- Messages
- 10,847
- Location
- vancouver, canada
London 2019, Heathrow. I wanted to take black cab instead of an Uber or such...just because. The cab next in the queue, driven by a guy in his 80's had no idea where our B&B was located and his GPS was down. I thought great I got the only black cab driver in London without a clue.....the guy that just barely passed the exam (if they still have them). I unloaded our bags, went to the supervisor and asked for a new cab. He asked why? He went to the cabbie with his phone and showed him how to get there. If I had been a bit ambitious we could have walked. Used Uber from there on in. If I am going to get lost I at least want a cheaper price.I'd mind it less if it was reality... Even the better shows that aren't that awful "scripted reality" drivel are still faked to a great extent. More importantly, the fact that they squeezed out so much quality content on grounds of simply being cheaper. While panel shows aren't quite the same thing, they are that much cheaper to produce - and it's no coincidence that the rise of the comedy panel show in the UK mirrors the decline of the great British sitcom. To a great extent this is now being offset by the streamers, though, as tastes change and we near the death of traditional television broadcasting.
News as entertainment is ghastly, especially when it puts the biases of the audience above fact. Journalism is rarely what it used to be.
It's inevitable. Over here I think it's 2040 has been set as the date at which, by law, all petrol engine car production must cease. I don't imagine it will be anything other than a smooth transition: 99% of the UK car industry is now merely assembly plants for Japanese and other, foreign-owned businesses (mostly German), companies with such a reputation for efficiency that it'll not be a big deal. Already one of the Japanese companies is opening a significant battery-producing facility here.
That's already being discussed over here. Ironically, I can see it happening anyhow because of the market: at some point, a bunch of the petrolheads will be persuaded to switch over because they can see all the advantages of an EV, and if it looks, sounds, and otherwise feels like "the real thing", they'll do it. Of course, doubtless there will always be the extremists who refuse to accept the change, and when asked will go on at length about "If it's just the same experience, why change it?", muttering darkly as they retreat into their caves.
Undoubtedly the technology will improve by leaps and bounds. In 1969, men landed on the moon using a computer vastly less powerful than the mobile phone I had in my pocket nearly twenty years ago, itself laughably limited to the one I have now. Indeed, my mobile phone today is vastly more capable than the desktop computer my parents bought in 1993 when I first went to university. That computer cost £1,000 at the time - just over £2,000 in today's money. My mobile phone cost me £100 in today's money. Thirty years from now, 99% of the current drawbacks of going electric will be eliminated completely.
I have a feeling that in a few decades' time there will be one almighty ruck over self-drive taxis versus black cab drivers with The Knowledge here in London. The self-drive capacity on the EV will doubtless appeal to those who like to take their own car on a night out, have a few drinks, then let it drive them home. Of course, for that to happen they'll have to be considered safe enough not to need a sober adult overseeing them... Then again, as (at least here in the UK) more and more young people abandon alcohol, that itself may no longer be a significant issue in thirty years' time.
I'm sort of surprised we've not seem more take-up of the hybrid option because of this, but again that may be price. The Toyota Prius is a very common option for minicabs here in London, of course, as if you drive electric you don't have to pay the congestion charge. The latest generation of London black cabs are all-electric too. That's one market which will increasingly refine the tech, I suspect. (Many of our buses are hybrid, with the electric used in and around the centre, and petrol to drive them back out to the garage on the outskirts at the end of a shift).
The batteries will improve over time, and recharging speeds will get faster. I have no doubt there will soon come a time when the car can be powered off a battery the size of a current car battery, and every car can carry two or three more so you can fire up and drive just by switching them over. The real chicken and egg imo will be the spread of recharge points. Simple enough in a fairly small area like the UK, but somewhere like the US with such huge tracts of rural land, you either need a much better network, or better batteries, or both. There's the chicken / egg thing: a lot of folks won't want to take up EVs until there are enough charging points, but will there be enough charging points without market demand for them?
The other US specific issue is that petrol has been relatively cheap there for so long. Look at all those classic US cars where a V8 was a norm for the shopping runabout back in the day - as compared to here in the UK, where tiny engines abound because petrol costs about three times what it does in the US... I'd say electric (especially for those who can charge their car at home with solar) will find a market more rapidly where petrol is expensive and there isn't quite the same car-culture as in the US. Start-up costs are indeed currently big with electric, though if they come down enough I wouldn't be surprised if it saw more private vehicles on the road here in London for a bit, given that currently it is otherwise so expensive to own a car here in top of it being a luxury at best for most of us, given the public transport infrastructure. (I notice that big time as I moved here from a rural area of Ireland where you'd never be able to get to half the place without a private car, and haven't felt the need of a car at all these twenty years here.)