From: Bob Cunningham
Crothersville
In 1980 I worked for International Harvester Co. in Indianapolis. While employed there, I operated a 7,000-pound electric forklift, and it carried as much as a 2,000-pound payload. It had but one gear and governed to only 9 mph per OSHA regulations. I would drive this for six hard hours before I would need to exchange its battery for a fresh one, and the one that was removed was plugged into a charger for eight hours and then it could be used again. This process of exchanging batteries took no more time than it would for you to fill your gas tank at a filling station.
Why have we gone all these years without electric cars? A car weighs about 2,500 pounds, and if you put a generator on any of the moving parts, the battery would recharge itself continually, and it would last for years. Instead of one gear, how about four or five gears? Just like the battery you have in your car, you would need a new one eventually. I can’t even contemplate how many thousands of miles this type of vehicle would go before you would need to pull into a battery-exchange station or plug it in at your home. This battery does not just quit, but rather it begins to slow down so you have plenty of time to get it exchanged or charged. You would still need new tires, windshield-wiper blades and various other parts, so America would still be in business building our own cars and trucks and not need to import any vehicles from abroad.
This would mean we would need no gas, no oil and there would be no emissions to harm our environment. We have very good synthetic oils for lubricants. We would no longer be chained to a gas pump with ridiculous prices. We would no longer be at the mercy of big business and their greedy interests. This would create many new job opportunities in this country, and the carmakers could concentrate more on beautiful designs instead of the ridiculous, uncomfortable boxes that we are driving around in now.
We would no longer need acres of corn we can’t eat. We would no longer be contemplating dangerous oil pipelines across our great nation. There would no longer be convoys of dangerous/flammable semis wearing out our highways, nor our railroads hauling thousands of gallons of oil across our nation. Perhaps the farmers would go back to growing food instead of foolishness as they continue to poison our soil and our water as we speak.
Ask the Democrats and Republicans why they have kept America chained to their private relationships with big business instead of letting our people go? Look up the Cushman Co., the Yale Co. and the Eaton Co. These companies have made industrial electric vehicles for over 30 years.
