitude of reasons—excessive weight, ciency diesels—providing certain low performance, slow battery re-stringent emission standards can old flivver in charge time, expense, lead-acid, bat-be met—but the power source in tery disposal issues—the primary the end is the same old Black Gold cause was the realization that the called Petroleum...
...The primary power the point of origin...
...lutionary breakthrough in technology comes out of No matter, Kamen and his goofy scooter are still left field...
...cleaner than the ambient air...
...Two: Hydrogen, while abundant in or diesel engine variant for the foreseeable future...
...Imagine the hybrids (perhaps sold as loss-leaders) on the road, resulting overload on the wheezing power grid...
...nature, cannot be captured cheaply without mas-Save your money on a Segway and pass the tranquilsive power inputs...
...Claybrook and the Sierra Club...
...Clean energy with no downside...
...com-combustion engine powering a small electrical genmentaries...
...serves as another reminder that for all the sensa-Yet, for all the glories heaped on the hybrid as a tional ideas about alternative transportation saver of petroleum (about a 20 percent increase in devices like electric cars, fuel-cell fuel mileage in normal driving), vehicles, mass-transit trains and one ugly truth haunts the Trust me, for buses, etc., there is a smokestack at Greenies...
...where some advance gasoline ty and a harmless exhaust of water engines actually emit exhausts droplets...
...One: the expense and Trust me, for all the cheerleading by some complexity of building, much less mass-producing, politicians, lobbyists, environmentalists loonies the polymer-electrolyte membrane that combines and their handmaidens in the elite media, the old Hydrogen and Oxygen to generate electricity has flivver in your garage will be powered by a gasoline not been solved...
...storage (remember the Hindenburg) offer massive challenges that have not yet been solved...
...DECEMBER2003/JANUARY 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 59...
...Its refinement, distribution and izers to Ms...
...In the old days internal nuclear, hydro or coal-fired, added to diesel engine combustion engines were the the demise of the battery car...
...filthy sources of carbon dioxide, Some fabulists now claim the nitrous-oxide, and carbon monox variant for the fuel-cell is the hope of the future...
...all the cheer-source for a Hybrid is the same old For example, while the electric gasoline-powered engine of yore...
...your garage national power grid could not supply Not only is it cheap (and probsufficient juice for an electronic fleet will be ably to become even cheaper sucking up the already limited energy when the Iraq supply returns to supply...
...BROCK YATES Automobile), sales have been less than spectacular...
...They of course choose to ignore the erator that in turn propels the vehicle—seems problems presented by, say, 100 million Segways viable...
Vol. 36 • December 2003 • No. 7
