CONTRIBUTORS to the interesting correspondence on the subject have assumed that future electric cars will need a battery which will be flat after a few hundred miles.
Recharging will then take several hours. Most inconvenient; but that is today’s technology. Improvements are unlikely to be enough to supplant existing vehicles.
Fuel cell technology already exists which turns hydrogen into electricity to drive the wheels.
What is needed is a brand- new disruptive technology to produce the hydrogen.
Fortunately, two are being actively worked on 2017.
Dan Nocera, of Harvard University, is copying nature and using a bionic leaf to get sunshine to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Meanwhile, the US Army Research Laboratory has discovered that an aluminium based powder will split water into hydrogen and oxygen very efficiently.
In the future you may just fill the fuel tank with the garden hose.
It pains me to say that Michael Gove might be right; even though he will have no idea why.
Quentin Macdonald, Church Lane, Nether Poppleton, York
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