by William Cobbs

Created on: January 04, 2009   Last Updated: April 30, 2009

By ENVIRONMENT, I mean not just the world surrounding your car but you, YOURSELF! For you and the relationship you have with your "wheels" is most important.. So why have we had more than a hundred years of automobiles with some problems rather than a perfect sort of vehicle that does what we want, costs little, and is easy to maintain?

I am a retired owner of a Rolls-Royce agency in which we also repaired and sold other cars of high "marque". I retired some years ago, but at the time I left the business, ROLLS was still(with Bentley) the best car in the world.

But it cost much more than a few or smattering of peoples in the world could afford. In fact, it was still expensive when it became old, and once 'antique' its price jumped higher than its original purchase price.

Other great cars of the past era, BMW, Auto Union, Ferrari, Delahaye, etc.etc. were fine. But the closest to a perfect GASOLINE car was alwyas the four-horsepower Renault of the fifties era. Fast and safe, it got 48 miles to the gallon and would go anywhere.

BUT ALL OF THESE GREAT CARS USED GASOLINE AND THUS POLLUTED THE ATMOSPHERE!

So, what we will probably NEVER do, but should do, and we could have done it as early as 1880, is have a good and correct electric car.

FIRST, the chassis and body should be of strong light metal, preferably magnesium mixtures.

It should seat five people comfortablyly and the back should fold down to make a small station wagon, with hatch. It's upholstery should be a strong or the strongest fabric, washable with soap and water. Same of rugs. Dashboard should be totally functional with all necessary instruments but no folderol. Perhaps a clock.

BRAKES should be the best and four-wheel.

Now comes the hard part.

We have available to us now extraordinary electric engines that will duplicate the power of gasoline motors. I say adapt the best of those motors to an electric transmission, again eliminating the troublesome transmissions we use, not changed since 1939. With proper electric transmission, one goes from 0 to 60 as fast as in a gasoline car, but much smoother...no changes!

The bug in the ointment is the battery, or cell, that furnishes the electricity. There are such cells available that would propel a car 400 miles without charge under any conditions. They are VERY EXPENSIVE but if a million Americans were buying the cars, those batteries or cells would fall immediately to a normal low cost.

I see a perfect electric car with speeds to 100 available for $15,000.

There is one-other solution to the pollution problems, and that would be to have the same car I describe above, but instead of electricity, it would run on encapsulated hydrogen. The problem there is that one must have a system for creating hydrogen or access to hydrogen at pumps. It would work well and though the storage of hydrogen is dangerous, safeguards could and have been produced to avoid catastrophes.

I have mentioned in past stories that I drove a hydrogen car 20 years ago that made its own hydrogen and was filled only with tap water. It was one of a kind, and a sedan, in which the back seat to the roof was filled with the hydrogen generator and tanks. Its ninety-three year old inventor who took me for the ride sold the rights to a development company and it disappeared, probably it being bought by a fearful oil oriented car manufacturer(this in 1986).

We have in America MANY MANY intelligent and active entrepreneurs in backyards, and shacks and garages who can make good cars. We need some very rich money-man, perhaps in Silicon Valley, to make my perfect little car in great numbers and sell it for the above reasonable $15,000.

Immediately the half of the pollution problem is eliminated in the world.

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