As the world's energy supplies are starting to get Effed up, the price of the fuel has skyrocketted beyond my imagination. Things are changing too fast these few years. It ain't like this 10 years ago, my dad could fill up his Corolla to full tank with RM50, but now it could only get you less than half tank. It gets better, the smart government has recently started to lift off the petrol subsidy, though the act has not triggered a massive riot like what happened in the Indonesia (only about 100 people protested at KL), the implication of the price hike is bigger than what people think.
Aside from the predicted all-out inflation due to cost-push and the rise of public transportation cost due to the fact that the price of diesel rose more than the petrol does, the automotive industry is definitely going to get hurt. And by the time the government has fully lifted off the subsidy, they will realise that they are shooting at their own feet - the national carmaker, aka the Electron is going to suffer real bad, especially when their cars fuel efficiency are not that good in the first place. And what are they going to do this time? Introduce a tougher AP system? Sell the company to Volkswagen again? Whatever, it's not that i cared about it anyway.
And so the urgency of the problem has resurfaced once again. People are concerned about the scarcity of the fuel. While many companies are introducing their hybrid cars which are more fuel efficient, the cars are still relying on fuel, and by the time the fuel are depleted in 20XX, these cars are nothing but some artifacts from the old world. Of course, one would say there are already cars that don't use fuel, but those cars are powerless and expensive, hence they are not made affordable to the masses. So it takes time to become affordable to the public.
But for how long?
One particular concept came to my mind, nuclear-powered car. It's not a new concept though, the concept came out half a century ago when the Ford company introduced the Ford Nucleon.
The Ford Nucleon was a nuclear-powered concept car developed by Ford Motor Company in 1958. No operational models were built. The design did not include an internal-combustion engine, rather, a vehicle was to be powered by a small nuclear reactor in the rear of the vehicle. The vehicle featured a power capsule suspended between twin booms at the rear. The capsule, which would contain radioactive core for motive power, was designed to be easily interchangeable, according to performance needs and the distances to be traveled. It was said that cars like the Nucleon would be able to travel 8000 km (5,000 miles) or more, depending on the size of the core, without recharging. Instead, at the end of the core's life they would be taken to a charging station, which research designers envisioned as largely replacing gas stations. Cool eh? But the car was never built and never went into production, and it remains an icon of the Atomic Age of the 1950s.
Where do you put your children and your luggages?
Still, nuclear-powered car is not feasible because it's too vulnerable and it can be used as weapons by those terrorists. So the nuclear car is out of question.
I thought of getting my first car when I turn 30 years old, but the cost of having a car is going to be astronomical by 2019. The prospect of getting one is daunting, will I still be able to buy a car by then? D:
