Re: Future cars will be 100% electric cars

Well, the on-line power use curve will begin to look more and more like
a constant, and that constant will be lower than the peaks on the
present curve.

What is a power use curve?

An industrial society has a characteristic power use curve. This 'M'
shaped curve rises steeply from a very low level just before sunrise as
people get up and prepare for the day. It drops around lunch time when
everyone goes to lunch, but not so many travel. Then, it rises again
after lunch, peaking after sunset just before people retire to bed,
where it drops to a low level again.

Clearly, with large capacity energy storage available in every single
vehicle - as you propose here - cars can charge automatically in their
garages over night. The power grid certainly can handle the load. In
fact, capital use rates will improve as equipment can now run 24/7.
Actually, with large-scale investments in large capacity energy storage
in every person's possession the power grid will trend toward a
constant value. That constant value will have the same area under the
curve as the 'M' shaped curve described here, so the average over 24
hours will be LESS than the peaks.

What will the impact be then of every car in America having a
super-storage device and running on electricity? It will be a
REDUCTION in the present electrical distribution capacity as America's
energy use rates drops to a constant value - while cars charge at lunch
and at night. In fact, large-capacity, ubiquitous, low-cost energy
storage - if it were possible - would be used by the energy company
themselves to reduce capital investment in generation and distribution
systems accelerating this trend toward constant efficient use of
existing power generation capital.

Since the cost of coal - which provides 53% of America's electricity -
is less than that of oil - the average 'fuel' bill for electric autos
is less than that of oil burning autos. Carbon emissions are higher
though for a given energy, since there is little hydrogen in coal.

Of course, if we could produce electricity very cheaply without
subsidy, from nuclear or solar sources, the situation changes. A
national grid replete with super-batteries would be ideally suited for
conversion to some sort of solar panel system - provided the panels can
be gotten cheaply enough. That way we could wire the sunny regions of
the world, charge batteries in these regions with solar panels, and
discharge the batteries constantly into the home based, office based,
factory based batteries - to make use of this energy. This would allow
us an industry that didn't pollute at all. Some fossil fueled and
other plants would be retained, to provide backup in case of grid
failure -at critical points.

This rube goldberg contraption would precede a more efficient system of
beamed energy from space. Here, a greater number of clear regions
would receive power on demand from space via phase conjugate laser
beam. This reduces the amount of energy storage needed on the ground
as well as the area of collectors. It also opens up the potential for
laser driven aircraft coming into widespread use, and ultimately a
laser powered rocket in every garage.

Here, sunlight is captured by inflatable mirrors and focused to a point
where a solar pumped laser resides. The power beam generated by this
laser passes through a phase conjugate mirror which without any outside
laser, disperses the beam back toward the sun. But, if the phase
conjugate mirror receives a low-powered pilot beam on the ground, the
phase conjugate mirror is arranged so that a portion of the total power
beam is directed back toward the point of origin of the low powered
pilot beam. So, a person anywhere on Earth with a clear view of the
satellite can draw down lots and lots of power from it with a low
powered laser beam. The laser beams and the photovoltaic conversion
device, all operate at the same wavelength, and thus provide very
efficient conversion of laser energy to electricity. Other direct
conversion process, such as conversion of laser energy to heat or light
using dyes to create white light - are also very efficient. Wires thus
are replaced with highpower optical fibers, and the entire system can
grow more dispersed and require less capital than formerly.

Ultimately of course this phase conjugate process of controlling laser
energy can be adapted to a population of dispersed lasing elements
creating from a cloud of microsatellites an large effective optical
area. This can be adapted to create a shell around the sun some 1
million miles in radius that in principal could intercept the entire
energy output from the sun. This energy would be beamed to reforming
satellites orbiting human occupied planets, which would beam the energy
to user networks in human occupied space.

So, energy use can be seen to increase in the following way;

1) pre-auto - 1
2) auto based - 10
3) aircraft based - 100
4) orbital spacecraft - 1,000
5) interplanetary travel (slow) 10,000
6) interplanetary travel (fast) 1,000,000 (constant gee)
7) interstellar travel (local/slow) 10,000,000

Since the US and its allies are the only population centers that have
popular widespread access to autos, and this constitutes less than 10%
of the world's population, ending our dependence on fossil fuels by
substituting sunlight for those fuels, creates the potential of
increasing energy usage some 5x to 10x from the present levels. This
also suggests that income and productivity can increase 5 to 10 times
as well. So, the world's $40 trillion economy might be able to grow to
$200 trillion to $400 trillion in a short period of time - if we
provide the world with low-cost solar energy. Energy consumption might
rise from the present $800 billion to about $8 trillion in this
scenario - making the terrestrial solar energy companies the largest on
Earth - and families worldwide enjoying incomes averaging $100,000 per
year.

Low cost beaming of energy from space increases power usage to 100x
today's level - and just as autos and industry increase living
standards while increasing energy use, so too does widespread use of
automated aircraft and zero emission industry. In a world were energy
is beamed from space by lasers - and everyone has a ballistic missile
they can ride to any point on Earth in minutes - where SDI and nuclear
missiles are an object of history - we might expect a global economy of
$4 quadrillion and an energy sector worth $80 trillion - in today's
numbers. This makes the average family income of $1 million. This is
helped along by widespread use of tele-robots to later be replaced by
autonomous robots.

Beaming energy from nearer the sun's surface to planet of use - permits
further rises in living standards and range of travel - along with
energy use. Here, we can economically retrieve material from the
asteroid belt and place it in Earth orbit, we can make remotely
controlled factories that make use of this material in space, powered
by laser beam - and then drop finished goods anywhere on Earth -
without the need of mining or polluting the Earth in any way. Material
can also be used in space to grow the orbiting industrial
infrastructure. Here biomes grow massive areas of crops and forests in
space in an environment untroubled by clouds weather or adverse
conditions found on Earth. So, the need to cultivate the Earth for any
reason disappears - as food and fiber arrive from space based assets.

Even the need for roads disappear as widespread use of air and rocket
travel grows. So, people disperse over the Earth's surface - provided
for from space based assets - with very little except very luxurious
homes in a vast global sized nature preserve to show for it.

So, that's the consequence -and a few hundred steps after - of
widespread use of highly efficient batteries - providing of course such
batteries are even possible.


This would allo
Of course with batteries in every home, office and car, the situation

.

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