The "Scalextric" solution to electric cars favoured by your correspondent Tony Cheney (Letters, 4 August) fails many basic principles of physics. He forgets that the Scalextric conductor is laid within an insulating plastic track and operates at a safe 12V. Unfortunately, scaling up while maintaining a safe low voltage would require currents of many thousands of amps. This would cause huge power losses from the massive conductors that would be required.
Peter Swinbank is closer to the mark with his comments about the impractically long charging times for batteries. This can be reduced, but only at the cost of shortening battery life, which leads to the most intractable problem: the cost of the limited-life batteries. An estimate of this can be obtained from the leasing costs for the batteries of Renault electric cars. Leasing the battery brings down the cost of the car by many thousands of pounds, but the battery leasing charge is over �70 a month. You can buy a lot of diesel for that ? even before you consider the cost of the electricity. So for once, Jeremy Clarkson is talking sense.
Roger Titcombe
Ulverston, Cumbria
? Electrifying the road could be realised with induction strips and deals with half of the problem of road transport, that of pollution. However, it does not solve congestion; traffic jams will just become less smelly. The greater advantage of such a system is that of electronic connection. Traffic could be managed by computer, and eventually (pace Jeremy Clarkson) be driverless. Cars could then be rented as driverless taxis. All the technology for this exists.
Ron Houghton
London
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/05/jeremy-clarkson-talks-sense-shock
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