Electric cars.

[hoppyscotty]

The reality is that there will be a mix of different powertrains going forward. Battery EV's have their place as do hybrids and good old ICE is not going away no matter how hard politicians try to rig things to coerce people and take away their freedom of choice. The reality is that ICE cars running on synthetic sustainable fuels is the optimal solution if there were to be a one solution for all. The fuel can be manufactured from renewable energy sources, transported via existing and conventional fossil fuel infrastructure, can be used in current cars avoiding making millions of cars obsolete overnight, and avoids all the problems of mass battery manufacture, massive global transfer of technology and manufacturing power to China which is a huge security risk that most people seem to ignore or not recognise as a problem.

 

[hoppyscotty]

The oil companies have spent over $2bn on EV propaganda. They use AI to generate headlines.

Utter nonsense. Oil companies are investing hundreds of billions of pounds inventing new renewable and clean technologies to enable net zero. They are key to achieving net zero and demonising them is shooting yourself in the foot.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Why didn't LPG take off i remember it being installed in a garage here and a few installers popped up but it flopped.

 

[old dog new tricks]

Why didn't LPG take off i remember it being installed in a garage here and a few installers popped up but it flopped.

The nail in the coffin was applying tax to it that killed it.

Was inefficient and had safety risks but made a big gas guzzler almost paletable

 

[hoppyscotty]

LPG is a classic example of a lost opportunity. Gas is alot alot alot cleaner than oil. The US has seen huge CO2 emissions reduction over recent years and it's mostly from their transition from oil to shale gas. Moving to LPG for cars would be a very beneficial interim step and relatively low cost.

Sure you dont get the same energy density from gas....Think people I knew that had dual fuel cars had an LPG tank of around 50 litre capacity, which got them about 150 - 200 miles vs 450 - 500 miles out of about 65 litres of diesel (though my old BMW M2 got about 200 miles from 65 litres) so very manageable for most people. Fill up time, which is what is really important to people, was similar to that of petrol/diesel, cost was comparable.

But I maintain the optimal initial solution for cars is sustainable fuels. We have the technology already, just needs scaling up and productionising (where the 'big bad' oil companies come in), is already being implemented in very very small and niche scales, doesn't consign current global supply chains and cars and infrastructure to the scrap heap overnight, and will provide an indefinitely sustainable transition to whatever technology wins out in the future, wether that be battery EV, hybrid, hydrogen or whatever else. Pushing for battery tech at the pace we are will cause (and is cuasing) such a CO2 debt it will take centuries to pay off once we achieve net zero and cost so much money causing such a devastating affect on our global economic growth that it will be far more harmful to human life and the environment than if we did nothing at all. It's a path that is being pushed by politicians for political reasons, not engineers and scientists charged with fixing a problem - which is what engineers and scientists do well and politicians don't do well at all.

 

[Rodcx500z]

Dacia do a range of bi fuel cars, no i don't have one https://www.dacia.co.uk/dacia-lpg.html

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Wow they've come on a bit -

Its a shame Marcel Marceau did the review

 

[Rodcx500z]

Wow they've come on a bit -

Its a shame Marcel Marceau did the review

I had one when mine was in for a service, it was a duster and to be fair i think it was very good, i would consider the bi fuel one

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Can you still get LPG

 

[Alastair70]

I said it before and i will say it again electric is the wrong way forward, and no i have no statistics to prove it i just know, i also have a nagging feeling in my head that they ie governments VW volvo know as well, Hydrogen is the way or electric hybrid, take a cateraman they have twin engines with high output alternaters that supply enough power you don't need a generater they supply all the power you need to charge your battery bank for total off shore living.

Hydrogen is a great local solution and it will have its place. But that place will be recharging EV’s for wider use and fuelling local transport +\- carbon capture in the immediate area. But that technology is a decade away at least.
In the meantime EV’s are a viable functioning alternative to fossil fuelled vehicles. Hybrids make no sense as they’re still dependent on fossil fuels. The carbon footprint of extracting, refining and transport of fossil energy is often ignored when people are talking about this issue. (And I don’t mean just in this thread, I mean everywhere).

 

[jof]

I see problem with hybrid is that it give you the complexity of both engine types, hence higher cost of ownership for those of us that can only afford 2nd hand out of warranty vehicles

 

[Alastair70]

I see problem with hybrid is that it give you the complexity of both engine types, hence higher cost of ownership for those of us that can only afford 2nd hand out of warranty vehicles

That’s another very valid point
I was thinking just from the environmental perspective.

 

[Fire]

Can you still get LPG

Yes they sell it at Morrisons near me, but it is only a penny cheaper than unleaded

 

[hoppyscotty]

Problem with hydrogen, just like batteries, is energy density. Energy density trumps efficiency any day. BMW did a demonstration vehicle to show what a hydrogen car of the future might be...they took a BMW 7 series, a pretty large vehicle, took out the back seats reducing such a huge vehicle to a two seater so they could fill the space with fuel tank. such is the difference in energy density between diesel/petrol and hydrogen to get similar mileage from a 'tank'. Also with hydrogen is because its the smallest molecule in the universe its impossible to seal so that make transporting it via pipes and tanks tricky without accepting a reasonably large amount of losses via leaks in the system.

Just to compare energy densities again...the uk has just spend many billions of pounds on the largest battery farm somewhere in the UK....it stores the same amount of energy as a typical fuel bowser you might see at an airport that contains enough Jet A1 fuel to fill up an A320...the type of aircraft you might fly on to your holidays...so flies 230 or so passengers upto 4 hours or 2000 miles or so. So all that energy, for all the inefficiencies of a combustion engine (actually about 45% efficient), fits into a non-articulated lorry. The many billions of pounds of battery farm that is roughly the same energy storage capacity takes up 5 acres of land....and such is the consumption of electricity would only provide power for a small town for a matter of minutes. OK the point of a battery farm is not to provide 100% of the power to a town, but to buffer the energy of the nearby solar farm that takes up another several acres of land, but you get my gist. Electricity might be efficient, but thanks to the inefficiencies of the renewable generation and the poor energy density of electricity sotreag, at a systems level it is not efficient...solar panels at best can only convert about 20% of the energy that falls on them to electricity so you need many many many acres of panels to get any meaninflull energy. And wind turbines are not much better.

By comparison synthetic sustainable fuel has an energy density much much closer to diesel and petrol, so by running your car off it, you might achieve about 20-30% lower mileage from a full tank for the same performance level. And you can run other vehicles from it like aircraft, tractors, mining equipment, boats, ferries and large vessels etc from it with minor modifications which are all basically impossible to electrify, but are so crucial to our modern way of life.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

OK the point of a battery farm is not to provide 100% of the power to a town, but to buffer the energy of the nearby solar farm that takes up another several acres of land, but you get my gist. Electricity might be efficient, but thanks to the inefficiencies of the renewable generation and the poor energy density of electricity sotreag, at a systems level it is not efficient...solar panels at best can only convert about 20% of the energy that falls on them to electricity so you need many many many acres of panels to get any meaninflull energy. And wind turbines are not much better.

That first one is a pretty bloody major point.

And at least with renewables the starting energy arrives free in the UK so it's a lot less important if 80% is not used. Compare that with hydrocarbons that have to be bought from (or at least have the marginal price set by) Russia and/or the Middle East. We've already seen how volatility from Russia can eg push unsubisidised gas prices over £1/unit, do you have a plan to ensure peace in Russia and the Middle East?

By comparison synthetic sustainable fuel has an energy density much much closer to diesel and petrol, so by running your car off it, you might achieve about 20-30% lower mileage from a full tank for the same performance level. And you can run other vehicles from it like aircraft, tractors, mining equipment, boats, ferries and large vessels etc from it with minor modifications which are all basically impossible to electrify, but are so crucial to our modern way of life.

Trouble with synthetic fuel is that it combines the inefficiency of hydrogen production with the inefficiency of ICE combustion. And all that inefficiency ensures it will always be relatively expensive compared to batteries. There will be a handful of applications where the energy density is going to be crucial - heavy aviation is likely one of them but we're already seeing all-electric light aircraft and it looks like that may extend into some smaller passenger planes. But since you like system thinking, try this (it's from 2017 so the EV numbers are rather out of date, EV's are now in the mid-80s% rather than the 75% implied here) :