Bill Nye believes NASCAR could change the world

This NASCAR, if it was electric,
could change the world.

I have roots in the southern United States. My mom was from Durham, North Carolina, and my sister, nephew, nieces, spouses, their exes, kids and more kids live in and around Danville, Virginia. Around there, it’s a big deal to go to the races. The boys of various ages, and occasionally some of the girls and women, will pile into vehicles to go see races in South Boston or other tracks nearby. I’ve been to the track in  – the ‘paper clip’ – which is still the shortest track on the NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) circuit. It’s less than a kilometre long, only half a mile. But it is exciting. The cars go just crazy fast, and they are amazingly loud … or LOUD!! But beyond the heart-pounding, Are-these-cars-going-to-jump-the-barrier-and-kill-me? exciting quality of it, it’s depressing – leastways depressing for me as an engineer. Because here I am trying to envision the smart, efficient transportation technology of tomorrow, and there is NASCAR doing the opposite – celebrating a very old transportation technology of yesterday.

Despite the excitement, NASCAR kinda breaks my heart. It’s a celebration of old tech. It uses gasoline-burning instead of electron-flowing. I wish NASCAR were more like NASA. I wish NASCAR were more about the future instead of the past. I wish NASCAR set up Grand Challenges to inspire companies and individuals to create novel automotive technologies in the way NASA does to create novel space technologies. At NASA currently, there are challenges to come up with techniques to mine an asteroid, build a better space suit, and survive the radiation environment in deep space. Those competitions are like races, with winners getting significant grant money. Or look at Google, which created the Lunar XPrize, a genuine competition to see which private group can land a robot on the Moon and send pictures back. There’s no reason why NASCAR couldn’t be like that: a race with rules designed to reward the coolest, most advanced vehicle technologies.

Read the Bill Nye story on Aeon - “If NASCAR embraced electric cars it could change the world.”