Four Wheels, No Go

This is a rewrite of an entry but with more focus.

Why I Love/Hate Cars

You know what? I love the whole concept of the automobile, The Car, the motor vehicle, I can quite happily glide along a motorway at the national speed limit watching other cars woosh past, and woosh by, glinting in the sunlight or the soft patter of raindrops bouncing off their tin tops while the warm glow of tail lights burn through the drizzle.
Car design nowadays is almost as if the concept cars of yesteryear are a reality, Swoopy batmobile alikes, are now the norm on the road, Just look at any Renault built in the past 5 years to see what I mean, Shake you Ass? Oh yes most definately. Adventurous coupes, now ply our freeways and highways with cheeky retro-alikes, Drop tops and CC’s, badly driven BMW’s and stoic herioc Mercedes Benz fight and jostle for space in the “3rd” lane, while I scoot by on the nearside oblivious to their testosterone fulled willy waving contest, and make better time for it. Even 10 year old cars now can rumble on past 100,000 miles and run as sweet, or sweeter then they have ever done, Gold, Green, purple metallics glint and glisten from granny mobiles, sports cars and four by fours, Even congestion and toll charges dont phase me. Congestion means that I can pick a channel on the radio and sing-alonga-Karaoke, making my fellow road users wonder if I’ve been electrocuted or am in pain. In the summer, tempers can flare, but I simply crank the air conditioning up a notch and float by the punchups and crushed glass on a bed of supercooled and chilled air.
Hooking together a well set up car, the tires worn in, the suspension just right, on a summer day, On some bendy twisty hilly roads, is a pleasure unlike any other, swooping and diving between hillock, dale and flock of sheep. The steering wheel whipping from left to right, curling around the hub, twisting the car around a bend, almost as if the curces, your mind and your arms are as one. Cresting a hill at full chat, a blat of brake pedal, a counter twist of the wheel, and you are off again.
Its like flying, and in some ways better, since you can actually feel the speed. Yeah, oddly driving is harder then flying, the extra dimension lets your mistakes float by, while on the hot bitumen, your tires and your skill are the only thing holding you on the road. Oh yeah, and of course gravity should get a mention too.
Speed.
Yeah, speed kills, but it also feels so good. But theres the thing, if its not safe, its not worth it. An A-road can feel quite fast enough thank-youverymuch at 70mph, But if its got a good set of bends on it, then, speed doesnt matter, you need just enough. The first time you spear a mini roundabout on a deserted road, sweep left, dodge right, Hammer down. The wheels scrabble for grip, They bite, they hold, they hook like talons into the ground and fling you out of the ’bout, back onto the straight with a roar of 2nd gear grunt and spout. You will know why people drive and not take the bus.

But.

I HATE CARS.

What? surely not, If I love driving, whats wrong with cars? The engines thats what.

Every three hundred miles, even the most modern and fabulous chunk of usually british designed sheening metal has to roll up to a “Petrol Station” and have a smelly, flammable liquid squirted into its innards like some kind of insane bewheeled animal that needs to drink like a camel. Except camels dont explode.

Petrol and its close cousin, Diesel, Makes cars a disgusting proposistion. Thy both come from Oil, a natural resource which is being squandered left right and centre as we speak. I know how **lucky** I am that I can go and drive whenever I like whereever I like, But I dont want to waste that precious liquid. gas..

and thats the crux of it, We can go where we please, we can do what we want but as we tootle along in our four wheeled friends, we are slowly killing the earth, polluting the environment and hastening the destruction of the human race.

Because our extremely high tech, German and japanese precision engineered, filled to the brim with smooth lines and tactile pleasures, passenger laden; extentions of our personalities are little more then a storm lantern, Filled with a noxious chemical substance, BURNING it. making smoke, making fire, making wheels move. A bit of noise, and a fair amount of flame.

It disgusts me.

We’ve moved on in the past 200 years since the inception of the motorcar in so many ways. The internet allows me to communicate with people across the globe in the blink of an eye, A digital camera means i can take a picture and have it on screen in moments, can take 1000 pictures in a day and pick the ones I want to keep at my leisure, The semaphore has morphed into the telegraph, into the telephone, and now the mobile phone means I can hear someones voice anywhere I want, any time I choose for a few pence a minute. And I dont haave to be tied down in one location. As humans we’ve developed sports and explored the greatest reaches of science and reality, of mathmatics of art of music. We are truly one (dysfunctional) world, ONE civilisation, whether we like it or not. But.

We are still driving CARs that BURN petrol.

meh.

And it doesnt have to be like this. In fact it shouldnt be like this. The future is here already, And in my book it should have been here years ago. If my current life plan succeeds I will be a major player in the automotive industries in the next 25-30 years and the beacon that will light my way already exists, It will sustain me and make me believe that it can and it will happen. We will drive cars that dont need petrol!
Sure, You can get them already, there are milkfloats, but milkfloats are crap, they move at about 5mph, and you are not exactly going to impress members of the opposite.. or even same, sex with it. “Wooorrh!!! look at mine!! it can varry FIVE HUNDRED pints of milk!!!”
hmm
And it could probably do about 30 miles at the very most before conking out on the side of the road dead.
However there is a car that fullfils everything that a “petrolhead” and yes, that tag is galling, wants to have in a car, and also matches my aspirations to get away from the evil blackness that is oil. It is a car that has a range of over 200 miles,
It is a car that looks like a super car,
It is a car that can travel at over 150 miles an hour,
it is a car that accelerates from Zero to Sixty miles and hour in… 4 seconds.
Its car that is available today.
It is a car you just plug into the mains, Charge up, and go!

the V E N T U R I – Fetish

This is an Electric car…

It doesnt have to be the way it is.
And if I have my way, we will all be driving something like that VERY soon.