John McCain is hoping to solve the country's energy crisis with cold hard cash.
The presumed Republican nominee on Monday proposed a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. The bounty would equate to $1 for every man, woman and child in the country, "a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency," McCain said at Fresno State University.
McCain said such a device should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs and have "the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars."
The Arizona senator also proposed stiffer fines for automakers who skirt existing fuel-efficiency standards, as well as incentives to increase use of domestic and foreign alcohol-based fuels such as ethanol.
In addition, a so-called Clean Car Challenge would provide U.S. automakers with a $5,000 tax credit for every zero-carbon emissions car they develop and sell.
Sounds great right? Sounds fine to me. It gives a financial appeal to battery companies, it’s a relatively small price to pay for what it can deliver, AND it’s a LOT of money for a company that can deliver this. The problem? It’s being proposed by McCain.
So, it’s being roundly ignored by the media. However, if OBAMA were to suggest it, then it would be across the front pages of every newspaper in the country. So far, I’ve only seen it on a few places.
Go to www.msnbc.com, and you won’t find it on the front page ANYWHERE. At least CNN has it on the front page, but you won’t hear kind words from places that openly support Obama.
How about we cut through the bullshit and make something that will work, work well, AND will meet all the needs we currently have?
I think I have a solution:
There’s a small car company that makes cars that run on compressed air. Sounds fine so far right? There are air filters in each car to help purify the air so particulates don’t get into the engine like any other engine. So, you would be literally cleaning the air as you drove around. Longer trips? Pair that with a VERY small gas engine that would only power an air compressor to “refuel” the tanks.
No batteries to take hours to recharge, you could have special air tanks at gas stations to “fill up” a car within minutes. With electric cars, you’d have to have ENORMOUS amounts of energy to recharge an electric car within a reasonable amount of time (say 10 minutes or less). At the end of the life of the batteries, you’d have to deal with recycling them. You don’t have that problem with an air car.
So, you can fill up at a normal gas station with a regular air compressor to a certain degree, fill up with a special air compressor, or fill up with gas. Over time, gas gets phased out when special air compressors become more and more common.
Then, you find yourself with a car that’s almost completely pollution free (you might need a small amount of oil for lubrication of parts).
But some people will say “hey, all you’re doing is moving pollution”, but that’s where they are wrong. With an air car, I can get my air from literally anywhere, and power it from any power source, (wind, solar, etc). Plus, when a power plant gets an upgrade for environmental reasons, ALL cars get an upgrade. However, with gasoline, unless you swap out the engine, that car NEVER gets an upgrade.
It’s not that hard people. You just have to WANT to make it happen.
Travis
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