When you look at advancement of certain technology it makes massive leaps in small time spaces, but others takes hundreds of years to actually make a change.
Take you mobile phone, this was a direct descendant of the old valve computers. The first instance of a valve was around 1904, this then grew into semi conductors around 1948 and then from computers in the 60s that took an entire room to run the simplest program to what we have today in a miniature device that has the processing power that just 30 years ago would have classified it as a super computer device that fits into the palm of your hand.
Now lets look at engine technology. The first internal combustion engine was recorded in 1807, with the first cars being commercially produced around 1888 with 4 stroke engines. The first electric car was demonstrated in 1881 and the first commercial available was around 2008.
But my point here is that even if I go and buy a new hyper car tomorrow spending multiple millions on it, the power under the hood is still driven by the same basics that were in the first IC Engine in 1807 with improvements made but no real change to the idea beneath the bonnet. So with some tech you can have a complete revolution of the technology within 40 years throwing away the old ideas and replacing them with a new idea, yet in over 200 years no-one has changed the way we propel our vehicles by any major way (yes, we have gone from 2 stroke to 4 stroke to V engines, ERS, better fuel economy etc etc but at the end of the day we are still blowing up fossils to push us forward faster than before). Even with an electric car we are still burning energy to push things in a circular motion, it is just the route from source to movement is a little longer and stored in batteries along the way.
So does anyone know what we are waiting for? Is there a better way out there just waiting to be found, or is the current engine the best we can do and we just have to find different way to power it when the fossil fuels run out?
Take you mobile phone, this was a direct descendant of the old valve computers. The first instance of a valve was around 1904, this then grew into semi conductors around 1948 and then from computers in the 60s that took an entire room to run the simplest program to what we have today in a miniature device that has the processing power that just 30 years ago would have classified it as a super computer device that fits into the palm of your hand.
Now lets look at engine technology. The first internal combustion engine was recorded in 1807, with the first cars being commercially produced around 1888 with 4 stroke engines. The first electric car was demonstrated in 1881 and the first commercial available was around 2008.
But my point here is that even if I go and buy a new hyper car tomorrow spending multiple millions on it, the power under the hood is still driven by the same basics that were in the first IC Engine in 1807 with improvements made but no real change to the idea beneath the bonnet. So with some tech you can have a complete revolution of the technology within 40 years throwing away the old ideas and replacing them with a new idea, yet in over 200 years no-one has changed the way we propel our vehicles by any major way (yes, we have gone from 2 stroke to 4 stroke to V engines, ERS, better fuel economy etc etc but at the end of the day we are still blowing up fossils to push us forward faster than before). Even with an electric car we are still burning energy to push things in a circular motion, it is just the route from source to movement is a little longer and stored in batteries along the way.
So does anyone know what we are waiting for? Is there a better way out there just waiting to be found, or is the current engine the best we can do and we just have to find different way to power it when the fossil fuels run out?