Electric cars, bin Laden and more

[Billzilla]

Someone needs to pull their finger out and design a compact, safe and affordable fusion reactor to power the forthcoming electric cars. Fill it up with a few mL of deuterium every couple of years and you're good to go!

What would be interesting is having a small radioisotope generator, much like on space probes that tour the outer solar system and so have no effective sunlight to work with - Make cheap, small, reliable ones of those and have them charge the batteries in the car all the time. Just leave it trickle-charging overnight or all day at work to charge up, that sort of thing.
If there's any excess dump it back into the mains for credit.

[Nitephyre]

I -so- want a Ford Nucleon :D

But on the other hand, that Tesla is hawt, but so is the Volta... mmm sexyness :O

[Norbie]

What would be interesting is having a small radioisotope generator,

If you're talking about the devices I'm thinking of, they're pretty low-powered things - like a few hundred watts, maybe one kilowatt max.

Back to the fusion generator, which shouldn't have any problems delivering 1.21 gigawatts to the flux capacitor. You know it make sense!

[Billzilla]

If you're talking about the devices I'm thinking of, they're pretty low-powered things - like a few hundred watts, maybe one kilowatt max.

Yep, that's the one.
Would that be enough energy to make an electric car, after charging overnight say, run for a few hundred K's?
A lot of variables, I know ...

[Road_Terrorist]

What about Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and every other country in the Middle East? So far only Dubai, which is one city, has taken this approach.

Maybe those other countries realise that tourists still need to rely on oil to get there in the first place via boat or air, so in the long term they are still screwed if oil runs out.

[BigMuz]

i think a huge thing would be the second car market. For example me and the missus currently need one and a half cars, i catch the train to work and 95% of the time the second car doesnt get driven but when it does its bloody useful because we live in the suburbs, public transport on the weekend is average and i dont feel comfortable with her walking around to late and catching PT.

We would happily use an electric car for all of the day to day commute trips and keep the ICE car for weekend long trips and as the spare car when needed.

An electric car that charges off our home power supply has a 200+ round trip between charges, costs $15k for a hatch back, doesnt look like a space ship, has cheaper rego, less maintance, can do 0-100 in sub 10 seconds, can reach maybe 150km/h, has options for things like leather/sunroof/etc.. if we wanted.

Spot on^^

Micky D- once you get started it could be self powered obviously. TRucks and transport don't need to burn diesel, though I don't really think such a bulky fuel makes sense. Having said that growing the crops to make alcohol from is a nett CO2 consuming process, so maybe with the added incentive of carbon trading it will become viable.