Originally Posted by
Dahon.Steve
It might be a good thing if China and India motorize because in doing so, they will extract billions of gallons from the world market causing the price to rise while diminishing the current supply of oil available on the earth. It's only when the price of oil skyrockets, that we began looking at alternatives.
It was five years ago, no one would have thought GM would ever develop an electric car. Now it seems an electric car is in the works for every manufacturer. Unfortunately, the need for oil for food production is only replaceable but at a very high cost. It's a cost our children's children will have to pay once our generation exhausts the inexpensive supply of oil.
More than 10 years ago GM introduced the EV-1 and Toyota had a fleet of leased Rav4 EVs in New York. So Five years ago they were all dropped for Hybrids. GM even refused to allow people to buy the EV-1s they had. China and India may or may not drive up the price of fuel I can’t say but there is little chance that will affect mankind’s preference for non human powered transportation.
As we humans have advanced from walking everywhere to all the other forms of transportation cycling always been a footnote in the transportation world. I don’t expect that will change in my lifetime or my children’s. I think we will bust our collective bottoms to develop EVs, Fuel cells, or anything that doesn’t require us to physically move ourselves. All shopping malls have stairs but people use the escalators and elevators. Kids in school today have never had a TV that didn’t have a remote and more that 90 percent of the American driving population drives a vehicle with an automatic transmission. What chance do you think there is that people will turn to bicycles rather than a self propelled vehicle in the next 50 to 100 years? I say slim and none unless society collapses.
What would you say the odds are?