Michael Douglas, the actor who starred in the 1987 film, Wall Street, played Gordon Gekko, who decreed that “greed is good”.
In the sequel to the film, Gekko, in 2000, is released from prison after serving eight years for insider trading and securities fraud. He is handed his possessions, which were taken from him when he entered. One of the items is a cellphone – it has an antenna and is about the size of a World War II walkie-talkie. This gets a good laugh and appropriately illustrates how swiftly electronics had moved on in eight years.
Had Gekko been a little bit more devious, he might have been release ten years later and would have had to compare his cellphone of 1987 with a smartphone.
What people fail to record or remember is that the early cellphones were not particularly useful. Not that many people had a cellphone. The cellphone battery would not last long. Many areas had no cellphone coverage. Even worse, MTN and Vodacom set call charges that were astronomically high. Three makes of cellphone – Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola – dominated the market. None of them is a leader today. The reasons for this are many, but the overriding issue is probably that, if you want to dominate the global market, you have to be a global player with brilliant engineers and very deep corporate profits.
Having said all this, recently, Mercedes-Benz announced that it was going to introduce ten new electric vehicles in the next five years. I think this is a brilliant move. As we all know, Elon Musk has been touting the Tesla electric car for some time. As I see it, he used the technology of Alan Cocconi to produce his electric car – basically, a battery charger, a battery, an inverter/variable-speed drive and a 22 kW alternating current motor.
The motor runs at 19 000 rpm, since it is operated at 400 Hz rather than 50 Hz – this is a common motor type used on aircraft. The motor gears down to drive the wheels, but no gearbox is necessary – you just control the speed using the variable-speed drive, which is very simple. No need for a differential either; one can balance the drivetrain electrically. The electric car components weigh less than a conventional vehicle.
But, of course, there is the battery. Which was a problem. No longer. Lithium-ion batteries, such as in cellphones, are light, durable and charge quickly. Basically, if you can keep your cellphone charged, you can keep your car charged. (Whoops! I guess that eliminates the Natal graduates from electric-car ownership. Oh well.)
Effectively now Mercedes-Benz is completely unlike Tesla. Mercedes-Benz is absolutely excellent in car design – how to get the chassis to work, suspension, brakes, steering. The company does not have to learn anything. Just the car electrics and, really, I could do that in my garage.
By pushing the electric car, Mercedes-Benz puts itself in the class of ‘emission- free’ cars. A big plus. Naturally, one can argue that you are just changing the emissions from the tailpipe of the car to the smokestack of the power station. But only if the power station is fossil fuel fired. Nuclear stations do not emit emissions, unless they are not designed against bad operation or floods, in which case they blow up and you hardly care if you escape in an emission-free car or not.
I think electric cars are a great idea. They have phenomenal acceleration and they are way simple. Car manufacturers are increasingly trying to computerise spark ignition and compression ignition engines, which often results in unexplained problems – witness recent engine fires. No problem with electric cars. One of the greatest drawbacks of electric cars is that you do not have that full throttle grumble roar as you push the pedal to the firewall with 800 km of freeway ahead of you. Do not see this as a disadvantage. A boot-mounted loudspeaker, a big amplifier, and a flash drive with Ride of the Valkyries is all you need. Can add helicopter sounds, serious gunfire effects and rockets. Petrol heads, eat your heart out.