My dad's first car was a Model T Ford tray back. And had a semi-automatic gearbox And as reliable as. Went three times around the clock without missing a beat.

Albeit, I think he spent more time under the bonnet with simple repairs and maintenance than on the road.

Never ever exceeded 25 miles per hour. (40klm) And transported all manner of cargo to all points of the compass. With the majority being fruit and vegetables he hawked from door to door.

Me I owned a 1934 Chrysler, the first production car with a hydraulic braking system and It could motor. The six-volt system meant I regularly hand to hand crank it on cold and frosty mornings.

It was followed by a 1954 Vauxhall Velox. A morris minor ute, a Thames Trader Truck, a big straight six Desoto, a Holden station wagon another of those, a 1966 Chrysler, A 1968 V8 Chrysler a Ford Sedan, a P76, a Nissan 4x drive tray back, a Holden station wagon, another, a Ford V8, an Austin, another holden, a Ford station wagon, a Mazda 929, an AU Ford, a Ford Cortina station wagon, and the car I have now, a Ford Focus.

I found it interesting that the first infernal combustion engine was a hydrogen-powered variant.

And I guess they would have the older method of making hydrogen via the catalytic cracking the water molecule method?

Far and away, the cheapest possible method of making hydrogen.

That said, Ford was quite a pioneer and pioneered the mass production method of manufacture. Something we could learn from in our energy future! TBC.
Alan B.

Mass production as mentioned in the article is the key to our best, most sustainable energy future!

And has to include, mass-produced MSR modules Which can.be powered by thorium, the most energy-dense material on the planet!

These walk away safe thorium reactors can be sited where we now locate step down transformers as small 40 MW reactors and power plants, all able to be assembled on the factory floor in shipping container-sized modules and transported to their sites to begin producing power in around a month?

Needing only routine maintenance checks tri-annually? And allow vast transmission lines to be phased out over time, their metals recycled in other products we might even export? Electric vehicles perhaps?

This method of reticulating future power could conceivably reduce transmission losses to zero and distribution losses by 50%?
Thereby, more than doubling profitability, and more than halving maintenance costs? Where power prices could still earn a reasonable profit at around 1 cent PKWH.

Or less if nuclear waste we are paid annual millions to store, is prefered as the fuel! Nuclear waste retains, on average, not less than 98% of its potential recoverable energy. And this is from a fuel that powered reactors for up to or beyond 30 years with just 2% or less of that potential energy quotient!
Alan B.

Sir Richard Bramston says, we must immediately stop using and selling coal to China.

Ok, but what replaces the billions we now earn from these energy exports?

Answer, other energy exports and from directly reticulated electrical power, reticulated via graphene cored undersea cables. And safe from on sea attacks by pirates, terrorists, even nuclear war?

Graphene apart from being the strongest material on earth and we have the purest commercial deposits, is also a superconductor!

And it's those two properties that makes this a very long term proposition that allows us as through the reticulation of this energy, to set reasonable prices in line with inflation and for the next hundred years and beyond as we contribute through just this one measure to reversing climate change! And secure our own future as we do so!

Yes I know, it's very insensitive to be talking about climate change as the bush is burning. But not so if I offer workable solutions to drought-proofing Australia and put more new water into all parts of the system affordably!

And as desalinated water, reticulated to strategic points at less than $20.00 a gigalitre! And just by combining the above energy provision with, space-age, deionisation dialysis desalination!

I've seen essentially mothball steel mills rejigged with little more than skeleton staff, to just recycle steel and turn it into miles and miles of steel pipe. We could do as much and as co-ops, the government sets up as employee-owned and operated enterprises. with guaranteed contracts that last for decades and allow the progressive roll-out of several key, water pipelines.

No, we cannot make it rain! But only tin-eared political intransigence prevents logical rational solutions being applied now! And as they are, rekindle hope in hopeless hearts and put firefighting water resources back where they're now needed. Not today, but ASAP!
Alan B.

$20.00 a gigalitre!
Alan B,
This is fantastic ! Where can we get a desalination plant that can produce that ? The best I've seen is 12 Cents a litre via Diesel powered plants.

Have just come back from the UK. Visted the Mini (owned by BMW) factory in Oxford, where robots working 22 hours per day, produce another car every 72 seconds, 1,000 Minis per day. They have conducted tours. Fascinating.
https://www.visit-mini.com/visitmini/

produce another car every 72 seconds,
If this is not straight forward insanity then I really don't know what is !