100 Years of Building Cars
I was looking at the press release for that Tata Nano, the world's "cheapest car". (article)
While the car's creation is nice for India and all (since we'd probably never see it on this side of the ball) one of the lines in the article made me raise my eyebrows.
article
Ford's Model T, which debuted in 1909 for $825, had a 4-cylinder, 20 horsepower engine with a top speed of 45 mph. The Model T had fuel economy between 13 to 21 miles per gallon.
So of course I popped over to Wikipedia.
wiki
The Model T had a front mounted, 177 in³ (2.9 L) four-cylinder en bloc motor (that is, all four in one block, as common now, rather than in individual castings, as common then) producing 20 hp (15 kW) for a top speed of 45 mph (72 km/h). The engine had side valves and three main bearings. According to Ford Motor, the Model T had fuel economy on the order of 13 to 21 mpg (5 to 9 kilometres per litre or 11.1 to 18.7 litres per 100 km)
Huh. (other resource if you don't like Wiki: one)
A hundred years of building, creating, updating, streamlining, fixing and improving cars... And we still don't have "cars of the future" with "fuels of the future" or "efficiency of the future."
Even the article at Wanttoknow.info states it better than I can:
WTK
How can it be that we've had such dramatic, almost miraculous advances in so many fields, while the energy and transportation sectors have had so little progress?
It goes back on to say something I've been pondering since Exxon posted the 400billion profit a couple years back.
WTK
Could it be that greed and the desire for economic and political control have kept the profit-rich energy and transportation sectors from developing as rapidly as they might have in a more open climate, where big money did not suppress technological breakthroughs?
I'm inclined to say "yeah."