Harry's Garage - YouTube
Discussion
JmatthewB said:
My concern with synthetic fuels is how expensive they will be. We are currently looking at something around £10/litre, they claim they could get the cost down to £1/litre which is still 3 times the cost price of petrol <clip>
No it's less than the price of petrol. Esso Supreme 99 is £1.48/litre and Shell V-Power is £1.40 litre so if they can get the price down to £1.00/litre that's roughly 30% cheaper. 
RichB said:
JmatthewB said:
My concern with synthetic fuels is how expensive they will be. We are currently looking at something around £10/litre, they claim they could get the cost down to £1/litre which is still 3 times the cost price of petrol <clip>
No it's less than the price of petrol. Esso Supreme 99 is £1.48/litre and Shell V-Power is £1.40 litre so if they can get the price down to £1.00/litre that's roughly 30% cheaper. Mammasaid said:
RichB said:
JmatthewB said:
My concern with synthetic fuels is how expensive they will be. We are currently looking at something around £10/litre, they claim they could get the cost down to £1/litre which is still 3 times the cost price of petrol <clip>
No it's less than the price of petrol. Esso Supreme 99 is £1.48/litre and Shell V-Power is £1.40 litre so if they can get the price down to £1.00/litre that's roughly 30% cheaper. RichB said:
No it's less than the price of petrol. Esso Supreme 99 is £1.48/litre and Shell V-Power is £1.40 litre so if they can get the price down to £1.00/litre that's roughly 30% cheaper.
One is net of tax for starters and it also has a lower calorific content so you need more of it. 
A litre of fuel costs say £1.30, 20% of that is VAT and 60p is fuel duty. You then have to remove transport and sale profits/costs to get a figure getting close to comparable to eFuel manufacturing costs. Then adjust for the much lower calorific value of the eFuel.
An F1 racing team might pay £1000 to top up a car but Mrs Miggins possibly won't.
Besides, anyone know what an eFuel is? Specifically?
Kawasicki said:
It's not about finding the best solution, it's about implementing what feels right.
Fossil fuels without al the externalities costed in are dirt cheap/convenient compared to either synthesizing liquid hydrocarbons (which as DA says doesn't resolve the NOx issue) or electric vehicles.It may be that the "best" solution is unpleasant enough that the others aren't worth contemplating.
DonkeyApple said:
One is net of tax for starters and it also has a lower calorific content so you need more of it.
A litre of fuel costs say £1.30, 20% of that is VAT and 60p is fuel duty. You then have to remove transport and sale profits/costs to get a figure getting close to comparable to eFuel manufacturing costs. Then adjust for the much lower calorific value of the eFuel.
An F1 racing team might pay £1000 to top up a car but Mrs Miggins possibly won't.
Besides, anyone know what an eFuel is? Specifically?
As I already said Esso Supreme 99 is £1.48 near me (not £1.30) but as I also said, it's pure speculation at this stage, no one knows what the duty would be. A litre of fuel costs say £1.30, 20% of that is VAT and 60p is fuel duty. You then have to remove transport and sale profits/costs to get a figure getting close to comparable to eFuel manufacturing costs. Then adjust for the much lower calorific value of the eFuel.
An F1 racing team might pay £1000 to top up a car but Mrs Miggins possibly won't.
Besides, anyone know what an eFuel is? Specifically?
Mrs Miggins will be driving a BEV so she's irrelevant, for the purposes of this discussion I am talking about enthusiasts who drive something interesting and continue to want to do so.
I will put you on the side of the sceptics while you call me a heretic.
Interestingly, especially as this thread is about 'Harry's Garage', a few months back I participated in a discussion with Harry and synthetic fuels was one of the topics. When he revisits this thread it would be interesting for him to expound on his thoughts on the subject.
DonkeyApple said:
We've been able to synthesise long chain hydrocarbons for decades. It's just that few consumers would want to pay several grand to fill up their Honda Jazz.
The US Navy was very interested in the technology for their aircraft carriers. The nuclear reactors that power the ships have excess capacity that can be harnessed to produce synthetic jet fuel. It would have strategic and logistical benefits to be able to refuel their planes without having to ship jet fuel to warzones and transfer it.RichB said:
DonkeyApple said:
One is net of tax for starters and it also has a lower calorific content so you need more of it.
A litre of fuel costs say £1.30, 20% of that is VAT and 60p is fuel duty. You then have to remove transport and sale profits/costs to get a figure getting close to comparable to eFuel manufacturing costs. Then adjust for the much lower calorific value of the eFuel.
An F1 racing team might pay £1000 to top up a car but Mrs Miggins possibly won't.
Besides, anyone know what an eFuel is? Specifically?
As I already said Esso Supreme 99 is £1.48 near me (not £1.30) but as I also said, it's pure speculation at this stage, no one knows what the duty would be. A litre of fuel costs say £1.30, 20% of that is VAT and 60p is fuel duty. You then have to remove transport and sale profits/costs to get a figure getting close to comparable to eFuel manufacturing costs. Then adjust for the much lower calorific value of the eFuel.
An F1 racing team might pay £1000 to top up a car but Mrs Miggins possibly won't.
Besides, anyone know what an eFuel is? Specifically?
Mrs Miggins will be driving a BEV so she's irrelevant, for the purposes of this discussion I am talking about enthusiasts who drive something interesting and continue to want to do so.
I will put you on the side of the sceptics while you call me a heretic.
Interestingly, especially as this thread is about 'Harry's Garage', a few months back I participated in a discussion with Harry and synthetic fuels was one of the topics. When he revisits this thread it would be interesting for him to expound on his thoughts on the subject.
Firstly, EV adoption is incredibly slow. Even when it gets to 50% of new cars as predicted by 2030 for affluent Europe, that represents only 1m cars a year in the UK on a fleet approaching 40m. The vast majority of classic car owners will be dead long before fossil fuel stops being sold at petrol stations.
Secondly, all legislation in Europe is constructed around the end of burning anything. Doesn't matter whether it's Dino fuel or eFuel, it won't be being burnt. Your gas boiler is going, your log burner and everything else.
Thirdly, should you live long enough that petrol is no longer on sale you almost certainly won't be able to afford a synthetic version of it.
But why don't we actually answer the simple question of what is an efuel? Other than a buzzword that pensioners have decided to cling to in the hopes that they will live to be 100 and still driving.
What is an efuel? How do you make a long chain hydrocarbon cheaper than the simplest of all hydrocarbons, Hydrogen? How do you create one with anywhere near the calorific value of petrol let alone diesel.
Jason from Engineering Explained has obviously been reading this thread (probably not) as he's just uploaded this video about hydrogen as an automotive fuel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IPR50-soNA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IPR50-soNA
Its pretty obvious how it will go, we have spent the last 100 years digging and drilling stuff from the ground which is stored energy from eons ago and burning it for energy.
The earth gets hit, in one hour with enough energy to power everything humans do like heating, cooling, vehicles, electronics etc.
So we got going using the short cut of banked energy from the ground, we had a fiddle with nuclear stuff but had a tendency to render who areas uninhabitable if somebody doesn't withdraw the fuel rods in the correct order or there's a bit of a high tide or whatever.
So, renewables, its the only way really except maybe for aircraft, 36 percent of demand is from renewables as of now, a third and it doesn't take a massive leap to think we have gone from very little to that third in the last what, ten years. Any reason why we cant get to 90 or greater ?
Utopia is predominantly EV's being powered by renewable electricity, with better batteries and charging not being an issue, I dont think that is impossible, its still early days in the switchover.
Whether I like it or not is immaterial, reactionary old farts choosing the V8 hill to die on or saying "I will stick with my old Jag" or whatever, is inconsequential as the masses will decide and cheap, clean, fast and efficient will win, just needs a push to get there and to be honest, we didnt have an oil infrastructure 100 years ago, that was a bigger ask I reckon than upgrading the electricity distribution systems, adding capacity and putting chargers in.
Its all happening now, seeing EV's enough that you dont really notice.
Its amazing how many decide its not going to happen as we cant generate enough electricity, er, we use less now than 20 years ago, we didnt have pipelines, oil fields, oil sands, Oil tankers, petrol stations and all that but dont think anyone said it wont happen back in 1890 as its too hard.
Hydrogen will have a niche, but the bulk will be EV's powered by renewables, the electric motor is a far better device than an ICE for moving a car or whatever, oce past the battery and charging bits which I reckon has so much investment and development it cant fail to improve, we now have 350 mile range Teslas, that will trickle down.
The earth gets hit, in one hour with enough energy to power everything humans do like heating, cooling, vehicles, electronics etc.
So we got going using the short cut of banked energy from the ground, we had a fiddle with nuclear stuff but had a tendency to render who areas uninhabitable if somebody doesn't withdraw the fuel rods in the correct order or there's a bit of a high tide or whatever.
So, renewables, its the only way really except maybe for aircraft, 36 percent of demand is from renewables as of now, a third and it doesn't take a massive leap to think we have gone from very little to that third in the last what, ten years. Any reason why we cant get to 90 or greater ?
Utopia is predominantly EV's being powered by renewable electricity, with better batteries and charging not being an issue, I dont think that is impossible, its still early days in the switchover.
Whether I like it or not is immaterial, reactionary old farts choosing the V8 hill to die on or saying "I will stick with my old Jag" or whatever, is inconsequential as the masses will decide and cheap, clean, fast and efficient will win, just needs a push to get there and to be honest, we didnt have an oil infrastructure 100 years ago, that was a bigger ask I reckon than upgrading the electricity distribution systems, adding capacity and putting chargers in.
Its all happening now, seeing EV's enough that you dont really notice.
Its amazing how many decide its not going to happen as we cant generate enough electricity, er, we use less now than 20 years ago, we didnt have pipelines, oil fields, oil sands, Oil tankers, petrol stations and all that but dont think anyone said it wont happen back in 1890 as its too hard.
Hydrogen will have a niche, but the bulk will be EV's powered by renewables, the electric motor is a far better device than an ICE for moving a car or whatever, oce past the battery and charging bits which I reckon has so much investment and development it cant fail to improve, we now have 350 mile range Teslas, that will trickle down.
DonkeyApple said:
How do you make a long chain hydrocarbon cheaper than the simplest of all hydrocarbons, Hydrogen? How do you create one with anywhere near the calorific value of petrol let alone diesel.
A small quibble, hydrogen isn't a hydrocarbon.You probably can't create long chain hydrocarbons cheaper than hydrogen, but if you include the cost of creating infrastructure to deliver hydrogen to individual vehicles compared to the existing infrastructure for petrol/diesel, it's a closer run thing.
If you have the same no of hydrogen-hydrogen, hydrogen-carbon and carbon-carbon bonds, calorific value can't be far different, so you need the same ration of H to C, and comparable chain lengths (and you'd want comparable chain lengths anyway to get comparable volatility and other physical characteristics). If you aim for too long, you can always crack to a desirable length. This still doesn't help of course with emissions other than CO2/CO/H20.
I dread to think of the energy cost if you try and do this with atmospheric CO2 though, and that's our biggest problem overall, economical atmospheric CO2 extraction.
thegreenhell said:
Jason from Engineering Explained has obviously been reading this thread (probably not) as he's just uploaded this video about hydrogen as an automotive fuel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IPR50-soNA
The early part is pretty irrelevant but from 8m in he gets to the core points that people need to get a basic grasp of when pitching the hydrogen revolution:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IPR50-soNA
97% of H comes from the cracking of CH4, natural gas. It's extremely polluting and you might as well burn petrol rather than grey hydrogen as it's cheaper, more efficient and the infrastructure is there.
There is almost no green hydrogen. What there is is created by breaking the H bond by applying electricity. Electricity that makes more sense to just use to directly power a car.
Combusting H is highly inefficient. Fuel cells twice as good but you've just lost 50% of the electricity that you had in the first instance L. So you start with 100% electricity to power a car and by converting it to H and then back to electricity you only have 50%. You would have to be mental to even begin to contemplate such an act of stupidity.
Even if this were some miracle fuel we have to ask how much are we going to need?
Well in extremely crude terms about 5kg of H replicates the energy from 50L of petrol. As an aside, 1kg of H is 14L in standard liquid form so that 5kg needs more space and a much heavier tank. But going back to that 5kg for a basic equivalent fill up we can start to see the issue. That's a lot of H. A lot.
I think we burn about 50 bn litres of petrol/diesel a year in the UK. That equates to 5 bn kg of H needed annually in the UK alone. 5bn!! The entire global production of H is only 90m kg.
We've been able to create Hydrogen engines for decades. Who cares when there is no fuel?
This is where the HIF projects come in, they will test the viability of converting cheap wind energy in Chile into a means to transport that energy to Europe. The most logical way being to electrolyse water, sell the O2 and ship the H. That's green hydrogen. It's very expensive but it's a credible means to transport huge amounts of electricity as chemical batteries are rubbish at that, we still have to store our own wind energy in water batteries like the Bronze Age. But then people are making the leap that somehow this expensive energy will be piped through new infrastructure to petrol forecourts, which is complete bunkum, it will be piped from the dock as short a distance as possible to be burned in power stations to create green electricity and for the tax credits to be claimed.
So, currently there is no green hydrogen only grey so it's not eco. There's no pipeline infrastructure and never will be. It's far too expensive and the basic concept is to take electricity that could be used to power a car, bin half of it, apply a load of costs and pollution and convert it back to electricity to power a car.
The LPG loon of a few years ago made more sense.
J4CKO said:
Its pretty obvious how it will go, we have spent the last 100 years digging and drilling stuff from the ground which is stored energy from eons ago and burning it for energy.
The earth gets hit, in one hour with enough energy to power everything humans do like heating, cooling, vehicles, electronics etc.
So we got going using the short cut of banked energy from the ground, we had a fiddle with nuclear stuff but had a tendency to render who areas uninhabitable if somebody doesn't withdraw the fuel rods in the correct order or there's a bit of a high tide or whatever.
So, renewables, its the only way really except maybe for aircraft, 36 percent of demand is from renewables as of now, a third and it doesn't take a massive leap to think we have gone from very little to that third in the last what, ten years. Any reason why we cant get to 90 or greater ?
Utopia is predominantly EV's being powered by renewable electricity, with better batteries and charging not being an issue, I dont think that is impossible, its still early days in the switchover.
Whether I like it or not is immaterial, reactionary old farts choosing the V8 hill to die on or saying "I will stick with my old Jag" or whatever, is inconsequential as the masses will decide and cheap, clean, fast and efficient will win, just needs a push to get there and to be honest, we didnt have an oil infrastructure 100 years ago, that was a bigger ask I reckon than upgrading the electricity distribution systems, adding capacity and putting chargers in.
Its all happening now, seeing EV's enough that you dont really notice.
Its amazing how many decide its not going to happen as we cant generate enough electricity, er, we use less now than 20 years ago, we didnt have pipelines, oil fields, oil sands, Oil tankers, petrol stations and all that but dont think anyone said it wont happen back in 1890 as its too hard.
Hydrogen will have a niche, but the bulk will be EV's powered by renewables, the electric motor is a far better device than an ICE for moving a car or whatever, oce past the battery and charging bits which I reckon has so much investment and development it cant fail to improve, we now have 350 mile range Teslas, that will trickle down.
How much of the earth’s surface are you happy to cover with infrastructure? The earth gets hit, in one hour with enough energy to power everything humans do like heating, cooling, vehicles, electronics etc.
So we got going using the short cut of banked energy from the ground, we had a fiddle with nuclear stuff but had a tendency to render who areas uninhabitable if somebody doesn't withdraw the fuel rods in the correct order or there's a bit of a high tide or whatever.
So, renewables, its the only way really except maybe for aircraft, 36 percent of demand is from renewables as of now, a third and it doesn't take a massive leap to think we have gone from very little to that third in the last what, ten years. Any reason why we cant get to 90 or greater ?
Utopia is predominantly EV's being powered by renewable electricity, with better batteries and charging not being an issue, I dont think that is impossible, its still early days in the switchover.
Whether I like it or not is immaterial, reactionary old farts choosing the V8 hill to die on or saying "I will stick with my old Jag" or whatever, is inconsequential as the masses will decide and cheap, clean, fast and efficient will win, just needs a push to get there and to be honest, we didnt have an oil infrastructure 100 years ago, that was a bigger ask I reckon than upgrading the electricity distribution systems, adding capacity and putting chargers in.
Its all happening now, seeing EV's enough that you dont really notice.
Its amazing how many decide its not going to happen as we cant generate enough electricity, er, we use less now than 20 years ago, we didnt have pipelines, oil fields, oil sands, Oil tankers, petrol stations and all that but dont think anyone said it wont happen back in 1890 as its too hard.
Hydrogen will have a niche, but the bulk will be EV's powered by renewables, the electric motor is a far better device than an ICE for moving a car or whatever, oce past the battery and charging bits which I reckon has so much investment and development it cant fail to improve, we now have 350 mile range Teslas, that will trickle down.
https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/r...
Kawasicki said:
How much of the earth’s surface are you happy to cover with infrastructure?
https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/r...
The UK dates for ending ICE aren't set in stone but rather they are political targets. https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/r...
I'm not sure anyone actually believes that we will get to 2035 and switch off all ICE sales. Not without a step change in energy storage solutions this decade.
2035 is more of a target, a driver and political grand standing.
Just converting half the UK fleet to EVs and then ensuring that any ICE engine is small capacity is the achievable sweet spot.
The logical way to have grown the EV market seeing as only the affluent can use them easily would have been to ban sales of engines greater than 1L a decade ago. Everyone who could would have bought an EV in order to get the larger, premium vehicle while everyone who couldn't would have naturally reduced their fuel consumption.
But we are where we are. This is not an innovative nation but one that copies, hence our solutions to reducing emissions have all been taken from countries and urban environments that don't match or fit our own and we have to patch up the absence of innovation with political oneupmanship that will be left to others to reconcile down the line.
EVs are brilliant but as a nation we have gone about pushing them into the market place in the most divisive and moronic way possible but what's done is done but what we now have to contend with is the new LPG propaganda around Hydrogen, yet another fossil fuel!
DonkeyApple said:
This is not an innovative nation but one that copies....
...Hydrogen, yet another fossil fuel!
Aren't you refering to China? This country is one of the more innovative - we just don't seem to capitalise on it....Hydrogen, yet another fossil fuel!
Hydrogen isn't a fossil fuel unless you're referring to current production being a bi-product of natural gas, but doesn't have to be that way.
DonkeyApple said:
EVs are brilliant but as a nation we have gone about pushing them into the market place in the most divisive and moronic way possible but what's done is done but what we now have to contend with is the new LPG propaganda around Hydrogen, yet another fossil fuel!
Indeed, I get the impression a lot of working class folk see them as middle class affectation and cant get their heads round them every being cheap enough to afford them, and the threat of a new battery at ten gazzillion quid worries people still further.If you buy cars from say £1,000 to £10,000, or finance stuff for <£200 a month, most EV's are a bit irrelevant, especially with range and charging constraints.
Thing is, nobody bats an eyelid at expensive petrol and diesel cars, they know they will eventually depreciate down and there are plenty out there that have done this, EVs are still a tiny percentage and if your peers are running older German diesels, thats what you are comfortable with, will only be when Teslas start migrating down that familiarity of and comfort with will occur.
AJLintern said:
DonkeyApple said:
This is not an innovative nation but one that copies....
...Hydrogen, yet another fossil fuel!
Aren't you refering to China? This country is one of the more innovative - we just don't seem to capitalise on it....Hydrogen, yet another fossil fuel!
Hydrogen isn't a fossil fuel unless you're referring to current production being a bi-product of natural gas, but doesn't have to be that way.
97% of all Hydrogen is currently grey and as you say it is produced from oil. It's very much a fossil fuel.
Green hydrogen doesn't really exist yet but it is generally created by electrolysis. And there lies the folly. You have a car with an electric motor and you have electricity. Why would you then take that electricity, lose half of it converting it to hydrogen, lose more paying for the bespoke infrastructure to distribute to retail outlets and then lose another half in the process of the car converting it back to the electricity that we had in the first instance. It is a bonkers thought process and why it's not actually being planned.
The purpose of generating green hydrogen is to facilitate the long distance transport of electricity from cheap destinations to ultra high cost ones in markets where the end consumer has the wealth to pay to reduce CO2/NOx emissions. Hence HIF is all about Europe buying the excess and very cheap electricity from the Chilean wind farm industry. The only way you can transport that electricity is to convert it into something else and Hydrogen is an obvious solution. But once that hydrogen lands in Europe it's not going to be inefficiently distributed to retail but converted back to electricity instantly by the power generation industry that can then claim back the tax credits which are larger than the cost of the Chilean electricity to buy and transport.
The current grey hydrogen is a fossil fuel but for certain industries it makes sense to use it instead of shipping in other fossil fuels. For example, this is why Bamford is looking at fuel cells for JCBs as this is plant that operates where hydrogen is produced as a byproduct of industry. Shipping that hydrogen to market is costly and inefficient compared to being able to use it locally. It's why the Japanese with their big domestic nuclear industry and the hydrogen from that have a focus on fuel cells. It's not for you and me to drive our classic cars around using some kind of efuel that's been manufactured at huge expense and pollution from simpler hydrocarbon building blocks and then burnt in cars emitting CO2 and NOx.
The closest we will get to this is the high end race track where the money exists to pay for the fuel and the commercial desire to make noise remains integral to the event etc.
The other issue with hydrogen is that like biofuel, there is a link to food production and when you take grey hydrogen to burn for fun in the West then just like the biofuel fiasco you have knock on issues re food production in developing nations.
Grey hydrogen is a fossil fuel and essential for food production. It absolutely should not be used to frivolously propel vehicles where there is absolutely no essential need for it. And green hydrogen doesn't exist in quantities of any use for transport and is far too costly to ever be used in mainstream transport.
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