RE: All good things come to an end in 2035
Discussion
otolith said:
monty quick said:
My biggest annoyance is the use of a 'banning' hammer to crack a nut. In 15 years, technology will have moved on massively. Possibly Internal Combustion Engines could have become 'acceptably' clean, but due to an impending ban, all of the focus will move to the next most available technology which is EV.
How do you see engines which when working as cleanly as physically possible turn hydrocarbons and oxygen into carbon dioxide and water becoming acceptable clean, when the problem is the carbon dioxide? The only options really are - run them on hydrocarbons which are not fossil fuels, for example bioethanol or biodiesel - or run them on something which is not a hydrocarbon. The only vaguely acceptable "not a hydrocarbon" option is hydrogen. Making and compressing hydrogen is very wasteful, then burning it in an ICE is moronically wasteful, so that's not going to happen. Biofuels were the great white hope 20 years ago, but they haven't come to fruition and probably never will. That strategy has been attempted and failed. Combustion engines are a dead end.
monty quick said:
This may not be the best solution - certainly infrastructure and battery technology will need to improve dramatically if we will still be able to use our cars in the way we do today. I am involved in the battery industry so I know that at the moment, the potential increase in demand will create significant real World problems (of course that won't stop commercial giants like Tesla, milking every Dollar). I feel that investment in Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles may improve efficiency of the production of Hydrogen and of the Fuel Cells providing a sustainable answer but I think the electric vehicle 'ball' is already rolling.
I really don't get the attraction of HFCs. It's not the answer, but people desperately, desperately want it to be. It's horribly inefficient because of fundamental physics. There is a bit of room for incremental improvement, but there is room for incremental improvement in battery tech and production battery tech is already more efficient that it's theoretically possible for hydrogen fuel cells to be."I hate battery electric cars, I want the answer to be hydrogen electric cars which are slower and more expensive to run than battery electric cars because I love garage forecourts"?
Is it really that people want the answer to be something, anything, that isn't here yet, so that they can justify continuing to use ICE? It is, isn't it?
People like the idea of HFC because you can fill them up just like petrol cars and keep going long distances and rightly so.
monty quick said:
otolith said:
monty quick said:
My biggest annoyance is the use of a 'banning' hammer to crack a nut. In 15 years, technology will have moved on massively. Possibly Internal Combustion Engines could have become 'acceptably' clean, but due to an impending ban, all of the focus will move to the next most available technology which is EV.
How do you see engines which when working as cleanly as physically possible turn hydrocarbons and oxygen into carbon dioxide and water becoming acceptable clean, when the problem is the carbon dioxide? The only options really are - run them on hydrocarbons which are not fossil fuels, for example bioethanol or biodiesel - or run them on something which is not a hydrocarbon. The only vaguely acceptable "not a hydrocarbon" option is hydrogen. Making and compressing hydrogen is very wasteful, then burning it in an ICE is moronically wasteful, so that's not going to happen. Biofuels were the great white hope 20 years ago, but they haven't come to fruition and probably never will. That strategy has been attempted and failed. Combustion engines are a dead end.
monty quick said:
This may not be the best solution - certainly infrastructure and battery technology will need to improve dramatically if we will still be able to use our cars in the way we do today. I am involved in the battery industry so I know that at the moment, the potential increase in demand will create significant real World problems (of course that won't stop commercial giants like Tesla, milking every Dollar). I feel that investment in Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles may improve efficiency of the production of Hydrogen and of the Fuel Cells providing a sustainable answer but I think the electric vehicle 'ball' is already rolling.
I really don't get the attraction of HFCs. It's not the answer, but people desperately, desperately want it to be. It's horribly inefficient because of fundamental physics. There is a bit of room for incremental improvement, but there is room for incremental improvement in battery tech and production battery tech is already more efficient that it's theoretically possible for hydrogen fuel cells to be."I hate battery electric cars, I want the answer to be hydrogen electric cars which are slower and more expensive to run than battery electric cars because I love garage forecourts"?
Is it really that people want the answer to be something, anything, that isn't here yet, so that they can justify continuing to use ICE? It is, isn't it?
321boost said:
Why did biofuels not come to fruition?
It's a good question. Issues to do with land use were one problem, but the 2nd generation tech that should have enabled production of fuels from non-food crops - well, nobody seems to be able to make it commercially viable. 321boost said:
People like the idea of HFC because you can fill them up just like petrol cars and keep going long distances and rightly so.
I strongly suspect that if people were accustomed to cars which charged up on the drive and you tried to sell them one they had to take to a special charge-up shop, they'd laugh at you!321boost said:
Why did biofuels not come to fruition?
.
Because people realised that we need the land to grow food for our impending 11Bn population. The only place it really took off I believe was South America. Its hard to make the case for growing corn to fuel our Porsche's when there are people starving..
monty quick said:
My point is: there isn't (at this time) a better solution than a small capacity turbo ICE to do what we do today (drive where we want to; when we want to; with the only inconvenience being a very quick stop at a petrol station). EV's are (currently) the emperors new clothes. Heralded as being 'Green' but in fact their carbon footprint is arguably worse than the latest ICE cars.
I've seen more studies debunking that than agreeing with it, though it depends how you spin the figures. If, for example, you compare a small petrol car with an E-class sized EV, and you assume that the EV gets all its power from coal stations, and you assume that the petrol just arrives magically at the petrol pump...Bottom line - you can make and use an electric car without emitting any CO2. We're not there yet, but it's possible and we can incrementally approach that. With an ICE car running on fossil fuels, you just can't.
321boost said:
Well yes that’s what I’m saying. And that’s why I’m asking for examples in the past when something has been announced with a lot of zeal and ended up not happening.
Got it. As a timely example I would thusly say Boris announcing Brexit would happen by 31 October or he’d be dead in a ditch. You don’t get more zeal than that! I totally get where you are coming from but politics is the act of administering a country to the best of your ability whilst being subject to a popularity contest every 5 years and having your every move thwarted by those who want your job.
I’d like to say the climate is an apolitical issue but of course it isn’t sadly.
otolith said:
I strongly suspect that if people were accustomed to cars which charged up on the drive and you tried to sell them one they had to take to a special charge-up shop, they'd laugh at you!
I agree with that point. If electric cars had come first, 100 years ago, and someone tried to introduce combustion engines now, noone would be interested in a slower, noisier, smellier, more complex machine with a weird set of extra controls (gearlever and clutch pedal), more frequent and needy servicing requirements, and a tank full of volatile fuel. On the other hand, without combustion engines, a whole lot of other things, like commercial flight, may well be years behind where they are now, if they would exist at all.FA57REN said:
Do they give everyone a petrol pump nowadays?
I don't understand all this wailing about the end of the ICE. If it's because it makes a nice noise then... good riddance. Eventually that obsession will die out and most people will focus on performance and handling.
Not a petrolhead then? I don't understand all this wailing about the end of the ICE. If it's because it makes a nice noise then... good riddance. Eventually that obsession will die out and most people will focus on performance and handling.
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kiseca said:
otolith said:
I strongly suspect that if people were accustomed to cars which charged up on the drive and you tried to sell them one they had to take to a special charge-up shop, they'd laugh at you!
I agree with that point. If electric cars had come first, 100 years ago, and someone tried to introduce combustion engines now, noone would be interested in a slower, noisier, smellier, more complex machine with a weird set of extra controls (gearlever and clutch pedal), more frequent and needy servicing requirements, and a tank full of volatile fuel. On the other hand, without combustion engines, a whole lot of other things, like commercial flight, may well be years behind where they are now, if they would exist at all.321boost said:
kiseca said:
otolith said:
I strongly suspect that if people were accustomed to cars which charged up on the drive and you tried to sell them one they had to take to a special charge-up shop, they'd laugh at you!
I agree with that point. If electric cars had come first, 100 years ago, and someone tried to introduce combustion engines now, noone would be interested in a slower, noisier, smellier, more complex machine with a weird set of extra controls (gearlever and clutch pedal), more frequent and needy servicing requirements, and a tank full of volatile fuel. On the other hand, without combustion engines, a whole lot of other things, like commercial flight, may well be years behind where they are now, if they would exist at all.otolith said:
monty quick said:
My point is: there isn't (at this time) a better solution than a small capacity turbo ICE to do what we do today (drive where we want to; when we want to; with the only inconvenience being a very quick stop at a petrol station). EV's are (currently) the emperors new clothes. Heralded as being 'Green' but in fact their carbon footprint is arguably worse than the latest ICE cars.
I've seen more studies debunking that than agreeing with it, though it depends how you spin the figures. If, for example, you compare a small petrol car with an E-class sized EV, and you assume that the EV gets all its power from coal stations, and you assume that the petrol just arrives magically at the petrol pump...Bottom line - you can make and use an electric car without emitting any CO2. We're not there yet, but it's possible and we can incrementally approach that. With an ICE car running on fossil fuels, you just can't.
CS Garth said:
321boost said:
Well yes that’s what I’m saying. And that’s why I’m asking for examples in the past when something has been announced with a lot of zeal and ended up not happening.
Got it. As a timely example I would thusly say Boris announcing Brexit would happen by 31 October or he’d be dead in a ditch. You don’t get more zeal than that! I totally get where you are coming from but politics is the act of administering a country to the best of your ability whilst being subject to a popularity contest every 5 years and having your every move thwarted by those who want your job.
I’d like to say the climate is an apolitical issue but of course it isn’t sadly.
You’re right it is a popularity contest.
monty quick said:
Heralded as being 'Green' but in fact their carbon footprint is arguably worse than the latest ICE cars.
Only by people who like to loose those arguments because they have just made their own mind up that EV's are no better than ICE's rather than actually look at the numbers and facts behind this claim.The actual data shows that in the UK, a typical EV, driven in a typical manner by a typical driver (lets say a nissan leaf vs a ford focus for example) uses around 2.6 times less energy during it's use. That is the actual fact, and it stems from the advantages of:
1) Not requiring any warming up (ICE run at low efficiency / high consumption when cold, uk ave temp = 12 degC, people drive mostly short distances)
2) Not requiring complex, lossy multispeed gearboxes (ICE loose significant power in their complex transmissions, even more so when cold)
3) Having a truely bi-directional powertrain and hence able to recapture energy held in their mass at speed (in the real world, drivers change speed a lot!)
4) Not having a complex, narrow operating zone where they operate efficiently. (ICE must run in the right gear, at the right speed to be efficient and clean, poor drivers (the average driver) = [high consumption) EVs operate highly efficiently under all conditions
5) Having fewer critical wearing parts ( ICE have a myriad of parts which as they wear, reduce efficiency and increase emissions, EVs work or don't work)
J4CKO said:
100 years from now, there will be stuff in museums showing cars burning petrol and diesel and people thinking how unpleasant and old fashioned that seems.
It is getting a little bit like that now with three pedal manual gearboxes. The majority see them as too much like hard work, slow and very old fashioned. Things move on for sure. There would be uproar now if you had to physically put a cassette tape in your car to listen to music, or you had to wind your window up yourself using a handle. Or use a road map to plan where you are going...times change no matter what.
otolith said:
321boost said:
Why did biofuels not come to fruition?
It's a good question. Issues to do with land use were one problem, but the 2nd generation tech that should have enabled production of fuels from non-food crops - well, nobody seems to be able to make it commercially viable. 321boost said:
People like the idea of HFC because you can fill them up just like petrol cars and keep going long distances and rightly so.
I strongly suspect that if people were accustomed to cars which charged up on the drive and you tried to sell them one they had to take to a special charge-up shop, they'd laugh at you!Arguably more importantly (as CO^2 emission is merely a proxy for energy consumption) it's perhaps therefore not surprising that bio's CO^2 footprint is actually worse than black gold; it takes a lot of farm equipment and Ag Chem to make them and then convert them.
Growing crops & converting them approximates to H2 production in that regard.
CS Garth said:
321boost said:
Well yes that’s what I’m saying. And that’s why I’m asking for examples in the past when something has been announced with a lot of zeal and ended up not happening.
Got it. As a timely example I would thusly say Boris announcing Brexit would happen by 31 October or he’d be dead in a ditch. You don’t get more zeal than that! I totally get where you are coming from but politics is the act of administering a country to the best of your ability whilst being subject to a popularity contest every 5 years and having your every move thwarted by those who want your job.
I’d like to say the climate is an apolitical issue but of course it isn’t sadly.
Max_Torque said:
monty quick said:
Heralded as being 'Green' but in fact their carbon footprint is arguably worse than the latest ICE cars.
Only by people who like to loose those arguments because they have just made their own mind up that EV's are no better than ICE's rather than actually look at the numbers and facts behind this claim.The actual data shows that in the UK, a typical EV, driven in a typical manner by a typical driver (lets say a nissan leaf vs a ford focus for example) uses around 2.6 times less energy during it's use. That is the actual fact, and it stems from the advantages of:
1) Not requiring any warming up (ICE run at low efficiency / high consumption when cold, uk ave temp = 12 degC, people drive mostly short distances)
2) Not requiring complex, lossy multispeed gearboxes (ICE loose significant power in their complex transmissions, even more so when cold)
3) Having a truely bi-directional powertrain and hence able to recapture energy held in their mass at speed (in the real world, drivers change speed a lot!)
4) Not having a complex, narrow operating zone where they operate efficiently. (ICE must run in the right gear, at the right speed to be efficient and clean, poor drivers (the average driver) = [high consumption) EVs operate highly efficiently under all conditions
5) Having fewer critical wearing parts ( ICE have a myriad of parts which as they wear, reduce efficiency and increase emissions, EVs work or don't work)
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