Tomorrow's battery medium

t would

In Australia there some talk about transporting hydrogen as ammonia.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation has develo ped a cheap catalyst for breaking down ammonia to hydrogen. It would be gre at for hydrogen tanking station for cars, but the process of cleaning up th e waste nitrogen stream requires relatively bulky gear that wouldn't fit in a car or truck.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman
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Cheers

--
Clive
Reply to
Clive Arthur

On a sunny day (Mon, 15 Oct 2018 12:17:35 +0100) it happened Clive Arthur wrote in :

Oh, a bit of introspection from the fishsicks community, I have made the joke of getting the right answer from the wrong reasoning before here:

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That really cheared me up :-)

Reply to
<698839253X6D445TD

Let's look at these one at a time.

Long filling times...

Mostly this is not an issue. People seldom take long trips requiring a ref ueling in the trip. Most driving is close to home. Electric cars can be c harged at home, work or while shopping. Yes, it will take a bit of infrast ructure to bring charging up to speed, but it is not as great an investment as building hydrogen distribution centers in parallel with the gasoline di stribution system.

Shorter distances per fill...

Technically this may be true, but again it doesn't have significant impact. A friend has a Nissan with a ~10 gal gas tank and can go less than 300 mi les before recharging... er, refueling. That is the shortest range auto I' ve seen, but it's not hugely different from many cars and about the same as my Tesla. The real issue with the Tesla is the spacing of chargers. When I got the car I took a trip from around Washington, DC to Houston TX. In the beginning I had to stop every 200 miles or so because the next charger was too far away. As I gained experience with the car I got better at seei ng just how far I could go on the remaining charge and more than once pulli ng into a charging station with less than 20 miles left in the "tank". Th is allowed me to skip chargers.

Again, as the charging network is filled out this will become a moot point. Notice I didn't have to mention the various new battery designs they are working on which will allow batteries that are cheaper and/or give longer r anges. They aren't 20 years out, some are just five years away from being driven.

"you need to get the electricity to the charge points"...

Uh, exactly what is the problem here? I've read in some UK forums that the ir electrical infrastructure is teetering on the verge of dysfunction. I d on't know how realistic that painting is, but this is not remotely true in the US. In fact, car charging has potential to help with the peak demand u sage problem. Cars can be charged at night as controlled by the utility (r equires a better watchdog than we presently have) utilizing excess generati ng and transmission capacity in our system. I can't say for sure the distr ibution system will not require changes, but with proper control the many c ars can be multiplexed to minimize the impact.

In other words, I don't presently see a problem and we likely can easily av oid a problem in the future.

This analysis is based on assumptions that are not valid. "Charge points" won't be like gas stations. They will be distributed (mostly at home) and used for charging when you aren't using the car rather than going out of yo ur way to waste your time at service stations. So throw your "gas station" equivalent model out the window and stop looking at the world through "pet roleum eyes".

t would

I think the above hugely complex description shows just how bad an idea hyd rogen fueled cars are. If anyone starts building a hydrogen infrastructure it will most likely become the "steam powered car" of the millennium.

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

Clive Arthur wrote in news:pq1t0j$bnl$1@dont- email.me:

Stupid shit from a stupid f*ck.

Not you... the 'artist'.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

True, and electric cars are fine for such uses today. But they are severely limited when you occasionally need a longer trip.

Here in Norway, electric cars are extremely popular - we have clean and cheap electricity, low taxes, tolls, ferry tickets, etc. for electric cars, while we have expensive fuel and high taxes on petrol and diesel cars. We have a higher proportion of electric cars than anywhere else in the world - about 25% of new cars sold here are pure electric, and

15% are plugin hybrids.

But they are mostly second cars in a family - you need a petrol or diesel car for going longer distances conveniently. Sure, it is /possible/ to travel longer distances in an electric car - especially Teslas with their longer range and faster charger stations. But it takes more planning and trip time.

You can charge at home - if you don't mind charging overnight, and if you have enough amps in your house supply. (We looked at getting an electric car recently, and concluded that we'd need a bigger main fuse for the house, with corresponding upgrades on other parts of the electrical system, to cope with charging in the winter when there is electric heating on.) You can charge while shopping - if you shop somewhere that has charging units, and there is one free. And if you have driven to the shopping centre and are reliant on the charge to get home, what do you do if the chargers are all in use?

If the majority of your travel is short, and you live in a city where there are lots of chargers at shopping centres and supermarkets, and you have a solid mains supply to your house, then electric vehicles are great. But there is a very large gap of usage that they simply cannot cover as yet.

And if electric cars get too popular (in terms of distance usage, not just numbers), many of their advantages and workarounds will disappear. Tax breaks and toll reductions will dry up - we are seeing that here. Competition for charger spots will increase, and challenges to the electrical grids and supply infrastructure will increase. It's fine to provide power for a few people in a neighbourhood to have fast chargers in their garage - but when lots want them, the electricity companies will have to refuse because they don't have the line capacity.

The key advantages of hydrogen (or other liquid fuel) distribution over electricity distribution is that you don't have to build infrastructure between nodes - you just use trucks, rail, boat, whatever, and you can have flexible storage. Until someone invents capacitors in the kilofarad range at 100 kV, buffering electricity is going to be an increasing problem.

Teslas suffer from the distance problem less than other electric cars. But they have a large price tag to go with it. And they look absolutely hideous on the inside - it's like an overgrown computer toy rather than a car. (Okay, perhaps that last point is somewhat subjective!)

Certainly it is possible to handle the problems to some extend - and with bigger batteries and remotely controlled off-peak charging you can relieve the strain on the grid a good deal. Fast chargers, however, will be wanted at peak times.

Most electric cars get most of their charging at home. But when travelling further, people will want petrol station style charging. Home chargers will do top-ups for your average usage - for your 30 km normal daily drive, or whatever. Fast charge stations are needed for longer distances and they need a /lot/ of power - they will be pulling

100 times or more current than your home charger. At the moment, this is not a big issue because people generally take their petrol cars for the longer distance, and there is only a relatively small proportion of long trips by electric cars.

So the "petrol station equivalent model" is still vital in a world of electric cars, even though they would be used significantly less than they are now.

I disagree - though I think it is entirely possible that we'll see ammonia, formic acid, methanol, or something other than pure hydrogen. I think the transport of large quantities of electricity is too difficult, the investment in bigger power grids too expensive, and the buffering of electricity is too impractical for a mass change to electric cars.

But there are potential technologies that would change my mind. Cheap, compact, environmentally friendly and efficient bulk storage of charge would be one thing. If local power distribution nodes could have, say, flow batteries to buffer charge then you could have a much more flexible and reliable system with much smaller peak currents. Ideally you'd want to change over to DC power distribution - that would be a big investment.

This is all speculation, of course - there are many factors that can affect things. We can dig out this thread in a decade or two, and see how it compares to reality.

Reply to
David Brown

You mean like my 4,000 mile trip to Houston and back? I didn't feel "sever ely limited". In fact at one charging point I was going to get lunch and e nded up spending an hour talking to folks who owned a pair of Model 3s.

Electric cars are a different paradigm for sure. But if they had happened first and everyone was used to them you would be complaining that you can't fill your gas tank at home and have to always be driving to gas stations t o refuel with that smelly, nasty stuff that can get on your hands, shoes an d stink up the car when spilled! Ugh.

That is the thing I like best about my Tesla. I don't have to stop at gas stations anymore. They are the pits! I much prefer the Panera Bread store s near the Tesla Superchargers.

If you spend more than five minutes planning charging for a trip you are ov erthinking it. Like many who haven't really looked at electric cars much y ou just don't actually know about it.

If you can't add a 50 amp electric outlet your wiring must be pretty primit ive. In the US we have been installing 200 amp service for many decades. I have a house built in the 60s by my dad who was perpetually cheap and onl y installed 100 amp service and I can still add an outlet that will charge overnight.

You are just looking for every negative thing you can dredge up. What happ ens if you drive to the store and you don't have enough gas to get to a gas station? Stop being absurd. If you don't like electric cars, don't buy o ne. But please stop being unreasonable about them.

I understand that BEVs may not be good for some people, but for the vast ma jority they are just fine. Most of your arguments are silly and not based in experience. I especially like your use of the term, "solid mains supply ". lol

Basically your arguments are not based in reality and would be considered F UD by most, not the least because they fail to consider that electric cars and infrastructure is young and growing, inexpensively growing compared to other potential technologies. Your arguments for hydrogen are not based in fact and require major advances in technology. In other words, pie in the sky.

You mean totally subjective?

The model 3 is price competitive. I test drove a Ridge Runner truck the ot her day and it was in the $40k range. That's not much different than a Mod el 3.

Again I think you only see the world through you own eyes and fail to under stand that the "issues" you raise will be dealt with in a few years or are really not issues at all. There will be no major peak time charging infras tructure needed. Just as people are aware of how much gas they have in the ir tank, people will be aware of their battery charge and keep it topped of f easily.

You mean the smell and mess? No, I think they will want electric car style charging, clean, simple and next door to a good lunch restaurant.

Hardly. 50 amp or even 90 amp circuits at home are the norm. 100 kW is yo ur typical Supercharger. I believe they are working to double that in the future.

Mostly because of how the charging is setup in your country obviously. Her e cross-country is much easier.

I don't agree at all. The gas station model is the worst possible.

be

Your ideas are a bit strange. We already transport enormous quantities of electric power. If you do the math properly you will find there is current ly sufficient electrical power to charge a very large number of cars as lon g as it is not at peak times.

This is the worst thing you've come up with yet, charging batteries from ba tteries. Totally unneeded. You think it is needed because you can't let g o of the gas station model. That will become a dinosaur ultimately.

How about in five years? I think forward vision will be a *lot* more clear then.

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

get off the ground. Coal & gas are mined, hydrogen can't be. At best it's j ust energy converted from one form to a less practical one at significant c ost.

k at the numbers. Practical it is not.

feel free to make a rough estimate.

or prime time. Yeah, it requires converting energy from one form to anothe r, but so does *every* power source for cars. Gasoline *uses* power for re fining, cracking, etc.

the point is that H2 requires an extra step, and for no gain. So practicall y it's a nonstarter. It's just more expensive & harder to handle.

I've seen various numbers for the electricity used, but here is an intere sting one.

it seems to works well enough. I do wonder though if cars could be made to work on LSC (light sweet crude). IC engines can't handle the tars so they'd use the exhaust heat to refine the crude, optionally producing a range of saleable chemicals as well as running on them. And use the exhaust heat aga in to crack long chain stuff to more usable chemicals.

If that system is ever implemented you could then chuck in a fair bit of wa ste material too. Wood chips, some plastics, food waste, grass etc.

c vehicles when refineries are shut down.

no sensible person is about to shut down refineries. The only possible reas on to do so would be the above scenario of cars refining their own fuel.

rgy. Bottom line is I can drive a BEV with a fuel cost of around $0.04 per mile. The fuel cost of running a gasoline vehicle is presently around $0.

10 per mile. So clearly there is a net energy savings somewhere in the pro cess.

one is heavily taxed, the other isn't

Even if an electric drive system turns out to be more efficient than a dies el or petrol, it also has to lug a lot more weight and has many other downs ides, some of which are show stoppers for large scale deployment.

NT

etween the source and end points for gasoline and BEVs. But that only cons idered the amount of energy input at the beginning and the energy reaching the car. Significant amounts of energy must be used in the process and it is likely much greater in gasoline produced for cars.

Reply to
tabbypurr

that only makes them practical for a minority of users

will it?

12 fill/charge points, a common number for petrol stations, is then 18MW.

Batteries are not even vaguely a practical answer to that issue. The only realistic possibility is for charging stations to incorporate the energy generation. 18MW nuclear is not practical, so that leaves solid fuel s, liquid fuels or gases. No, 18MW all day long every day from PV is not pr actical. Ditto windmills.

(swapping tanks would be easier.) But H2 is hugely inferior to liquid fuels as well as more cost.

t would

ie it's ideal where ideal means hopelessly inefficient/expensive and thus u n-green

and the winner? gasoline, diesel etc

no such animal exists

again if ideal means hopelessly expensive & inefficient.

the peak oil people utterly miss the point. Exploration costs money so no-o ne explores for far future reserves. They will only do that when they belie ve it's prudent to spend the money doing so. Peak oil is a simple failure t o comprehend this.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Take a lesson from your neighbours and make a giant Scalextric track...

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Cheers

--
Clive
Reply to
Clive Arthur

gnuarm wrote

IMO your view of reality is severely limited to your own 'scene'. Here people park their car in front of the house, IF there is space, running your charging cable over the sidewalk will get you in trouble. Maybe run for 40 or 50 meters too if you need to park a bit further.. Losses, tangled mess, no way.

In the cities people live in flats, cars parked outside, or if you are lucky in some sort of garage. In short forget about charging overnight. So now everybody needs to go and wait an hour to charge,

The electric grid here is in no way capable of the power your need. Somebody do the math, the number of cars multiplied by .. You do not even have enough power stations.

It is a dream, a usable reality only for a few, totally unpractical, and an enormous load on the environment to replace that battery pack every few years...

Reply to
<698839253X6D445TD

it's just another topic on which he's confident but short of basic knowledge.

Reply to
tabbypurr

:

r get off the ground. Coal & gas are mined, hydrogen can't be. At best it's just energy converted from one form to a less practical one at significant cost.

ook at the numbers. Practical it is not.

Not very useful unless there is no other data. It's not my point so I'll r efrain from making up numbers. Unless you can show some credible data I'll assume your point is null.

for prime time. Yeah, it requires converting energy from one form to anot her, but so does *every* power source for cars. Gasoline *uses* power for refining, cracking, etc.

lly it's a nonstarter. It's just more expensive & harder to handle.

I read up on it a little and I don't see where it is so bad. Electrolysis is 70-80% efficient and the electricity can come from sources other than ca rbon.

My problem is hydrogen is the amount of time it will take to develop the ca rs and an infrastructure. That is likely some 20 years off before it even starts to look attractive.

resting one.

o work on LSC (light sweet crude). IC engines can't handle the tars so they 'd use the exhaust heat to refine the crude, optionally producing a range o f saleable chemicals as well as running on them. And use the exhaust heat a gain to crack long chain stuff to more usable chemicals.

Let us know when you have that perfected.

waste material too. Wood chips, some plastics, food waste, grass etc.

Maybe that will do well in West Virginia.

ric vehicles when refineries are shut down.

ason to do so would be the above scenario of cars refining their own fuel.

Of course not. Refineries are needed to refine petroleum for many things s o they *all* can't be shut down. But they won't be needed to provide fuel for electric cars which will eliminate a great number of refineries and a l ot of excess energy use involved.

nergy. Bottom line is I can drive a BEV with a fuel cost of around $0.04 p er mile. The fuel cost of running a gasoline vehicle is presently around $

0.10 per mile. So clearly there is a net energy savings somewhere in the p rocess.

You need to do your research. Gas taxes in the US are not very high. So t hat's not the reason.

esel or petrol, it also has to lug a lot more weight and has many other dow nsides, some of which are show stoppers for large scale deployment.

All of which is accounted for in the price of electricity vs. gasoline. Ac tually, I will be paying half my former electric rates to charge the car of f peak. :)

between the source and end points for gasoline and BEVs. But that only co nsidered the amount of energy input at the beginning and the energy reachin g the car. Significant amounts of energy must be used in the process and i t is likely much greater in gasoline produced for cars.

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

Good thing 18 MW is a BS number. I've charged at Superchargers by malls. How many MW is a 50 store mall powered from?

Except for that pesky carbon...

In 10 or 15 years we can buy all the Thorium reactors we wish from China.

That and the fact that we won't need it if we develop alternatives which we will.

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

te:

ver get off the ground. Coal & gas are mined, hydrogen can't be. At best it 's just energy converted from one form to a less practical one at significa nt cost.

look at the numbers. Practical it is not.

refrain from making up numbers. Unless you can show some credible data I' ll assume your point is null.

whoosh

dy for prime time. Yeah, it requires converting energy from one form to an other, but so does *every* power source for cars. Gasoline *uses* power fo r refining, cracking, etc.

cally it's a nonstarter. It's just more expensive & harder to handle.

s is 70-80% efficient and the electricity can come from sources other than carbon.

so you accept it does increase cost and energy use.

cars and an infrastructure. That is likely some 20 years off before it eve n starts to look attractive.

teresting one.

to work on LSC (light sweet crude). IC engines can't handle the tars so th ey'd use the exhaust heat to refine the crude, optionally producing a range of saleable chemicals as well as running on them. And use the exhaust heat again to crack long chain stuff to more usable chemicals.

I'm not working on it. Having played with crude distillation in the distant past it's not especially complex. People do it in shacks in the 3rd world.

f waste material too. Wood chips, some plastics, food waste, grass etc.

it's a plus everywhere

ctric vehicles when refineries are shut down.

reason to do so would be the above scenario of cars refining their own fuel .

so they *all* can't be shut down. But they won't be needed to provide fue l for electric cars which will eliminate a great number of refineries and a lot of excess energy use involved.

the majority of cars will not go electric for obvious reasons.

energy. Bottom line is I can drive a BEV with a fuel cost of around $0.04 per mile. The fuel cost of running a gasoline vehicle is presently around $0.10 per mile. So clearly there is a net energy savings somewhere in the process.

that's not the reason.

diesel or petrol, it also has to lug a lot more weight and has many other d ownsides, some of which are show stoppers for large scale deployment.

I'm not making any sense of that point

r off peak. :)

on between the source and end points for gasoline and BEVs. But that only considered the amount of energy input at the beginning and the energy reach ing the car. Significant amounts of energy must be used in the process and it is likely much greater in gasoline produced for cars.

The problem is the same as ever, you're overconfident.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Have fun discussing it. ICBA, too many errors.

Reply to
tabbypurr

:

r get off the ground. Coal & gas are mined, hydrogen can't be. At best it's just energy converted from one form to a less practical one at significant cost.

ook at the numbers. Practical it is not.

You've claimed to have "looked at the numbers".

Give us a link to the numbers that you have looked at.

for prime time. Yeah, it requires converting energy from one form to anot her, but so does *every* power source for cars. Gasoline *uses* power for refining, cracking, etc.

lly it's a nonstarter. It's just more expensive & harder to handle.

NT seems to imagine that gasoline comes out of crude oil without an interme diate processing.

resting one.

o work on LSC (light sweet crude). IC engines can't handle the tars so they 'd use the exhaust heat to refine the crude, optionally producing a range o f saleable chemicals as well as running on them. And use the exhaust heat a gain to crack long chain stuff to more usable chemicals.

Right. Build the oil refinery into the car. And all the instrumentation tha t keeps track of the physical conditions along the various stages of the ca talytic cracking involved.

waste material too. Wood chips, some plastics, food waste, grass etc.

And NT's brain, which clearly doesn't work.

ric vehicles when refineries are shut down.

ason to do so would be the above scenario of cars refining their own fuel.

The extremely plausible reason is that we can't persist in burning fossil c arbon as fuel. We'll still need refineries to service other markets, but no where near as many.

nergy. Bottom line is I can drive a BEV with a fuel cost of around $0.04 p er mile. The fuel cost of running a gasoline vehicle is presently around $

0.10 per mile. So clearly there is a net energy savings somewhere in the p rocess.

Fuel that is burnt in consumer-owned vehicles is more heavily taxed than - say - the fuel that is burnt to generate electricity.

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In Australia about a third of the price we pay for petrol is valued-added t ax (10%) and excise $A0.412 per litre (about 25% of the current current pri ce - about $A1.65 per litre).

esel or petrol, it also has to lug a lot more weight and has many other dow nsides, some of which are show stoppers for large scale deployment.

For years hybrid vehicles have been lugging around a - small - internal com bustion engine along with a complete electric drive system, including batte ry, and delivering better to fuel economy to happy customers.

Take out the internal combustion engine and the petrol tank, and the custom ers are going to be even happier.

NT lives in cloud-cuckoo land.

Bumping up the electricity generating system to deliver all the extra energ y now being generated by burning fuel in internal combustion engines is goi ng to take capital investment, but rebuilding all our port cities to cope w ith ten metres sea level rise would probably be even more expensive.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Why?

d

Seems likely.

But most electric cars are going to be recharged where they are parked, whi le they are parked.

"Petrol stations" will become much less numerous.

d

e energy generation. 18MW nuclear is not practical, so that leaves solid fu els, liquid fuels or gases. No, 18MW all day long every day from PV is not practical. Ditto windmills.

Idiocy. Electric cars will get recharged where they are parked, from the sa me electric distribution network (somewhat beefed up) that we already have.

ls as well as more cost.

Even liquid hydrogen is bulkier than gasoline or liquified natural gas, but it's not a show stopper - even for aviation.

it would

un-green.

Bizarre logic. NT can't provide a quantitative measure of what he means by "hopelessly inefficient/expensive" and doesn't seem to be capable of realis ing that he should.

e

Ammonia has some fans.

Only if you are prepared to keeping on trashing the planet.

One degree Kelvin of anthropogenic global warming has delivered a couple of spectacular hurricanes to the US east coast this year, and more warming wi ll make the hurricanes even more intense

Solar panels and wind farms do pretty well.

e

Wind power is cheaper than power produced by burning fossil carbon, and sol ar panels - which currently generate about 1.7% of the world's electricity

- seems to be as cheap.

formatting link

Another increase of a factor of ten in the volume of solar panel will halve the unit cost again, and make it the cheapest source.

NT's claim of "hopelessly expensive" seems to be ill-informed. His claim of "inefficient" is demented nonsense - efficiency is power out as a proporti on of power in, and doesn't come into any discussion of exploiting wind pow er and solar radiation.

-one explores for far future reserves. They will only do that when they bel ieve it's prudent to spend the money doing so. Peak oil is a simple failure to comprehend this.

The problem with oil isn't that we are going to run out of oil reserves (th ough the oil would have become progressively more expensive to extract) but that we can't afford to keep on dumping even more CO2 into the atmosphere.

NT doesn't seem to understand this. John Larkin doesn't either. It's a ment al defect.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

On Monday, October 15, 2018 at 12:56:01 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@nospam.org wr ote:

mitive.

ly

overnight.

Obviously if you don't have a driveway home charging requires the support o f the landlord or city government. But it's not like it is a physical impo ssibility. There is no economic, logistic or legal limitation to providing charging in many locations; home, work shopping. Currently Tesla has focu sed on fast superchargers that will charge a car 80% in an hour (they pick this number because the remaining 20% charges more slowly). But a wider ne twork of slower, cheaper and easier to install chargers will do the job in a longer time but be very easy to install everywhere. They are actually ra ther widely installed now in the US.

If you choose to believe it is not practical to support electric cars you w ill find every reason to support that. But it doesn't make your argument r ealistic.

cky in some sort of

You are still being silly. But that is your choice.

This is the most absurd argument I've encountered so far, not just with you . The idea that significant changes are needed in the electrical infrastru cture are bogus. There was a discussion here where many people "proved" w e would need to quadruple our electrical production. Of course they were m aking very wrong assumptions and using very wrong data. In reality very li ttle additional production of electricity would be needed for a large propo rtion of the autos to be electric. This is mostly true because car chargin g can be scheduled to facilitate an even use of power which will actually I MPROVE the utilization of generation facilities LOWERING the average cost o f electricity.

y few years...

More unfounded assertions. Rather than learn about electric cars, you pref er to make up your own reality. Ok, enjoy!

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

:

rote:

ever get off the ground. Coal & gas are mined, hydrogen can't be. At best it's just energy converted from one form to a less practical one at signifi cant cost.

ou look at the numbers. Practical it is not.

ll refrain from making up numbers. Unless you can show some credible data I'll assume your point is null.

eady for prime time. Yeah, it requires converting energy from one form to another, but so does *every* power source for cars. Gasoline *uses* power for refining, cracking, etc.

tically it's a nonstarter. It's just more expensive & harder to handle.

sis is 70-80% efficient and the electricity can come from sources other tha n carbon.

If you goal is to reduce carbon emissions, some cost increase is perfection acceptable.

e cars and an infrastructure. That is likely some 20 years off before it e ven starts to look attractive.

interesting one.

de to work on LSC (light sweet crude). IC engines can't handle the tars so they'd use the exhaust heat to refine the crude, optionally producing a ran ge of saleable chemicals as well as running on them. And use the exhaust he at again to crack long chain stuff to more usable chemicals.

nt past it's not especially complex. People do it in shacks in the 3rd worl d.

Ok, let us know of your progress. When do you think you will have a protot ype car running?

of waste material too. Wood chips, some plastics, food waste, grass etc.

LOL! Hardly anyone will want to do anything other than pull up to a recept acle and pump or charge. Wood, food... lol!

lectric vehicles when refineries are shut down.

e reason to do so would be the above scenario of cars refining their own fu el.

gs so they *all* can't be shut down. But they won't be needed to provide f uel for electric cars which will eliminate a great number of refineries and a lot of excess energy use involved.

You may be right. It might be trucks that go BEV nearly totally. All the big truck companies are watching Tesla very closely and have their orders i n. There is even a serious competitor in the electric truck race. In the auto sector there are no serious contenders because of the lack of charging for anything other than Teslas. That will take time to change.

of energy. Bottom line is I can drive a BEV with a fuel cost of around $0.

04 per mile. The fuel cost of running a gasoline vehicle is presently arou nd $0.10 per mile. So clearly there is a net energy savings somewhere in t he process.

So that's not the reason.

a diesel or petrol, it also has to lug a lot more weight and has many other downsides, some of which are show stoppers for large scale deployment.

If there were serious issues with powering cars from electricity, poor effi ciency in any step, too much weight, etc, it would show up in higher costs to run. The Teslas cost for electricity is about a third the cost of gas f or comparable autos. So clearly the things you complain about aren't signi ficant factors.

I'm not aware of any other impacts of battery weight. Heck, the Model S is the quickest 0 to 60 production sedan in the world! How bad can the weigh t be???

car off peak. :)

ison between the source and end points for gasoline and BEVs. But that onl y considered the amount of energy input at the beginning and the energy rea ching the car. Significant amounts of energy must be used in the process a nd it is likely much greater in gasoline produced for cars.

That's the sort of argument people make when they have no facts on their si de.

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

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