Listen to the Difference on Universal Studios' Electric Trams

Can you imagine Autopia if Disney was willing to spend the cash to get rid of its stinky, loud gas powered engines?

/\ Yes, I rode the electric Autopia at Hong Kong Disneyland before it was removed and have also ridden the electric car ride at Ferrari Land Port Aventura. It's nice to not have the emissions but other than that I wouldn't say those rides are any better or worse.

The gas powered cars are extremely loud as compared to their electrical counterparts, that's worse.

And of course they spew fumes all day, which is not just worse for the rider, but also for the environment.

@thecolonel - But the noise and vibration created by the gas engines are part of the appeal. It provides the illusion of speed and power in vehicles that don't actually move that fast. Electric-powered vehicles don't have that same feeling, and either have to be throttled up to go faster (less safe) or risk losing guests who are no longer drawn to the attraction by the noise and feeling that the current vehicles provide.

Also, from an environmental perspective, electric vehicles haven't reached a point in development where they are any better for the environment than gasoline counterparts. Certainly in the immediate vicinity of a gas vehicle you get the exhaust fumes (which some find appealing also), but a certain percentage of electricity generated to power electric vehicles are derived from the burning of fossil fuels. There is also the conundrum with disposing of battery and electrical motor waste, which is a pretty big challenge.

I think a shift to electric vehicles would necessitate a complete redesign of the attraction (more like Joe Cool Driving School at Cedar Fair parks and similar attraction at Legoland parks) instead of the tracked attractions they have now (unless they build blocks to allow for faster speeds).

As a driver of an electric vehicle, a big appeal beyond the quiet and the lack of smell is the stomach-dropping torque that an electric motor provides. No consumer-grade car accelerates off the line like an EV. An ICE and an electric motor each offer different strengths and weaknesses to car enthusiasts - which is something that any designer of a automotive-themed attraction surely would consider.

Now if I could get one of those wireless charging pads in my garage floor to go with solar panels on the roof, I would be a happy, happy driver.

@Russell "Also, from an environmental perspective, electric vehicles haven't reached a point in development where they are any better for the environment than gasoline counterparts."

Quick trip to the EPA's website (or many other sites) proves that incorrect. And I can assure you that to people under a certain age, sustainability is every bit as important as torque. Put another way: who wants to ride on a relic from the past that may end up being a primary driver of humanity's demise? I thought Autopia was meant to be the freeway of the future?

@Russell Meyer:

I'm sorry but your statement comparing the environmental impact of BEV vs. ICE vehicles is false.

While the impact greatly depends on how the electricity is generated for a BEV. The worse case (all coal electric generation) does make it a wash for the lifecycle of either car. In the US, this applies to the center-north (Dakotas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa). The rest of the country is diversified enough where the lifetime impact is lower on BEVs.

The switch to BEV allows for that switch over to gain the benefits. Sticking with ICE means your fleet must use fossil fuels and no other source. You can make the argument of car use vs other modes of transportation including public transit and smaller personal vehicles. But to claim that BEVs are net worse for the environment is preposterous.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change

Re: Autotopia

When Autotopia was rolled out, it was an attraction representing the future of what would become America's multilane limited-access highways. Now it is a relic of that era.

Taking Autotopia to BEV would reposition the attraction back to showcasing the future of transportation, making it relevant to Tomorrowland again.

It's not just the electricity generated to power electric vehicles, but it's the immense amount of energy required to create batteries and magnets, most of which contain heavy metals and rare earth elements mined and refined in Russia and China, not the most conscientious stewards of the environment.

My point is that it's not all sunshine and lollipops simply because the car your driving is powered solely by electricity.

If Autopia/Tomorrowland Speedway were to be refreshed to show the current future of American transportation, guests wouldn't be driving the cars anyway. The reality is that Rocket Rods was the best vision for a car-based theme park attraction, but we all know how that ended up. Converting Tomorrowland Speedway/Autopia to that ride platform would obviously be duplicative with TestTrack/RSR.

@Russell Meyer

I was talking about and linked source to the total lifecycle of the car, which includes production of the vehicle and the impact of powering that vehicle for the expected life of the product. I was not as clear as I should have in my comment and apologize.

Even with these factors, the impact of BEVs are still less than ICE. The sourcing of the battery components do alter the net benefit. But to imply that ICE is easier in either case is not matching the reported data. Nor should we be complacent for simply being better than ICE products.

Sorry to make this a point in the themed entertainment blog, but I start to loose trust in this publication if a writer can be unsourced and incorrect about subject matter in the article itself.

Fall in line, Russell, or leave the republic. Remember, the government, most of the media and the EPA are trustworthy. Relinquish your control and join us, the good and decent people of our great (though somewhat racist) nation.

Great, through a discussion about how a theme park ride would be better if the cars were electric we've managed to troll out a conspiracy nut. Guess they're never far away these days ...

Electric cars are definitely not as bad for the climate as ICE cars and i'm all for them. I actually drive Tesla's every day for my job, i've driven about a dozen model S plaids, and got to drive a Rivian for the first time two days ago. Electric cars are better than ICE in every way.

But Autopia and Electric Car Ride at Port Aventura were still boring and it doesnt surprise me HKDL already got rid of it. Driving slow isn't very exciting when there is nothing else going on. Disney won't spend the $ to make the car rides electric they will get rid of the rides before doing that (which wouldn't surprise me at all if that happens in the next 10 years so they can meet their own company emissions goals).

Conspiracies are ridiculous along with those people that support them. Everyone needs to get on the right (or left) side of the discussion. Come on people, get with the program!

Some hide behind anti “woke” and conspiracy bandwagons to obscure the racism, bigotry and absolutism. You’re welcome to your opinion but the good always wins!

Thankfully improvements in technology, medicine and social constructs will keep the world evolving from the flat earth era…which means fun theme park experiences ahead - Yay!

That’s right, you anti-woke right-wingers are racist bigots!
The world is bigger and better than you and you will be defeated by democracy, science, CRT, Facebook and Twitter. All you “deplorables” don’t stand a chance…I love theme park blogs - Yay!

you gotta relax, man.

To put this to rest, the jury is still out regarding how "green" EVs are right now, and it's going to continue to be a moving target as technology improves and the infrastructure supporting EVs (supply chain, power grid, and disposal/recycling) continues to evolve. Ultimately EVs are not the silver bullet some claim them to be, but they do represent the potential for significant improvement over ICE-powered vehicles.

I think there's little doubt that EVs are the near future of personal transport, and continuing investment and technological advancements will likely make them a better choice than ICE, which is a technology that has reached its peak. However, that transition can't simply be made overnight, and turning our backs on gasoline/diesel can't just occur at the snap of your fingers considering the investment that has been made into those long-established technologies.

I strongly subscribe to the concept of entropy, and just because you choose to accomplish a task a different way doesn't change the amount of energy needed to do it. That energy has to come from somewhere and is consumed in such a way that converts matter from one form to another creating waste and unwanted energy in other forms (heat and sound primarily). While there are different ways to skin the cat, the amount of energy required to do it is constant, as is the entropy that is generated from creating and using energy in all forms. Over the course of human history we have come up with better ways to do things, but those always come at a cost, often in unexpectedly harmful ways. So many innovations are promoted as "better" but end up having ramifications that are worse than the problem that was solved, and for EVs, mining and disposing of heavy metals and rare earth elements is a massive consequence of this shift that is not being fully considered.

With all that said, what should Disney do with Autopia/Tomorrowland Speedway? I think it comes down to the planned lifespan of these attractions. Unless a ride is significantly underperforming in terms of popularity or efficiency, a park is going to continue to operate an attraction until it reaches the end of its planned lifespan, which would include routine rehabs, rebuilds, and modernizations. Both of these attractions take up pretty large chunks of real estate, particularly Autopia at land-strapped Disneyland, so if Disney knew these were close to their planned lifespan, they would be working on replacements.

No, the jury is not "still" out on whether electric vehicles are better for the environment, literally every reputable source demonstrates that they are, which is why people and their governments around the world are demanding the switch. Sure, you can quibble over how much better they will be, but to suggest it's not clear whether they are better is simply false. It's oil industry and Murdoch disinformation.

Anyhow, gasoline-powered cars on the purported highway of the future is stupid, smelly, and bad for the environment. If polluting the air is what it takes to make Autopia exciting, raze the attraction.

@Russell Meyer you are wildly uninformed.

I'm happy to see Universal is willing to invest in a healthier future for us and our children.

I guess MIT isn't on thecolonel's jury...

https://energy.mit.edu/research/mobilityofthefuture/

The fact of the matter is that we are still developing the technology and capacity to create an infrastructure that can efficiently support widespread EV production and use. The costs of that are not only in terms of dollars and cents but also in terms of energy spent and carbon emissions to build out a world that can feasibly and efficiently support the technology.

It's easy to say that a gasoline vehicle is less efficient and more polluting than a comparable EV, because comparing the 2 end products is straight forward and easy, but that does not consider the effort, energy, and infrastructure that has already been committed over decades to build that gasoline-powered vehicle versus what still needs to be created to make and support an EV. Just look at Tesla and the amount of energy and environmental harm Musk's company is doing to build the needed infrastructure to support their increasing capacity to produce EVs (sure he buys fictional "carbon offsets" with his silly Dogecoins - an even more environmentally damaging industry FWIW, but those do not physically undo the harm they are producing). Their battery "gigafactories" alone are massive drains on local resources that do not yet yield a substantial increase in efficiency because they're still islands in a sea not yet equipped to handle the technology.

Then there's the unknown with regards to EVs as I noted based on centuries of human technological history and evolution that has shown for every advance there is a corresponding harm that must be dealt with. I think it's pretty clear that the "harm" associated with EVs is how to handle and dispose of the waste associated with battery production and use. As someone who has worked on thousands of environmental remediation projects, I have seen the consequences of the advancements of technology over the decades first hand. For every solution we come up with, we invent another problem which passes on consequences to the next generation. Until we solve the problem of batteries and their disposal, we cannot simply abandon a proven technology with well researched and known hazards like fossil fuels (better the devil you know than the devil you don't). This is not "disinformation", this is fact. No one knows what to do to deal with spent batteries aside from pumping 10x more energy into the manufacturing process to recycle them, which in the end is just as inefficient as a gasoline engine. We also don't know what other adverse effect may arise from technologies surrounding EVs. For gasoline engines, every time chemists came up with additives or modifications to gasoline formulations to increase efficiency or reduce emissions, they created a new contaminant that either doesn't naturally decompose or poses harm to humans in a different way. EVs will likely evolve in the same way with technological advancements that will create chemicals, wastes, emissions, and consequences that will have to be dealt with. Every time humanity thinks they've built a better mousetrap they end up catching their own finger in it.

Again, that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep moving forward seeking what appears to be better and more efficient technologies. However, that doesn't mean a switch should be thrown and hundreds of years of proven technology that took generations of energy and capital to build should be abandoned without a clear understanding of the consequences of that switch.

As with actual trials, it always matters who is on the jury.

There is a need for both types of vehicles as of now. Robert mentioned the torque that he enjoys from his EV. I've been in Teslas and gotta say I really love the acceleration of them! I think EVs are fine for those who live in cities and do not have long commutes.

However, not everyone lives like that. Some of us may have 90-mile round trips (or more) to work, and while most EV can handle that easily on a full charge, that doesn't include having to travel on days in addition to that when life gets busy (kids' games, school functions, night-on-the-town, driving trips to Disney, etc.)

There is also not a viable EV alternative for semi-trucks, farm vehicles, or other heavy machinery.

I will partially agree with Russell in his statement that EVs are not as clean as you may think, but only with the part that it depends where you live and how your charge your vehicle. If you have a charging pad connected to an array of solar panels or wind turbines, then you are getting very eco-friendly. If you still live in an area where the primary power source is coal burning ("clean" or otherwise), then how much of your carbon footprint are you really reducing?

Getting back to actual theme park discussions...

Autotopia and Tomorrowland Speedway changing to EV is long overdue. I don't thing EV is necessarily the permanent future, but it is much more so than those old and loud gas burning motors they are using now.

I just wanted a nice little article on a theme park switching to electric for a single ride, not another crazy political discussion....

End of the day, I like this change, Autopia and Speedway are long overdue for an update and it just sounds like it works better.

I'm with Robert, my model S puts me in the mind of Velocicoaster every morning on my way to work

I feel like this should have been done years ago? Unless they were waiting for the newly manufactured, cream of the crop vehicles?

I've never heard about electric attractions before! And I'm happy to know that our technologies have reached such a level. I'm telling about a level when it's used in such a general way as an attraction. I've read much additional info about it, and I'm happy to say that energy efficiency is an integral part of our life now, and that's great that it’s embedded in everyday life.