All-Electric Transportation
Robert Noble12/30/11
[Editor's note: As a New Year's exercise, we asked a select group of Xconomists to answer this question: "What's the craziest idea out there that just might succeed?"]
All-electric commercial boats, ships, railway engines, and aircraft. The hyper-convergence of energy generation, battery storage, electric vehicle systems development, and electric charging infrastructure has first focused commercially on cars, and now trucks. These advancements may, sooner than we have expected, transition into other highly polluting vehicle markets. As the economies of the all-electric automobile industry are understood and realized, the specific systems and technologies will migrate quickly into these other markets. Air and noise pollution will be dramatically reduced, and everyone on board will enjoy a much smoother ride. And pilots and other EV operators will love the hyper-responsiveness of their electric motors.
