Electric cars taking over the world?

[Derec]

I suspect that it will ultimately be cheaper, easier, and more effective to prevent the combustion of fossil fuels by simply manufacturing gasoline (or other liquid fuels) from non-fossil sources.

I don't know about that. Electric motors have some significant advantages over ICEs.
- lighter
- far simpler, one moving part vs. dozens or more for an advanced ICE, especially if you add things like turbos.
- much better torque response, meaning a fixed gear transmission suffices, further reducing complexity, improving efficiency and reliability (who doesn't hate having their transmission serviced?)
- pollution. Difficult to completely avoid even with synthetic fuels. For example, NO_x emissions are due to atmospheric nitrogen being burned.
- a motor is also a generator, allowing for regenerative braking. An ICE cannot make gasoline from water vapor and CO₂. It also does not need to run when standing, avoiding fuel wasted on idling.

That might mean using such things as bio-ethanol for cars and light vehicles, and vegetable oil based diesel fuels for trucks (The first diesel engines ran on peanut oil, and there is very little technical benefit to using mineral diesel instead* - it's done because it's cheaper; Electric trucks are even less likely to come to pass than widespread adoption of electric cars).

Biofuels are a mixed bag at best, and only subsidized because of powerful agricultural lobby.

More likely, IMO, light cars will run on synthetic octane, made using hydrocarbons, alcohols, CO₂, or a combination of these, in plants powered using non-fossil fuel derived electricity.

Electric motors for the win! But you can run electric motors via fuel cells on liquid fuels rather than (or in addition to) batteries. Right now hydrogen is preferred, but has big difficulties. Better would be something like ethanol. You would not burn it, the oxidation of ethanol and reduction of oxygen would occur separately, with electrons being diverted through the motor.

It's just easier to store the electrical energy from the grid in the form of a liquid fuel that is compatible with existing internal combustion engines, than it is to develop batteries that can be safely recharged fast enough to compete with pumping gas.

But existing ICEs are a dead end technology. They have become ridiculously complex to advance the twin goals of improving efficiency and reducing emissions (two opposing goals, as can be seen from the German diesel scandal). That pretty much all German manufacturers had to cheat to meet these goals with ICEs shows just how difficult it has become to improve upon these technologies.
I have shared this image before, but it shows just how complex modern ICEs have become.

Now, this is a high-end BMW V8, as found in cars such as M5. Most cars have simpler engines than this (still very complex compared to say a VW Bug engine from the 60s). But this is the engine that powers cars to whom Tesla Model S is a direct competitor. Model S has an engine with only one moving part, and which is connected to a transmission with only one gear, not eight.

Whether fuel cells or batteries (which are constantly improving) will win outright, or whether both will coexist in the marketplace, time will tell. But I am certain that by 2050, most cars will have electric motors and not ICEs. I can see some niche applications using ICEs long into the future, and certainly jet planes will need liquid fuels going forward. So it's hardly all or nothing.

Of course, either possibility is only worth bothering with if the grid power is generated without the combustion of coal, oil or gas.

Especially coal. But it would be a fallacy to say that we should not develop electric cars until the grid is (mostly) carbon-free. Both developments will (and have already) taken decades, so why should they not develop in parallel?

*In fact there are some significant benefits to use of vegetable, rather than mineral, oil for fuel in diesel engines, not least the lower levels of sulfur in vegetable oils.

Well, if you are one of the few on the block with a vegetable oil diesel, you can get often get your fuel free, courtesy of your local fast food joint. So that's an advantage. Plus, your exhaust smells like french fries, that's another bonus.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It depends what you are comparing it to. Oil is also wasteful considering we only have one planet and we're fucking it up. If we lose this planet how much do you think your percentage points put you ahead?

We can stick bio-fuel plants in some remote area and have them be 100% robotic. They'll fuel themselves. It's hard not to make a profit with that.

It's a question of technology.

You really need to educate yourself a little.

Well, that's annoying. I wrote a long answer that just got deleted. Here's the short version.

* We're producing more food than we've ever done.
* We're using about the same amount of farmland today as we did in the 1970'ies.
* We have about twice as many people on the planet now as we did in 1970.
* Farmed land is down from the peak in 1990. We're using about a third of the farmland.
* We had a surplus of food in 1970, and we have an even greater surplus of food now.
* This is because the green revolution and the computer revolution. Farming is just more efficient now.
* We have vast areals of empty decomissioned farmland just sitting there, doing nothing. And we don't need it for making food.
* Using this land to make bio-fuel has zero cost. Any yield is better than nothing.
* Even if we replace only half of a percentage of the petrol industry with bio-fuels it's still a net benefit. We still haven't lost anything.
* And more importantly, nobody will be starving because of this.

https://ourworldindata.org/yields-and-land-use-in-agriculture/

https://www.infoplease.com/world/population-statistics/total-population-world-decade-1950-2050

I think you need to educate yourself a lot.

 

[barbos]

You really need to educate yourself a little.

Well, that's annoying. I wrote a long answer that just got deleted. Here's the short version.

* We're producing more food than we've ever done.

I don't understand why are you bringing it up cause I never disputed that.

* We're using about the same amount of farmland today as we did in the 1970'ies.

I don't understand why are you bringing it up cause I never disputed that.

* We have about twice as many people on the planet now as we did in 1970.

I don't understand why are you bringing it up cause I never disputed that.

* Farmed land is down from the peak in 1990. We're using about a third of the farmland.

I don't understand why are you bringing it up cause I never disputed that.

* We had a surplus of food in 1970, and we have an even greater surplus of food now.

I don't understand why are you bringing it up cause I never disputed that.

* This is because the green revolution and the computer revolution. Farming is just more efficient now.

I don't understand why are you bringing it up cause I never disputed that.

* We have vast areals of empty decomissioned farmland just sitting there, doing nothing. And we don't need it for making food.

Define "vast" and why do you think it can be commissioned anyway? Do you think 100% of land can be put to "use" by farmers?

* Using this land to make bio-fuel has zero cost. Any yield is better than nothing.

That's patently not green.

* Even if we replace only half of a percentage of the petrol industry with bio-fuels it's still a net benefit. We still haven't lost anything.

As I explained to you, you can't replace even 10% without starving.

* And more importantly, nobody will be starving because of this.

That's patently false.

https://ourworldindata.org/yields-and-land-use-in-agriculture/

https://www.infoplease.com/world/population-statistics/total-population-world-decade-1950-2050

I think you need to educate yourself a lot.

Nope, it's you.

 

[DrZoidberg]

* Using this land to make bio-fuel has zero cost. Any yield is better than nothing.

That's patently not green.

I'm not sure what you mean? With green I mean zero or negative CO2 emissions. Which we get from the biofuel industry. Also, with electric cars biofuel will be all the more interesting, since there's plenty of biofuels that are high-yielding but aren't suitable to put into a car. With the added benefit of us not needing to have a car specifically built for any specific kind of biofuel.

If just 1% of the charge in an electric car comes from biofuel, it's still better than 0%. Using empty land for this, really has zero cost.

As I explained to you, you can't replace even 10% without starving.

But why are you bringing that up? How is this relevant? If we can't replace even 10% with bio-fuels then we won't. We'll replace it with as much as we can. Since anything is better than nothing, it's still good.

You have a very all-or-nothing view of biofuels. No, we can't replace all petrol with biofuels. But have you ever heard anybody (with a science degree) claiming that we can?

The research on biofuels is improving with heaps and bounds. It's getting better already. It's not inconceivable that we one day will find biofuels that will out-compete gasoline. Last time I checked the general attitude around biofuels is that it's still on the level of experimentation and basic science. Are you saying we should stop researching it?

* And more importantly, nobody will be starving because of this.

That's patently false.

Oh, really? You didn't look at the links, did you?

https://ourworldindata.org/yields-and-land-use-in-agriculture/

https://www.infoplease.com/world/population-statistics/total-population-world-decade-1950-2050

I think you need to educate yourself a lot.

Nope, it's you.

ha ha... you're busted. You didn't look at the links? Less talk, more reading from you.

 

[barbos]

That's patently not green.

I'm not sure what you mean? With green I mean zero or negative CO2 emissions. Which we get from the biofuel industry. Also, with electric cars biofuel will be all the more interesting, since there's plenty of biofuels that are high-yielding but aren't suitable to put into a car. With the added benefit of us not needing to have a car specifically built for any specific kind of biofuel.

If just 1% of the charge in an electric car comes from biofuel, it's still better than 0%. Using empty land for this, really has zero cost.

As I explained to you, you can't replace even 10% without starving.

But why are you bringing that up? How is this relevant? If we can't replace even 10% with bio-fuels then we won't. We'll replace it with as much as we can. Since anything is better than nothing, it's still good.

You have a very all-or-nothing view of biofuels. No, we can't replace all petrol with biofuels. But have you ever heard anybody (with a science degree) claiming that we can?

The research on biofuels is improving with heaps and bounds. It's getting better already. It's not inconceivable that we one day will find biofuels that will out-compete gasoline. Last time I checked the general attitude around biofuels is that it's still on the level of experimentation and basic science. Are you saying we should stop researching it?

* And more importantly, nobody will be starving because of this.

That's patently false.

Oh, really? You didn't look at the links, did you?

I don't need to read your stupid links.

https://ourworldindata.org/yields-and-land-use-in-agriculture/

https://www.infoplease.com/world/population-statistics/total-population-world-decade-1950-2050

I think you need to educate yourself a lot.

Nope, it's you.

ha ha... you're busted. You didn't look at the links? Less talk, more reading from you.

Why should I read your irrelevant links when you don't even read my posts before replying?

 

[barbos]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consumption
and simple math says that US consumes 10 liters of oil per day per person.
That's 40x more than average adult consumes in the form of food.
40 times more. yes people eat only part of the plant, lets just assume only quarter of the plant goes into actual food. You still left with the factor of 10. you need to grow 10x more to get oil replaced by bio-fuel. And I ignore that bio-fuel production is not 100% efficient process.

 

[Sarpedon]

Growing biofuel has no cost in theory, but in practice the cost of growing, harvesting processing and distributing all carry a carbon cost, and all reduce the efficiency of the system. There is doubt as to whether the efficiency is high enough to compete with other possible uses of the land. The ultimate goal of 'green' philosophy is maximum efficiency in use of resources. If you have to have a farm, make it an efficient farm. If you have to have a vehicle, use it as efficiently as possible. If you build a building, have it use as little energy and rare materials as possible, and have it generate as much of its own power as it can.

Biofuels, I think, will be no more than a useful supplemental form of energy, ideally created from food waste (which, as you say, is massive). Far better would be to reduce waste, and thus reduce land use for farming. Restoring forests, prairies and wetlands will have a far better impact on the environment than growing grain exclusively for fuel.

 

[barbos]

Growing biofuel has no cost in theory, but in practice the cost of growing, harvesting processing and distributing all carry a carbon cost, and all reduce the efficiency of the system. There is doubt as to whether the efficiency is high enough to compete with other possible uses of the land. The ultimate goal of 'green' philosophy is maximum efficiency in use of resources. If you have to have a farm, make it an efficient farm. If you have to have a vehicle, use it as efficiently as possible. If you build a building, have it use as little energy and rare materials as possible, and have it generate as much of its own power as it can.

Biofuels, I think, will be no more than a useful supplemental form of energy, ideally created from food waste (which, as you say, is massive). Far better would be to reduce waste, and thus reduce land use for farming. Restoring forests, prairies and wetlands will have a far better impact on the environment than growing grain exclusively for fuel.

food waste is massive only with respect to food itself. It is miniscule fraction of oil consumption.
There is no land for bio-fuel, especially from food crops such as corn. Corn ethanol is a scam and people should go to prison for that as far as I am concerned. Overall, farming itself is not sustainable in the long run, especially meat production.
Solar panels and batteries is the way to go, in fact it's already viable, unlike bio-fuel which will never be viable with plant photosynthesis efficiency less than a percent. And I would go further and make fully synthetic food at least for livestock.

 

[Malintent]

Far more people today are suffering from the effects of eating too much than are suffering from eating too little.

I find that hard to believe. I agree with you that the CURRENT* issue is not "space to grow", but it is the distribution of resources, globally... If you could provide a citation for that statement I would be keen to learn.

* CURRENT issue:

Farm-to-plate style nutrition is completely impossible for the vast majority of the modern (densely populated) world, due to limited space to grow. You can't feed NYC farm-fresh food using the farmland available in all of NYS. I think I read somewhere that if you wanted to feed just 1 major US city farm-fresh, organically grown food, then the rest of the country's land would have to be dedicated to that single effort.

 

[Malintent]

Growing biofuel has no cost in theory, but in practice the cost of growing, harvesting processing and distributing all carry a carbon cost, and all reduce the efficiency of the system. There is doubt as to whether the efficiency is high enough to compete with other possible uses of the land. The ultimate goal of 'green' philosophy is maximum efficiency in use of resources. If you have to have a farm, make it an efficient farm. If you have to have a vehicle, use it as efficiently as possible. If you build a building, have it use as little energy and rare materials as possible, and have it generate as much of its own power as it can.

Biofuels, I think, will be no more than a useful supplemental form of energy, ideally created from food waste (which, as you say, is massive). Far better would be to reduce waste, and thus reduce land use for farming. Restoring forests, prairies and wetlands will have a far better impact on the environment than growing grain exclusively for fuel.

I don't think the winning effort is to grow fuel on farmland. I have been reading about algae farms that grow fuel with very little overhead and practically no carbon footprint.. kind of like an organic solar panel made of tubes of algae-rich water.

 

[barbos]

I have been reading about algae farms that grow fuel with very little overhead and practically no carbon footprint.. kind of like an organic solar panel made of tubes of algae-rich water.

Except that it has huge carbon footprint.
You need to pump air (or better CO2) through these tubes with water. Algae needs CO2 to grow in case you did not know. In the end energy spent on pumping is few times higher then you get in the end in the form of fuel. In the open ocean you don't need to pump CO2 because wind does it for you.
So any attempts to intensify the process cause you to spend more energy then you get in the end.

Algae farming is a scam.

 

[Sarpedon]

and the cost of processing and the water and the cleaning of the tubes between batches, etc. I too wish algae could be raised for something besides agar, but it really can't.

 

[ronburgundy]

Algae farming is a scam.

Fortunately, it's a scam that probably won't cost us as much as the Ethanol scam, because the algae lobby isn't as powerful as the corn lobby.

 

[Sarpedon]

The shame is that there may be useful applications, but the fucking pie in the sky people are selling more than they can deliver.

 

[bilby]

Far more people today are suffering from the effects of eating too much than are suffering from eating too little.

I find that hard to believe. I agree with you that the CURRENT* issue is not "space to grow", but it is the distribution of resources, globally... If you could provide a citation for that statement I would be keen to learn.

* CURRENT issue:

Farm-to-plate style nutrition is completely impossible for the vast majority of the modern (densely populated) world, due to limited space to grow. You can't feed NYC farm-fresh food using the farmland available in all of NYS. I think I read somewhere that if you wanted to feed just 1 major US city farm-fresh, organically grown food, then the rest of the country's land would have to be dedicated to that single effort.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)30054-X/abstract

The worldwide percentage of men who were clinically underweight in 2014 was 8.8%, and of women, 9.7%

The worldwide percentage of men who were clinically obese in 2014 was 10.8%, and of women, 14.9%

In 1974, far more people were underweight than were obese.



Farm to plate food is not needful; malnutrition and starvation are both rare in large cities, and where they do occur are typically due to ignorance rather than unavailability of better foods.

'Organic' is a scam, whereby lower quality foods are sold for higher prices to gullible morons.

There's no reason why New Yorkers shouldn't eat food grown on the other side of the world; modern containerised shipping is incredibly cheap and efficient. Why would we want to discard it in favour of some naturalistic fallacy driven dogma about eating local produce?

If we are worried about using fossil fuels for shipping (and it's certainly lower down the priority list than their use for electricity generation and road transport), then we can use nuclear power - it's ideal for use in large ships, as the navy can demonstrate.

 

[barbos]

The shame is that there may be useful applications, but the fucking pie in the sky people are selling more than they can deliver.

That's how you get funding if you are researcher - you know it can't be done but if public is convinced it can then you play along and take their money.

 

[TSwizzle]

The shame is that there may be useful applications, but the fucking pie in the sky people are selling more than they can deliver.

That's how you get funding if you are researcher - you know it can't be done but if public is convinced it can then you play along and take their money.

Very true, particularly in the AGW sphere.

 

[DrZoidberg]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consumption
and simple math says that US consumes 10 liters of oil per day per person.
That's 40x more than average adult consumes in the form of food.
40 times more. yes people eat only part of the plant, lets just assume only quarter of the plant goes into actual food. You still left with the factor of 10. you need to grow 10x more to get oil replaced by bio-fuel. And I ignore that bio-fuel production is not 100% efficient process.

But why would anybody even try? Why do we need to replace all of it with biofuel?

You are arguing against a straw man. I think you've misunderstood what biofuel proponents are trying to do. You want them to stop doing something they never have done or tried to do.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I have been reading about algae farms that grow fuel with very little overhead and practically no carbon footprint.. kind of like an organic solar panel made of tubes of algae-rich water.

Except that it has huge carbon footprint.
You need to pump air (or better CO2) through these tubes with water. Algae needs CO2 to grow in case you did not know. In the end energy spent on pumping is few times higher then you get in the end in the form of fuel. In the open ocean you don't need to pump CO2 because wind does it for you.
So any attempts to intensify the process cause you to spend more energy then you get in the end.

Algae farming is a scam.

It's still basic science. I don't understand what your problem with science is? I'm just happy researchers are studying it. It is a huge potential. You can't argue that.

Whether or not they make it work is another matter. But neither you or I knows this

- - - Updated - - -

The shame is that there may be useful applications, but the fucking pie in the sky people are selling more than they can deliver.

That's how you get funding if you are researcher - you know it can't be done but if public is convinced it can then you play along and take their money.

Stop talking shit. You don't know this. It is a huge potential

 

[barbos]

Except that it has huge carbon footprint.
You need to pump air (or better CO2) through these tubes with water. Algae needs CO2 to grow in case you did not know. In the end energy spent on pumping is few times higher then you get in the end in the form of fuel. In the open ocean you don't need to pump CO2 because wind does it for you.
So any attempts to intensify the process cause you to spend more energy then you get in the end.

Algae farming is a scam.

It's still basic science. I don't understand what your problem with science is? I'm just happy researchers are studying it. It is a huge potential. You can't argue that.

Basic science says that when you put in 10 times more energy than you get out you failed. Yet these people call it success

Whether or not they make it work is another matter. But neither you or I knows this

- - - Updated - - -

The shame is that there may be useful applications, but the fucking pie in the sky people are selling more than they can deliver.

That's how you get funding if you are researcher - you know it can't be done but if public is convinced it can then you play along and take their money.

Stop talking shit. You don't know this. It is a huge potential

I know this, it's you who does not know.