Fuel for Electric Cars

Here is something amazing from MIT. Some students have learned how to store the electrons, (that provide the electricity for electric cars, and everything else for that matter), in a semi-solid “gel” that can fill up an electric car, not unlike filling up a car with gasoline.

Forgoing the traditional route of storing electrons in either nickel or lithium-ion, the MIT students have figured out a way to store electricity in semi-solid flow cells. Called “Cambridge Crude,” the charged particles are stored in an electrolyte gel that can be removed and refilled when drained, not unlike how we currently fill our cars with gasoline. The gel would move between a charging area, and dispensing area, sending electrons straight to the drivetrain. Perhaps even more importantly though, this technology can (supposedly) store 10x more electricity, at half the price of current conventional battery technology.

They are working on building a prototype in about 18  months. As the article says, this could be a game-changer that actually makes the electric car feasible.

There is one problem that I can see. If  electric cars do become common, maybe even only 10% of the cars on the road, then the demand for electricity will go up. Since we are not building many power plants, it is likely the price of energy will go up, making the electric car less economical than a regular car and sort of defeating the purpose of introducing them in the first place.

Anyway, there is more information here.

Jesse Jackson Jr: Luddite

Jesse Jackson Jr has discovered the source of our economic woes. It’s the iPad.

On Friday, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.) took the House floor and lambasted Apple’s iPad, saying the tablet was “probably responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs.”

Jackson expressed general outrage over the potential of a paperless society that the iPad threatens to create. “What becomes of publishing companies and publishing company jobs? What becomes of bookstores and libraries, and all of the jobs associated with paper? Well, in the not-too-distant future, such jobs simply won’t exist,” he said.

Here’s the video:

It’s all that dang new-fangled technology that’s doing it. If only we’d stopped Ford and his Model T, the buggy manufacturers would still be in business. The railroads and telegraph put the Pony Express out of business and the riders out of the job. Gutenburg’s invention made  all those scribes unemployed. We just have to stop technology to save the economy.