Reality Askew

I saw something yesterday about a mechanical storage medium that would harness power in a flywheel device and then return it on demand. The cool part was the fact that the flywheel was suspended in a magnetic field so that it never really touched the sides and thus reduced friction significantly. This got me to thinking, why couldn’t you do the same thing for car wheels and their relationship to axles? Simply suspended the tire in an electromagnetic field. Imagine the fuel economy of this type of arrangement. By fuel I’m of course referring to electric cars, as doing something like this for gas cars doesn’t seem practical. Of course if you could go back and retrofit gas cars, that would be a game changer as well.

I can’t help but think we are stuck on stupid when it comes to some technology.  Computer CPUs double in speed every couple of years, but my SUV still has a combustion engine that was created over a hundred years ago.  Sure it is more fuel efficient, more power, and burns cleaner, but it’s essentially the same basic concept of a controlled explosion causing the locomotion of my vehicle.

So now the tough question, if not this what is the answer?  Obviously I don’t have the answer to that question but I would imagine that enhanced electricity is the next logical step but after that is anyone’s guess.  By “enhanced” electricity I think we will see some combination of elements that will cause the perpetual generation of electricity with minimal waste and byproducts.

Hydrogen has great potential, but again it’s just another take on the combustion type mechanism.  Of course this might be a mute issue several hundred years from now because I think we will a dramatic decrease in the privately owned vehicle and instead a move toward mass transit and the preferred mode of travel.

Fast forward a couple of thousand years from now and you will likely teleport or timeshift eveywhere you need to go.  If it’s the later, please come back to 2013 and confirm I was right. :)

Why haven’t car manufacturers made cars with a built-in HTML page yet?  I mean how cool would it be for your car to have a simple webpage where you could check it’s battery level (think Prius), turn on the AC, check system status for any errors, etc.  Heck a simple integration of a smartphone would work for this now.  These systems could even be connected to their respective manufacturers so they could “push” updates to the cars computer for improved gas mileage or to alert you to possible issues (recalls) of a vehicle.  Go a step further and they could send you the occasional coupon for a reduced service.