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2008-06-06

Car Reviews and Future Cars  

Why Car Reviews are important

Why? Simple. My country just recently increased petrol price by 41% and there is still plenty of room above. I have been telling my children that there is only one way for petrol prices to go - UP. It will hit our pockets hard. In addition to this petrol price headache, there is still the fact that petroleum is a depleting resource and there must come a day when supply of petrol will be extremely scarce. Then there are environmental issues. Top of the list is the environmental problem of the Century - global warming. Now let us add air pollution and anyone can understand why choosing the right type of cars is very important. Towards this end, checking car reviews will be most helpful.

Cars of the future

The vast majority of cars and trucks on our roads now are using the ancient internal combustion engines which are, according to Wikipedia: Internal Combustion Engine, centuries old technology. New technologies for future cars are long overdue.

Future cars, trucks and buses

Many are pinning their hopes of solar cars like the one below:

solar car
Photo of solar car is property of Dwayne


However, a practical solar car convenient for everyday use is still a pipe dream. Others are looking to electric cars. However, one must always keep in mind the source of that electricity to power the vehicles. If the sources are the conventional fuel burning electrical power stations or even hydraulic dams, we are back to square one as these are, I suspect, already at crisis point. The other impediment to solar cars being a practical alternative to the ancient internal combustion engines cars is the capacity to store sufficient electricity without huge and heavy array of storage batteries like the lead-acid accumulators.

A temporary solution is hybrid vehicles which can switch between power source like electricity and (again) the internal combustion engines. These are already on sale in car showrooms and on the road, but are expensive and just a stop gap measure in my opinion. However, look the photo of a "hybrid bus" below:

interesting hybrid bus
Photo of "hybrid bus" is property of Clyde Robinson


One way around environmental problems caused by cars is to get as many people out of their private cars and into public transport above. However, I can visualize the situation where the place we want to go is not well served by public transport. What better ways are there than to provide means for buses to carry passengers' leg powered bicycles to intermediate bus stops and for them to proceed the rest of the way on environmentally friendly bicycles.

What next?

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