• Question: Hi Duncan, Grant and Nik I would like to ask for your opinion on eletric and hybrid cars. I may not be to do with food science but maybe you have a stong opinion Thanks

    Asked by chocolatemint151 to Nik, Grant, Duncan on 15 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Grant Campbell

      Grant Campbell answered on 15 Mar 2013:

      Hi chocolatemint. Yes, it’s not directly related to food science, but yes, I do have an opinion!! I think electric cars are the future. Electricity can be environmentally clean – petrol never can be. To have environmentally clean electricity, we need more solar power. This needs to be located in the Sahara Desert, with big power lines to bring it to Europe and to us. That way we might just about manage not to run out of energy before it’s too late.

    • Photo: Duncan Gaskin

      Duncan Gaskin answered on 17 Mar 2013:

      We need cars for the way we live at the moment so in order to keep this style of living we need to develop different fuel sources for cars. Hybrids are an excellent way of making the most of the petrol that we use at the moment, but as that becomes rarer and more expensive we will need non-petrol based cars. Electric cars don’t need petrol, but they do need electricity and this electricity has to made from something. If you burn petrol or gas to make the electricity for electric cars it is no different from burning it in the cars. So if we want electric cars to be ‘green’ we need green ways of making electricity.
      In the long term we will have to consider ways of changing the way in which we live so that we don’t need cars as much. This may mean more public transport such as trains and buses, or living lives that don’t require us to move around so much.

Comments

  • Photo: dom1234

    dom1234 commented on :

    Imagine if there wasn’t any power lines to bring it to Europe and everybody had to drive to the Sahara Desert to get electricity because they had solar panels but there wasn’t enough sunlight in Great Britain to power there cars (breath) and then their power almost ran out so they had to drive all the way back to the Sahara Desert for power again and they kept going back and forth, back and forth. People would be asking where are you going today? They would reply oh just going to the Sahara Desert to get some power.
    Now everybody take a breath. Sorry that was a bit long. That idea just popped into my head. I wanted to get it out.

  • Photo: chocolatemint151

    chocolatemint151 commented on :

    I disagree Grant.
    Eletric cars cost a fortune and have very little range.
    Hybrids, like the Toyota Pruis are more enviromentaly harmful to make than a normal car.
    There also still rather expensive!