Want 250 mpg?
This is great-- a growing movement of green auto tinkerers are adding batteries and other features to hybrid cars. Some have achieved mileage as high as 250 mpg.
Of course these modified cars aren't cost-effective enough to mass produce in an economy like ours. But I think it's great that enterprising engineers would tweak them up. Maybe one of them will happen upon an idea that Toyota, Honda, or another car company could use.
This is the power of "creativity of the masses" in technology development. Give people a new device to play with, and watch what they do to modify it, to use it in new ways, and to take it out of context into whole new dimensions the designers didn't think of. This is one key strength I see in capitalism-- the ability to just get stuff out into the marketplace. End users in their garages are often much smarter than designers in their offices. If there is some mechanism for feedback from the market back toward the suppliers, real improvement can occur quickly and to everyone's benefit.
Go, auto tinkerers!
Of course these modified cars aren't cost-effective enough to mass produce in an economy like ours. But I think it's great that enterprising engineers would tweak them up. Maybe one of them will happen upon an idea that Toyota, Honda, or another car company could use.
This is the power of "creativity of the masses" in technology development. Give people a new device to play with, and watch what they do to modify it, to use it in new ways, and to take it out of context into whole new dimensions the designers didn't think of. This is one key strength I see in capitalism-- the ability to just get stuff out into the marketplace. End users in their garages are often much smarter than designers in their offices. If there is some mechanism for feedback from the market back toward the suppliers, real improvement can occur quickly and to everyone's benefit.
Go, auto tinkerers!
