Re: commuting - people did a lot less getting around in rural England in the 30s than they do now. And we had a much bigger train network, which served as the standard long-distance option. People also lived much closer to where they worked. Long distance commuting was limited to a couple of specialised dormitory areas around London which were served by tube extensions and rail. People often walked or cycled to factories because they were close enough to walk to or cycle to.
As for the practicality of electric cars, see the recession watch diary.
"Steam-operated cable plowing developed successfully in England, using a system of two steam engines pulling a cable-drawn plow. The English cable plows were capable of traveling safely at up to 4 mph when plowing through good soil. The length of the furrow was usually measured in 1/2 miles rather than in rods, and the early English cable plows, with their short strings of cable, were grossly inadequate. By 1870, there were 3,000 steam cable-plowing outfits in operation in England and only four outfits operating in the U.S. Henry E. Lawrence, a southern planter, used one of these plowing outfits on his 1,000-acre sugar estate near New Orleans." http://www.steamtraction.com/article/2003-03-01
And obviously we have huge central pivot irrigation systems that reach every part of a field. It's not that hard to dream up possible methods of rigging up a power cord to a tractor...
I can't take extension cords seriously. There are literally miles of fields around this house, and they're easily accessible by tractor - they're ploughed, sprayed and harvested every year. To make extension cords likely the entire area would have to be rewired, at a huge cost.
Nope, not after Cameron throws all the Poles out.
I can't take the idea of extension cords for farming seriously either. I would suggest, though, that the assumptions we're making about battery power could be incorrect in a big way. There's, for example, that technology they developed out in Silicon Valley that increases battery power tenfold. Presumably there are ways we haven't gotten to yet that will allow us to get more juice out of them.
Even getting ten times the charge would get the job done for most people. Then you'd be talking about driving 400-500 miles instead of 40-50. Nobody other than guys driving semis is going to drive farther than that out of necessity, and truck drivers presumably won't mind getting a little more sleep. If push came to shove, you could toss an extension cord or two out the window to charge it up every night. Initially, at least, it's going to be crude arrangements like that before everybody's got electricity outlets on their driveways and stoops decades from now. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
