Despite a strong image campaign, China is still a communist nation. One of the hallmarks of a communist society is a lack of innovative thinking. Not to say that communistists are completely incapable of innovation, but cultures that discourage independent thinking (somtimes violently) breed subjects that fear taking risks and making independent decisions; prerequisites for innovation.
I can't think of any Chinese technology that hasn't been pilfered from the west or Russia. Can anyone???
Noswad; The Rossi E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) is SUPPOSEDLY a cold fusion NUCLEAR reaction. Most people that I consider knowledgable are skeptical of the claims of the E-Cat. Perhaps you would like to re-think the 'Knucklehead' comment.
That chemical reaction I talk about is a pure chemical reaction. Not something that has to be recharged(battery). You would just replace the chemicals used in the reaction.
Do you know about the ECAT? Google it and learn something.
The ICE is a much more open loop system than a battery. Imagine building an ICE powered vehicle that carries all of is oxidizer and fuel, captures all of its exhaust, and contains all of the machinery to convert all of the exhaust back into fuel and oxidizer. Then, we will have a fair comparison.
Battery technology is hard because it does not dump its byproducts into the atmosphere and must be reversable.
@tekochip-from my experience living in Shanghai, bicycles are still widely used but more in the countryside than cities today.
SUVs and sedans have really taken over the city streets in big cities. Although, I did once see an elderly woman on a bicycle put an SUV driver in hs place when he didn't respect the bike lane.
I appreciate the subject of the article and love the comments but the quality of the article is troubling. From the title on, it has a very "neener-neener" tone.
If the article just covered developments in China without the "no better than ours" appraoch, it could have been a more informative.
Kudos to all of the comments so far. The subject of electric cars seems to be polarizing and stimulating here at times.
E-cat, I wouldn't recommend that we bring the ICE to an end till we have something to replace it with. That doesn't exist yet.
Also that chemical reaction in a small container you refer to is called a battery.
Another might be the fuel cell where hydogen and oxygen combine to form water and generate electricty. There are variations on this theme where methane is used to supply the hydrogen instead of pure hydrogen. None of these are zero emmission if you follow the entire supply chain.
The real goal is a zero greeen house gass emission source. What ever that may be.
I don't think I believe in the oil company conspiracy just yet. Not that it couldn't happen.
In my feeble opinion, the fundemental problem with EV is the battery. It takes (x) energy to move (y) mass from point (a) to point (b). The amount of energy stored in a gas tank far exceeds the energy stored in any comparably sized battery, even given the relatively low efficiency of the ICE. (Less than 40% at best).
Batteries need to have a technological break through before they compete well with the ICE.
EV's are also not the "Green" device eveyone is hoping for. The power used to charge them comes primarily from coal fired plants. I also expect to see a lot of battery components in land fills in the next few years as these batteries out live their usefulness. I don't really know how much will be mitigated in the recycling process. Not to mention all the environmental damage done in the REO extraction process.
For 3D printing to make the jump from rapid prototyping to manufacturing, engineers will need to find easier ways to move products from their CAD screens to their printers.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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