What If Everything Ran on Gas?

This week Nissan released this funny 60-second spot for the electirc-powered Leaf. Nissan imagines a world where everything runs on gasoline. Well if you live here in Ontario most of your electricity is coming from nuclear and hydro, as you can see in these charts that show us where our electricity is coming from this hour.

Watching the technician check the oil in the photocopier and the laptop being filled with gasoline from the converted watercooler are particularly funny moments. Did you notice the ‘not-so-subtle’ jab at the Chevrolet Volt hybrid? The Volt owner stands at the gas pumps and looks longingly as the Leaf drives by.

While the building of infrastructure for the recharging of electrical vehicles is still in the early stages, it’s satisfying to see these cars starting to reach the streets.

Comments

  1. After watching the documentary “Who Killed The Electric Car” you can’t help but wonder why we’re just seeing them now when the technology was there many years ago.

    • I still have to watch that documentary. Electric cars have been around since the mid-1800s, well before gas powered cars. Electric lost out to gas in the 1920s when the roads between cities began to improve and the electric vehicles simply couldn’t manage that range. (which is still the argument used by people now and I assume was mentioned in the documentary). I did look that up on Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle

      I saw a comment from someone on another blog which mentioned the idea of having a gas/hybrid for longer travel, and an electrical vehicle for everyday errands and commuting.I always wonder if we will get to the point where the idea of personal car ownership will fade and evolves into the concept of self-guided vehicles on a grid like Minority Report.

      • Range has indeed always been the issue but most people commute less than 100 miles per day now which makes range a non-issue for most.

        Watch the doc and then try to make sense of what happened and why. It made me angry. People were willing to pay more than the cars were worth and GM wouldn’t sell. It was a very strange set of circumstances.

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