Keep on Truckin'? I very much enjoyed Eric Haseltine's article, "Twenty Things That Will Be Obsolete in 20 Years" [October]. I must disagree, though, with number 18, the internal-combustion engine. I would like to see internal-combustion fade into antiquity, but what would replace it? The problem with electric vehicles has always been that of energy density. Batteries just don't have the energy/volume ratio or the energy/weight ratio to compete with diesel fuel and gasoline. My judgment is that they never will, although an electricity-producing fuel cell might eventually come close. In particular, I find it hard to imagine fuel cells as a viable energy source for commercial trucks. Long-haul trucking may have dwindled in Europe, but it is not likely to do so in the United States in the next 20 years. Europe does not have the vast distances of the American Midwest and West; its rail system actually runs on time for freight service; and water freight is available to many of the continent's population centers. Trucks hauled 70 percent of all freight shipped in the United States in 1998; the reason is cost and on-time delivery. America's railways have effectively given up where wide coverage and timely delivery are concerned— they are buying trucking companies. And water freight is not available to most of the United States.
When some new technology allows 80,000-pound trucks to move without internal combustion, I will cheer along with everyone else. But trucks will remain, unless we plan to build a railway, runway, or canal down every street in the country.
