Automobile Exhaust and Horse Manure: Two Things We Can Live Without

Well, here’s an interesting thing.  Only 20% of Chinese own cars; they are buying them at the fastest rate of any country in the world.  China is also investing more money in battery technology than any other country in the world.

Facts summarized from an “Oppenheimer Funds” blog post of March 29, 2017:

It seems that, around the beginning of the 20th century, cities were drowning in horse manure produced by the animals that they needed to carry them around.  New York, for example, produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure a day in 1893.  Not to mention the urine also produced in prodigious quantities.  Because of the expense and noxious odor of the manure that had to be removed every day, people flocked to horseless carriages as soon as practical (or even impractical) models became available.  By 1912, cars outnumbered horses in New York.

China is currently suffering extreme pollution problems (like manure, only in the air) in some of its cities and cannot tolerate any increases in emissions as the rate of car ownership increases.  So battery-powered cars are essential for China’s development and their government is fully aware of this issue.  Steps are being taken, money is being invested, and electric cars will be outnumbering internal combustion-motivated cars very soon.  What about the US?  Let Don the Con worry about that.