Progress is harder than the road

Not at all like this

I am presently reading Long Hard Road. Unless you’ve noticed accidental hints I’ve dropped in recent posts – posts few have read – you may guess at the subject matter. A sequel, or prequel perhaps, of Jack Kerouac’s novel with a slightly similar title? The autobiography of a personnel manager with a highway surfacing sub-contractor? The brief life and early suicide of a folk guitarist who unwisely chose to trim his own hedge? A Mississipi congressman’s even briefer attempts to woo Mary McCarthy?

None of these. But don’t guess too hard. I decided I needed to be better informed – technically – about the electric car.

Not about the car itself, of course. Such a vehicle is no more interesting than a power drill fitted with wheels. Lacking an overhead camshaft, direct fuel injection or a hemi cylinder head there’s little to wax lyrical about. In fact, one way of identifying an electric car as it sighs past is the absence of an exhaust pipe. Absences don’t usually excite. They’re difficult to tweak

No, the nerdy bit is the battery. Specifically the lithium-ion battery. Ions you may have heard of, they’re sort of attached to – or detached from – the atom. Hard info so we may ignore them. Lithium is… well, stuff.  A chemical element, yeah. Symbol Li, yea-ea-ah. Atomic number 3; is that good or bad? Highly reactive and flammable. O wow! Bring it on.

Look, I’m only a third the way through Long Hard Road. All I can say for the moment it took decades to develop the battery’s anode and cathode. And they’re truly basic. I haven’t really touched on the internal goo. 

Regard this post as a prelude to thrilling techno leaps forward. Usually measured – if past pages are any guide – in sub-millimetres.