4 ms·
Open Source the Chevy Volt
- ams6110 18y ago"... proposed that in exchange for the GM bailout we spin out the Chevy Volt into an open source electric car platform." Counterintuitively, electric cars are not something that is a good idea in the near term. Why? The electrical grid does not have the capacity to absorb the additional demand. California for example has rolling blackouts during the summertime, just to moderate the existing demand. Imagine adding tens of thousands, or more, of electric car recharges to that... Widescale adoption of electric cars, even assuming they were otherwise acceptable to the public, will require a massive investment in electrical generation, the two practical energy sources being coal and nuclear, neither of which is a politically easy thing to pull off.
- andyn 18y agoI heard mention of charging the cars at night from the unused base load, possibly meeting the demand during the day by taking some charge from parked cars. Whether that's practical or not...