I need to know what you think of cute electricity

[andrewducker]

Poll

Context for the cuteness question - via the top half of lizzie-and-ari.
Context for the Scotland half

Comments

[randomchris]

Two out of three at least - I think self-driving cars by 2050 is plausible, and ditto amazing batteries, as there are so many interesting materials out there which have been touted as possibly being amazing battery material (surely one of them has to be right). Efficient generation by 2050 is going to require a lot of capital investment about now though.

[andrewducker]

Agreed on all counts. There's a lot going on though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Scotland

And Audit Scotland agree with you:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-24047166

[tobyaw]

We just need to build a few more dams, flood some valleys, and hollow out some mountains. Plenty of hydro power in Scotland.

I like the idea of hollowing out mountains.

[a_pawson]

Self-driving cars are pretty much there already. Google has had cars driving around California for about 2 years, and in the past week Mercedes have announced they expect to have a model ready for sale by 2020.

[tobyaw]

It would be good if there were a Scottish car industry to go along with the desire for all-electric vehicles.

An electric Hillman Imp, perhaps?

[ggreig]

Or an updated Argyll Motors.

[kiffkin]

Axolotls are pretty great, and the pokémon mention in the comments refers to wooper.

[drplokta]

The technology may well be good enough for all new cars to be electric by 2050, but there are forty-year-old cars on the road now, and there will be in 2050. Those ones won't be emission-free.

[andrewducker]

I'm curious as to what the half life of a car is.

Particularly as it seems that cars are more reliable and longer-lived than they used to be:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/automobiles/as-cars-are-kept-longer-200000-is-new-100000.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[danieldwilliam]

I was wondering about this when I was up in Orkney recently.

There are 40 year old cars on the roads at the moment.

What happens to them if the petrol stations lose 95% of their business and have to close down?

[a_pawson]

What happens to them if the petrol stations lose 95% of their business and have to close down?

Most likely the owners will have to invest in some sort of storage tank and will pay to have petrol delivered form time to time like people do nowadays with domestic heating oil.

[autopope]

Electrification of vehicles inside Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the central belt is probably do-able

[andrewducker]

Clearly for long-distance trips we'll need self-driving cars, with passengers changing to a fresh set of wheels at occasional roadside inns.

[sbisson]

We could connect them together for maximum carrying capability, give them an external power source, and their own dedicated right-of-way.

I wonder what we should call them.

[andrewducker]

Sadly, trains are not always the answer. If I was staying in central London then I could get on one here, get off one there, and I'd be fine. If I'm travelling to the middle of Wales, then less so.

Travelling with a Volvo full of camping equipment, and two dogs, faaaar less so. (That was my youth, that was - five of us, a tent, and a dog, all packed in like sardines.)