Asklemmy

43893 readers

1227 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

what is the biggest failure in human history? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by zachimusprime44@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

85 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] HurlingDurling@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

So... there isnt a war in the US right now, and there probablywont be one.

"Lead-acid electric..." when was the last time you looked at an electric car. Electric cars can now give you 400+ miles of range just like ICE vehicles, and I don't have to scavenge fuel from who knows where, all I need is a few solar panels and I'm good... eventually.

Also, IF this was a war zone, I'd rather be whisper quiet than to tell everyone around that I'm driving by with the sound of an engine. Oh and it's easier to remain undetected by food than on a vehicle anyway.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 4 months ago

Yeah, I know, I'm not arguing against electric now, or even as a concept then. This was an alt-history exercise, remember?

Batteries could have been standard for a bit longer, but it seems to me that eventually the need to go faster for longer would have forced combustion engines to be a thing. All they had were lead-acid batteries (or primary cells, but that would be dumb) and new more energy-dense chemistries didn’t show up for a long time after. Maybe they could have found one if they really needed, but it’s a tricky science even today, so I’m skeptical.

It’s possible, I suppose, that infrastructure could have been rolled out for both en mass, but I don’t see an even mix lasting through the whole 20th century. Probably not even past WWII.