This Brings Back Memories... Electric Cars.

So, I read an article on the new Nissan Leaf- the plug-in, electric vehicle from Nissan. SO, as far as the Chevy Volt is concerned- did we lose the race to have the first electric plug-in brought to market? Anyway... to me, plug-in technology is going backward. More on that a little later.

Evidently- they're coming out with a "fast charger" a "quick charger" sorta device that is meant to quickly charge the batteries on the Leaf... making the car more usable, better range, etc, etc.
When I was a kid, in 1987- I got into radio controlled cars- "R/C cars" as they were commonly known- and in the late '80s- just as I was getting into them- they were really all the rage with dozens of manufacturers, scales, modifications, even an entire aftermarket and racing leagues, magazines, etc, etc... dedicated to them.

I was obsessed.

This was, for me anyway, as close to a real car as cars got. These little 1/10-scale electric buggies. To make them go, you had a 7.2V NiCad battery pack and this thing called a "quick charger," this plug-in device that charged the said battery packs in 15-minutes flat. There was a little timer knob, a meter, even little lights that gave indications as to what was going on.

15-minutes was damn near eternity when you wanted to play with the darn thing.

Electric model cars were fun- they were quick, easy, quiet and clean. You could even run them indoors! But their biggest pain, their downfall, were those damn battery packs and the need to charge them two or three times an hour- just go get 10 minutes of playtime or "run time" as I remember it being called. That- and, well, they started out strong and the performance quickly evaporated as the run time went on- about seven minutes...

In 1989- I got my first "gas" car, or rather an R/C buggy that ran on nitro methane. This, my friends, was when I arrived... This was, and still is, R/C buggy driving at its finest.

Nitro-powered R/C cars... Not only were they twice as fast, they made a hell of a lot of noise and were messy, maybe even a little dangerous too... but... you didn't have to wait for the darn thing to charge- meaning- you never had to stop playing with it! Just add more fuel and go... And scare the ever-loving-shit out of your neighbors- even out-accelerate their Mustang 5.0s and Toyota MR-2s.

Well- I know, I know... I'm not being fair here. I'm correlating zero emission vehicle technology to my childhood hobby of expensive model cars; they're not the same... It's not the same.

But ask anyone who owned anything made by Tamiya back in the '80s- you won't get them excited on the notions of the Nissan Leaf, or any proposed "fast charger..."

Sure- electric vehicles have loads of torque and accelerate like crazy... But if you really want to have fun- and the kinda fun we've been having for well over a hundred years now- nothing will replace filling the tank up with something- and not having to wait for anything to "charge."

I don't think any real car guy will ever get a charge out of anything zero emissions; certainly not anything you have to plug-in. And wait.

My days of waiting ended with the '88 Tamiya Fox I had.

I'm not going backward- to hell with everything else!