From S. T. DOBBS
I was fascinated by your recent article on the development of electric
cars (‘Electric dreams take to the road’, 2 October). However, surely the
most important pitfall of this energy source for a car is not the range
the battery permits before recharging, but the duration of the recharging
process itself.
Fuel-driven cars (be they petrol, diesel, and presumably hydrogen-driven)
have an effectively limitless range because it takes less than five minutes
to refuel them. This is much more important than the capacity of the tank.
An overnight refuelling is wholly useless. Perhaps some form of exchangeable
battery would solve the problem, with points-of-exchange doing the overnight
recharging.
S. T. Dobbs Market Harborough Leicestershire
