Cars Go Star Trek

I've neither enough time nor enough adjectives to properly explain how much I've come to love Star Trek, in its multiple iterations, over my lifetime. There have been some breakthrough moments - that one day in college when I discovered Deep Space Nine's first few seasons were heavy with Israeli-Palestinian symbolism; the high school Power Reading class in which my teacher explained (using Vonnegut and Commander Data) how men make machines of other men to circumscribe their own inadequacies. Along the way I've come to hope for certain technological breakthroughs implicit in the show but woefully slothful in development here. Among my favorite Trek changes was the touchscreen/voice-activated computer system. Such luxury!

Well, some industrious fellow has finally yoked my inverse atavism with a damned good idea: a purely electric car. Click the link in the article for a slideshow. Take special note of the touchscreen dashboard. How long until we sit idly behind the non-wheel of our electric car, program our destination and watch as the GPS microbrain whisks us thither, we listening to the quiet hum of the motor, reading Dickens and, dream of dreams, asking for hot Earl Grey tea, only for the car to prepare that as well? On a less whimsical level: Considering this enterprising gent named his young company Wrightspeed - I quiver with gooseflesh - and has already raised 8 million dollars in funding, I see no reason why we can't someday soon (read: next twenty years) abandon our use of petroleum combustion. Sure, the car only has a 100-mile range, but with some battery upgrades I'll bet we could see a car with 400-mile range and a 6-hour recharge time by 2025. "But Robert," you say, "what if I want to blast across country with three friends and stop only when our bladders dictate?" Extra batteries? I'm grasping at straws. In truth, I think we're going to have to come to grips with reality very soon: petroleum is a luxury and traveling vast distances is also a luxury. When we invade Iran and they block of the Strait of Hormuz and our gas starts to cost 12 dollars per gallon, we'll all understand. So I'm saying this now: Americans must accept that the key to surviving this coming half-century with our sanity intact is to stop demanding everything be available cheap! Right now, gas doesn't cost as much (adjusted for inflation) as it did during the embargo in the seventies. And if you can believe it, we actually have more allies in the gulf now than we did then! Qatar just gave 60 million dollars to New Orleans. Dubai's interest in our ports is not new; that little nation-state has done more to expand its global image in the last few years than anyone outside China and India. (And we really overreacted there, by the way)

Phew. The upshot: if you're rich, buy one of Ian Wright's toys. You'll be funding the revolution. And if you're poor, like me, bicycle away in the hopes that, one day, this too shall all be ours.