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Vektar Bike (Raleigh, 1985)
(i.imgur.com)
A place to share and discuss Cassette Futurism: media where the technology closely matches the computers and technology of the 70s and 80s.
Whether it's bright colors and geometric shapes, the tendency towards stark plainness, or the the lack of powerful computers and cell phones, Cassette Futurism includes: Cassettes, ROM chips, CRT displays, computers reminiscent of microcomputers like the Commodore 64, freestanding hi-fi systems, small LCD displays, and other analog technologies.
See this blog to know more.
I don’t think battery tech that was really practical for anything other than low speed, around town travel was actually practical until lithium ion batteries- those early electric cars and trucks only went short distances at a few miles an hour, where as gasoline cars were comparatively light and started going very fast/far very early.
Had we not had any alternative to electric, I have no doubt tech would have advanced faster in that area, but combustion was just so much more practical in so many ways that it was the better option at the time. It’s still true for a lot of use cases today- we need significant improvements to energy storage to make many classes of vehicle practical in all-electric (planes, freight trucks, trains, ships, heavy machinery, anything remote, anything that can’t have hours of downtime charging) to name a few.
They had lithium ion batteries in 1985. You could get lithium ion backed DRAM for the ZX-81, "keeps data for 10 years". Nothing like enough power to move a bicycle or anything.