Thursday 5 November 2009

Rise in the Green Economy? Not on Labours Watch.

A lovely, comical piece on the BBC website today. Well, its not supposed to be comical, its a serious piece about a new electric car, designed by F1 designer Gordon Murray.

Now I've blogged before about battery-powered electric cars being a technological cul-de-sac, but the comedy isn't about where the power comes from.

No, its the looks:



Just look at it. £4.5 million of taxpayers money has been sunk into this abomination. Thats half the cost of developing it. Thats 9 million quid to develop a buggy, when I've seen better built in 10 hours on scrapheap challenge.

I'm not even remotely impressed by the supposedly new iStream technology, where the body panels are made by welding flat panels together. Anyone can learn to weld flat panels together and why would you build a car built out of flat sheets of steel anyway? How many people love Stealth Fighter Chic?

This thing is so wrong for so many reasons. But indicative of government funded projects, where government fail to spot where the smart money is going. The smart money is investing in Hydrogen infrastructure and hydrogen fuel cells for cars. Its investing in that technology simply because its the least alien of the future technologies. People will fuel their cars just like they're fuelling them now. There won't be a range issue like there is with battery technology.

But government money has never been smart money.......

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