Do We Really Need Electric Cars?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- The truth about biofuels. Go to brilliant.org/... to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership. Electric cars are off to a strong start when it comes to getting renewable energy out on the road. Still, not everyone is sold yet, which is why electric vehicles are facing a familiar-looking contender: synthetic fuel and biofuel. Companies like Porsche and BMW are investing a lot of money into biofuels. With synthetic and biofuels, it might be possible to make your existing gasoline car carbon neutral… but will it actually work?
Watch "The truth about graphene - what's the hold up?": • The truth about graphe...
Video script and citations:
undecidedmf.co...
Get my achieve energy security with solar guide:
link.undecided...
Follow-up podcast:
Video version - / @stilltbd
Audio version - bit.ly/stilltbdfm
Join the Undecided Discord server:
link.undecided...
👋 Support Undecided on Patreon!
/ mattferrell
⚙️ Gear & Products I Like
Tesla and smart home gear:
kit.co/undecid...
Undecided Amazon store front:
bit.ly/Undecide...
Abstract Ocean Tesla Accessories:
15% Discount - Code: "Undecided"
bit.ly/UndecidedAO
Jeda Tesla Wireless Charger/USB Hub:
bit.ly/Undecide...
Tesla Referral Code:
Get 1,000 free supercharging miles
or a discount on Tesla Solar & Powerwalls
ts.la/matthew8...
Visit my Energysage Portal:
Research solar panels and get quotes for free!
link.undecided...
And find heat pump installers near you:
link.undecided...
Or find community solar near you:
link.undecided...
👉 Follow Me
X
X.com/mattferrell
X.com/undecidedMF
Instagram
/ mattferrell
/ undecidedmf
Facebook
/ undecidedmf
Website
undecidedmf.com
📺 TH-cam Tools I Recommend
Audio file(s) provided by Epidemic Sound
bit.ly/Undecide...
TubeBuddy
www.tubebuddy....
VidIQ
vidiq.com/unde...
I may earn a small commission for my endorsement or recommendation to products or services linked above, but I wouldn't put them here if I didn't like them. Your purchase helps support the channel and the videos I produce. Thank you.
Do you think synthetic fuels will catch on? Go to brilliant.org/Undecided to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership.
If you liked this video, check out: "The truth about graphene - what's the hold up?": th-cam.com/video/KhQrGtragXc/w-d-xo.html
i really dont see it being able to be that mass produced maybe the best possible outcome would be to only be able to cover the needs of aviation and that maybe isnt possible
Best Electic vehicle is are as follows:-
1300 kg
1300 watts
130 kms x2 in 1:1 ratio of rpm 😎
Meaning Tesla range have to be over 13,000 kms in single charge in 1:1 rpm and 24,000 kms and above in single charge with a transmission system with 1:13 rpm ratio mean 1 rpm of motor 13 rpm of wheels in middle level 1:1 in Torque mode 13:1 mean motor 13 rpm wheels 1 😇
Elon musk cars have over 500 to 600 miles range 😏
Change rpm to 1:1 can give us over 9x higher range which is over 4500 to 5400 miles per charge and I m not talking about using and transmission system which easily boosts the range of any Tesla cars over 13,000 to 24,000 miles in single charge 😏
But they r not going to do it cuz it’s very low profitable business and elon musk wants only money money money 😂
That’s y he is not supporting hydrogen cuz it’s even less money money money 🤣(th-cam.com/video/MjlB5VLZ5C0/w-d-xo.html) 😂
Elon musk (ironmonger) 😏
Kalki avatar (Ironman) after 2026 😎
How can they be carbon neutral if it takes energy to make the fuel?
Canada winters ? for EV car and bio fuel is bad for soil and lands.. destroy land for fuel,, just wait till tech catches up with ambition's,, hydroponic crop fields growing in dust go look at the soils in crop fields,, no organic material left ,, i love electric.. dont like to be forced to pay taxes for some ones pockets in the name of.. price on pollution
Porsches + Mercedes investment will cover 1% of current consumption in cars in Germany. The price per Km/h will be >10x the price of electric cars. Porsche acknowledges it's old cars won't leave the road so they try to make there existing historic cars still driveable in a zero emissions world at enormous cost for people in love with vintage Porsches.
There is no reason to keep a car running on synthetic fuels, it just takes so much green energy to make carbon neutral fuels that it would irresponsible to keep coal plants running longer to produce a very little driving distance for existing inefficient cars.
Whenever people talk about alternative energy there seems to be this assumption that only one can prevail & provide %100 of our energy needs for our future, this is idea that needs to stop. Having a diverse energy supply has many benefits: resistance to economic shock, resistance to monopolization, more stability in matters of national security, and most importantly diverse energy supplies to meet diverse energy needs.
For instance electric cars may be great but they have many limitations: poor performance in adverse weather, short range, bulky & heavy, etc., ect.. What this means is that we will remain dependent on fossil fuels for industries like trucking & construction. And seeing that we need to end our dependence on fossil fuels bio-fuels will be an absolutely necessity.
While there are many obstacles in the path of bio-fuels they are well understood & none of them are impossible to overcome. One would be switching more vehicles to diesel & another would be the further development of flex fuel gas engines (variable compression ratios).
In conclusion if we maintain this idea that one energy source will be best for all needs we risk falling back into the same problems we're currently experiencing with fossil fuels. Imagine if our only food source was a toxic bland rice grown in Saudi Arabia. It's easy to understand how disastrous this policy would be for our food industry so why are we so blind to see these problems when it comes to the lifeblood of our modern civilization?
Agreed that we need to end our use of fossil fuel, but not because of "climate crisis" hobgoblins. Whether we have ten years or a thousand years of oil in the ground, eventually we're going to run out. Better to make the transition while we've options, rather than when we have to do it because there are no options. (Actually, as the price of harvesting energy from the ground goes up, the price of the energy goes up. It won't be a hard wall; rather, a "well, this makes more sense now" sort of thing. But practicing the engineering now, when we can make mistakes that aren't fatal to civilization, makes sense.)
"Energy density" makes sense when talking about trucks moving heavy loads. Efficiency means fewer stops, and less weight hauled to move the goods being hauled. Batteries to move trucks are damn heavy! Passenger miles? Local, electric makes sense. Long distance, it's not so clear. Electric trains?
Perhaps it would be better if the peasants just stayed put while the elite fly in private jets to climate conferences. Zoom meetings? Those are for plebes.
💯Agreed. I agree that we need to at least reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, while also doing more research to find an abundant gasoline alternative source. Because let’s face it: not everyone has $40-50k lying around to buy an EV or is even eligible to lease one. Not everyone wants or needs an EV. As someone said on here, we need to diversify our energy sources. We need to get away from this idea that EVs will be the “end-all be-all” new standard for cars like gasoline was when it replaced steam engines. Who knows? maybe we need to revisit steam engines with 21st century technology as we can get more energy from water today than technology allowed back then?
Strong case man!
I honestly think there is a strong case for using oxen. They convert corn to energy at least as well as we can.
@SKYLARKING Interesting take, haven't heard that one before. Probably because that's exactly what biofuels are, man made fuel from renewable resources. This process is very energy intensive but nuclear is so cheap & abundant that it wouldn't be a problem. Which brings me to my original point, diversify the energy market.
I feel that the book “There is no Planet B” puts it best. The same amount of food used to feed 3 people for a day can be used to make biofuel to drive a car 4 miles.
The space needed to make that food could instead be dedicated to solar for a year and will drive an EV 1k miles. Or that electricity can be given to an ebike which will enable it to drive 10k miles.
I’m really not a fan of synthetic fuels for anything other than a way to use up excess food scraps.
I am personally opposed to using corn. There are ample crops that grow where corn and other food crops cannot that can be used.
Since most of the planet is un-airable for crop growth, this is actually a good short gap for energy production in nearly uninhabited areas that have low to no food farming potential. And a stop gap only if we are assuming we get an power line technology that has dramatically better performance then copper wire, or assuming we start building space based solar collectors and beam the energy down with something like a mazer.
Solar panels are hideous and ruin the countryside, aren't efficient and degrade severely within a matter of a few years. Nuclear is the future.
The Food vs Fuel argument is so damn outdated. Ethanol is not the only biofuel, and cars are not the only use case.
Refineries will exist for many other products, what feedstocks will they use?
Bio-methane from Waste Water Treatment and Landfills (although i prefer recycling + waste to energy/chemicals workflows like Europe does, potentially, even integrating the “Refuse Derived Fuel” into the biofuel plants and Wastewater Treatment Plants (if treated in a “Wet Materials Recovery” Plant) ) can be upgraded to CNG/LNG standards (rather than contributing to climate change as methane which has a greater CO2e)
Native Grasses / Woody Biomass can be Gasified and/or Pyrolysed producing syngas (can be used in refineries or made into methane/methanol/dme), or “Pyrolysis Oil” a sort of crude oil substitute. This way farmland can be partially “Rewilded” short of an occasional lawn mowing / controlled bun type thing.
Also algae based Hydrothermal Liquefaction (HTL) biocrude **Is a drop in replacement for crude oil**. This can be made using an “algae turf scrubber” or similar concept wherein fertilizer rich runoff is cleaned up, feeding the algae. This would thus help reduce dead zones. The usage of this biocrude could be implemented very quickly leading to carbon reductions. Also since it tends to have much lower sulfur and heavy metal content, those forms of pollution disappear too.
Harm Reduction / Working with what Already Exists is more important than the most optimal option, at least in my Opinion. Infrastructure is expensive, and also has a large carbon + mined material footprint.
@@ericlotze7724 all great points. I guess the main place where I tend to exit the conversation is when we start suggesting that Biofuels are used in cars.
I’m fully supportive of those options that you highlighted as long as they’re simply capturing excess and refining it into something for a dedicated process (which won’t see an increase in demand) or use it to generate electricity.
When we talk about using biofuels to power cars I really worry that we’ll constantly be running into issues of not having enough biofuel on hand due to increased demand so we have to drill for oil or perform more of an action JUST for the excess which we’ll use to make fuel.
So I’m not saying that the tech as a whole should be tossed out; just that I don’t like the idea of applying it to cars.
@@Stevie-J Is that due to government policy, or technological requirement?
Matt,
I was in the biodiesel industry for a decade. I learned that we have a very limited choice when choosing a plant manufacturing company. Even if we would have chosen a different company it was still the same technology. It was obsolete. I even made a logical change in the equipment used in the process. I used seperatiors instead of chemicals. A high speed centrifugal seperatior could remove particles even miroparticles from the finished product. I did away with a lot of toxic chemicals that were dangerous to my people and disposal was not good for the environment.
I also learned that the equiptment suppliers were not creative. They did not promote. New ways to do the same process better. Yet they are all in business to this day.
I also spent lots of money on a different oilseed. It was 44% oil and half the cost to produce compared ti soybeans. I worked with a small university which had two. People who were thrilled about their discovery. But like all universities to make a sizeable donation to this creation the school took 60%
For admin charges. I did not make a donation. I walked away. My 85 million gallon plant was closed by the banking laws in 2008.
That's brutal.. thanks for the info
Well, that sucks. What venture capital plan are you up to now?
Thank You for your contribution.
How can I get in touch with you??
What oilseed were you using? Palm oil?
Missed a few points.. fuel can be produced as a battery. Excess solar can produce fuel for gas heating and can be used to stockpile energy .. the energy in fuel already has all of the infrastructure required to move and distribute..there are many industries that will take a long time to electrify. I.e. farming. Flight. Shipping, heating. , industrial process.
I really appreciate how fair you are in these presentations. It's easy to read about some technology and imagine problems are solved, hydrogen from gas is a perfect example of this. Keep up the amazing high quality work
There is another point to consider. Here in Brazil we have ethanol biofuel since 1978 as an option to gasoline, but even that it comes from sugar cane (wich has a way better output than corn or soybean) is questionable to use large portions of fertile land to plant biofuels instead of food to eat.
Such a good video as always Matt
Yup, it might make sense if vertical agriculture of floating farms could be made to work but it's not a good use of land. (I don't know how it compares to livestock feed...?)
What if they built floating garden islands in a protected harbor to grow bio fuels on unused space where water is instead of using land space?
@@armadillito I literally just commented on this comment, then once it's posted I look and see you mention floating areas lol I'm dumb for not looking first. 🤡
You should know better about our country's size
We have enough arable land currently under used to multiply many folds both our ethanol and our food crops output
Even directing such extensions of land to sugarcane ethanol and Eucalyptus firewood - why everybody forget our use of Eucalyptus firewood, even another Brazilian? 🤔 - we still providing food for 1,2 billion people worldwide
The matter is the world just don't have enough demand to everything our arable land can produce
@Ragnar OdinssonDear Ragnar, I've been a soy farmer with very little knowledge on sugarcane
What I can tell you is there is a radius of viability around the distillery
The hauling of sugarcane harvested outside this radius become to expensive to be viable
And yes, unfortunately, the trucks and machines uses diesel instead of fuel alcohol, but as long as I know it's due to market distortions caused by taxation
Many decades ago there was a time when all the fleet of a distillery could be fueled by it's own ethanol, as I learned, but nowadays this option is gone
There is also a secondary byproduct which is electricity generated from burning the bagasse
The juices resulting from the distillation process are also used to fertilize the cropfields surrounding the plant with great recovery of mineral nutrients
What we know as a rule of thumb is the equivalence between common gasoline and ethanol
You may expect one liter of ethanol to release around 70 to 75% o the energy available from the same amount of gasoline
By the way, that's what made me choose fuel alcohol instead of gasoline to fill my tank, just a couple hours ago
What I would like to see in this debate is the relative emissions between building a new electric car and keeping older petrol cars on the road. I always assumed the most emissions came from creating the car not it’s running costs. Also how much co2 actually comes from vehicles compared to other sources?
For certain applications (legacy, heavy aviation ect)this is an option. But for simple ground transportation battery electric has too many advantages. Price is going to fall in line, range is going up and reliability is better than anything internal combustion has to offer. And remember most of all It is far easier to make Electrons then it is to make hydrocarbons.
The big issue that most folks forget about with electric vehicles, is the cost and environmental impact of the rare metals used to make the batteries.
@@notajp the impact, while being a serious problem, is still smaller than that if fossil fuels. Additionally we can greatly decrease that impact by recycling most of those resources. There will never be an energy source that is 100% environmentally friendly.
I have some problems with some of the things you are saying. But I’m glad you are showing the world another option. Brazil has over 40,000 servos and all of them sell a blend of ethanol from e10 to e100 but no one talks about it. Here in Australia e85 is around $1.60 a litre, cheaper than premium
We need more servos with E85 here, though im not sure there is enough demand for it especially considering most cars cant run it ):. Would love to run my car on E85 and crank the boost and timing a bit for that extra power but it would eat through my fuel system and Id prolly run lean on startup considering how much extra injector capacity is needed for E85.
e-fuels will probably only be used for new high performance vehicles (i mean, it is getting dev'd by BMW and Porsche) or modified cars, and the rest of us get EV's. Which is fine by me. Keep the cool cars, everyone that drives a camry gets an EV, all is well.
@@Byefriendo Around here I can get E30, its cheaper and my car runs great on it. I grad it whenever I can.
also does not mention that building new cars of any kind even electric is alot worse than using old cars
Very interesting. My take on this is that someone should be looking into hybrid synth/electric. In the US a lot of travel is longer distance where hybrid extends electric range nicely. The thing we really need though is a leap in energy storage, might be interesting to see if synth can be used to somehow create a new storage medium.
I posted this earlier but there's an article about a modified Tesla with an onboard gas powered generator. It has insane range.
I feel like replacing half the battery pack with a replaceable and recyclable aluminum-air battery or a hydrogen fuel cell with solid-state storage for longer trips while using the regular rechargeable batteries for short to medium trips would be a lot simpler and more effective than making a plug-in hybrid with a bigger battery.
Just no. There are no benefits to this path.
Battery capacity is good as it is today, and is getting better quickly. Full electric vehicles are superior in every way, no reason to add in a bunch of moving parts that reduce efficiency
It's all about efficiency guys, as Matt says in the video you're commenting on. Synth fuels just don't stack up.
Actually I'm on par with this, simply cause I live in Australia, enough said
The hydrogen needed for synthetic fuels is also a big hurdle. It only makes sense if it is produced with green electrolysis. Producing hydrogen from natural gas as is mostly done today, adds CO2 emissions.
But there is already insufficient green electricity. And it makes more sense to put that directly into EV’s, with the efficiencies taken into account.
and that is exactly why we are going to have to turn to nuclear. No matter the solution it always comes back to not having enough c02 free energy to use to start the process to make something else c02 free. We will never be able to build enough wind and solar to make green hydrogen, c02 free fertilizer, concrete and steel cheap enough. Not to mention all the water we are going to need to desalinate and c02 we will need to extract from the air, both require massive amounts of energy 100% of the time.
...until there us a superabundance of renewable energy. Coming soon!
Plus bevore you put the hydrogen into a processing plant to get fuel out of it...you could just use the hydrogine itself with an electric engine.
@@instanoodles I'm a huge supporter of expanding nuclear fission, but fuel synthesis is the *perfect* application for intermittents like wind and solar, and they can be turned up far more quickly and easily than nuclear plants. I'd say we should save nuclear for grid baseload where we need reliable energy, and dedicated wind/solar to fuel synthesis.
@@instanoodles Focusing on CO2 is a grave mistake. Frankly, we don't have enough fossil fuels either, but we should use everything we have left. We are looking at a full blown global energy crisis in the near future. People should stop wringing their hands over CO2, which has never been demonstrated to a high order of probability to warm the world, and if it did, that would be a positive outcome, not a negative outcome. Right now, the world is about 1 degree Celsius above another Little Ice Age. No way is that the optimum temperature.
One of the biggest limitations of electric will be in large machines in the agriculture and mining where the vehicles can not sit and charge. For example, farm equipment are usually a hurry up and wait use pattern. Combines are only used for a short stint in the year and are then run for 14-16 hours a day on average (this is the same for tractors used for planting and management). This limits when charging can take place and along with refueling time can be a real burden. In addition, the weight of the batteries needed to run these machine will be massive and reduce the amount of total weight the vehicle can hold or tow. It may not be perfect, but biofuel is one of the only ways to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. We just need to put more money into technology like cellulosic ethanol to be able to utilize all aspects of the plant efficiently for fuel production.
An issue you skip over is that combustion engines don’t only emit co2. They also emit a host of other substances, like particular matter causing health issues and nitrogen compounds causing biodiversity problems. EVs have their own share of problems ofc, including greater particular matter caused by their higher tire wear due to their high mass.
Don't forget about groundwater annihilation near lithium fields...
Also where it comes the electricity, as long as the electricity comes from thermoelectric plants it remains fossil energy.
A significant motivation for the motor vehicle industry to switch over to electric, is that it gets the emissions regulators off their backs. Current emission standards for diesel engines require the use of expensive aftertreatment which ends up being a problem for end users, because there have been many reliability and durability problems. Euro 7 emission standards for cars and light trucks are in the foreseeable future and are at the moment considered unachievable without switching a considerable part of the production to EV and making use of fleet averaging. Switching to EV makes all this go away. Of course, there is an argument that it makes it "somebody else's problem", but if you are in the business of building motor vehicles, "somebody else's problem" is not a problem.
I've been a mechanic for 30 years. There is no way to make ICE carbon neutral. Oil in the crank case, petroleum in the transmission, gross hydraulic fluid, it was never good and never will be
All those mechanical parts wear out and need toxic lubing. EV's have a motor that need to be greased and some other parts but you dont change those "oils" they last for the life time of the car which is probably 10 to 20 years. The brakes are regenerative.
Those are just medium to long chain hydrocarbons that can be collected as byproducts from refining fischer Tropsch fuels. Not that they're significant in the grand scheme of things in the first place
Lol….. those liquids are actually recycled and reused all across the industry, there is a reason why those things are collected. Also ICE might not be the most efficient but you have to agree that when it comes to doing the job and beeing super flexible nothing beats ICE, you cannot increase the range of your EV or easily modify it to suit an application/use.
@@Andytlp big lol….. you realise that there are 30-40+ years old cars still on the roads right!? EVs still haven’t proven to even remotely last long with all their millions of electronics. What about those EVs in really harsch environments like Africa, South America, Asia…… those EVs will really struggle to survive there.
@@carholic-sz3qv I don't own an EV so I don't have a dog in this fight. But my understanding is that EVs hold up much better than ICE vehicles overall. Since they have so many fewer moving parts, there is far fewer things to wear out. So they require significantly less repairs and are less likely to break down. But yeah, batteries degrade over time so you are definitely looking at issues related to that 15-20 years after buying the EV.
I used to make my own bio-diesel from spent frying oil, from restaurants. If I didn’t count my time, it would cost me about $2.50/gal. That said, trying to make this a business was cost prohibitive, and not enough availability of feedstock. However, it satisfied my family’s needs for lower cost transportation, and I love to putter with this sort of stuff.
Unfortunately, I think, the ROI still is favorable for fossil fuels. Imho, we will have to see very expensive fuel prices to make bio-fuels an attractive choice. I wish it weren’t so.
If you're using any of that biodiesel for bulk heating, I've discovered that you can dissolve straight (filtered) WVO into gasoline (60:40'ish) and get a low enough flashpoint and high enough stoichiometric combustion ratio to make it run great in forced-air diesel/kerosene heaters. :)
My biodiesel process costs me about the same; are you recovering methanol from the glycerol after separation? Pump diesel is around $6/gallon here, so in my case it's still economically favorable.
@@GordLamb
Yes I did. That is what helped with the cost.
Hey, this sound really interesting. Do you have any good resources that I could use to study this process?
@@HakuTemaki unfortunately not. It’s been over a decade since I made any bio-diesel, or studied what is going on in the field. That said, I would imagine there is still information out there.
Matt. Interesting video. Keep up the good work. Please dig deeper into the inefficiencies and negative externalities of biofuels. My back of the envelope calculations show that solar farms produce more than 100 times more miles per acre than biofuels. Photosynthesis is not efficient at turning sunlight into usable energy. The figures I've seen shows that corn plants are about 0.25 percent efficient at turning sunlight into the corn kernels that are used to produce ethanol, while the current generation of solar cells convert about 21% of sunlight into electricity. In addition, electric motors are more efficient at turning electricity into motion than internal combustion engines that have relatively low thermal efficiency.
Heating my home with a boiler converted to Biofuel, for 8 years, builded a separate boiler shed for safety. Been using Canola oil from restaurants, well filtered. A burner modified to heat the oil, and to mix with air at the nozzle. Being Canola the oil is gummy and does plug up the boiler, maintenance is high. Cost for oil is free. Spillage is enviro friendly, it has happened. Storage 3 x 1000 liter containers. Does burn more oil than fossil due to it being an older used boiler. It has been a learning process over the years. The used oil by product unable to burn is blended with crushed used road asphalt to make pavement. The unit paid for itself in the first year.
Great video, would have been interesting if you also added hydrogen fuel in the comparison.
Hydrogen is very expensive to produce (in money and energy terms), store and use (if you want decent but sub electric efficiency).
In a sense, is worse than synthetic fuels.
There really isn't much of a comparison. Hydrogen is extremely expensive, and there is a huge problem with storage and transport.
@@dozaarchives2225 Of course there is a comparison. Every option mentioned bar none (including oil) ultimately comes from hydrogen - that alone shows there is merit. It's a matter of scale and ingenuity of engineers. In terms of hydrogen, everything you need falls on the roof of your house (water and sunlight) so its not even like you need to dig up rainforests to do it.
If hydrogen had received the decades of investment and scale that oil has we would be fine by now. But changing all the engineering from oil rigs, giant refineries, tankers, distribution doesnt happen spontaneously, and politicians are still holding their hands out for easy short term cash from big oil.
@@aitorbleda8267 true, but It can't be much worse e-fuels right? Or maybe it is, that is why I thought it be interesting to see in the comparison how it stacks up. And yeah storage is a problem but everything has a solution the only question is how bad the losses of energy are and how expensive it is. Things like liquid organic hydrogen carriers or the video matt did before about solid hydrogen. If there is a possibility we should explore it and not right it off because it's not immediately ready for use.
@@grizzlythegrey9464 It is better and worse.
energy wise, hydrogen is worse than synth, and emissions are worse, but on the point of use, no noise or emissions.
Even on ideal scenarios, batteries are better, for cars.
It's good to have alternatives. Personally I prefer the performance and quietness with my electric car. To have zero tailpipe emissions aint too shabby either.
A big part of the EV craze is that eventually you can pair it with your own solar power generation system at your home and break away from dependency on utilities and having to purchase fuel at all from some corporation trying to take advantage of you.
@Darrell Braden unless you plan on building your own cars and solar panels from scratch you still have the same problems as before.
Sure you can, buddy
Sure you can
@@cdb5961 Well having knowledge of how these systems work may very well be a key to maintaining them in the future. The storage and solar panels for instance are being constantly improved for output and longevity. But, I'm just saying the initial savings is that you are no longer held hostage by utility companies who charge you outlandish rates at there own whim just to deliver you the energy. They can not yet monopolize access to the raw power of the sun or wind. These devices remove the middle man. However maintaining and open improvement of these systems becomes the challenges we face beyond this. but completely doable.
I feel as if synthetic fuels are less about saying the planet and more about saving the ICE, which is frankly admirable but on a smaller scale
As long as there are ICE because there are not enough EV’s build yet the E-Fuels can help moving countries that do not have EV’s yet away from oil.
I agree. It very much feels like companies just trying to figure out a way to keep us buying fuel from them on a daily basis.
@@Lewis94444 internal combustion engine. So your normal gas powered car that you see on the road today.
@@Lewis94444 thanks! I hope you find my stuff helpful :-)
saving ICE cars is not admirable.
This is like creating a more environment-friendly film when digital cameras started taking over. It's pointless now. EVs are taking over the market. No need to transport the fuel to gas stations, then for you to go to a gas station (you have the choice of charging at home), no waiting in lines or inhaling fuels.
Yeah, I agree. Mr. Ferrell seems to have set up something of a straw man, here. Although I appreciate the thoroughness of his analysis, it's really the cost that is making synthetic fuels a non-starter. Personally, I don't think that the simplicity of the electric motor is talked up enough. I believe that it is the much lower maintenance costs of electric vehicles that will ultimately win over the public. Replacing mufflers, oil, fuel pumps, timing belts, transmissions and the frequency of brake pad replacement--things that add greatly to the cost and inconvenience of ICE vehicles--will be things of the past. As people are hit with a $3000 bill to replace a transmission or $300 for a fuel pump and witness their EV neighbors never having to deal with these headaches, they're going to change their minds. No matter how much they like the VROOOM VROOOM right now. Save that for a hobby vehicle.
The problem with EVs is the lack of enough lithium in the world for everyone to drive one. Mining for lithium it’s horrible for the environment not to mention you’re going to more electricity for the cars. Either you’re going to burn more coal or go nuclear. Nuclear is the cleaner more affective option but people are afraid of it. Wind and solar just doesn’t create enough power
If you lived near a lithium leaching field you would probably think differently. The problem isn't the efficiency of the car, it's the emissions generated to produce the car itself ("embodied energy", Google it), and an EV doesn't really have any advantage over ICE in that respect. ICE actually has a manufacturing advantage because there's steel everywhere, unlike lithium.
@@Addy262 nuclear is the best source, but is too delicate and dangerous in the hands of idiots, and humans are idiots by nature, some more than others, but idiots nonetheless
It doesn't make the combustion engine more efficient, doesn't make it less complicated, doesn't make it less dirty etc....
Maybe it is a short term solution for some specific applications. But aside from the stupid co2, it seems more complicated and more destructive than regular fuel.
I'm on the electric side. The only "problem" right now with electric vehicles is the energy storage. Everything else is simple and reliable.
It does make ICE's less dirty, 100%. In the case of waste food oils for biodiesel, if we put that oil in the environment, it becomes methane which is worse than CO2. NOT ONLY THAT. if we put that waste food oil into landfills, it leaches in to aquifers, rivers, lakes, spill ways, and oceans, killing surface plankton and algea we need for turning CO2 in to O2 and feeding the rest of the eco system.
Meanwhile,.the CO2 to produce lithium ion batteries is an unmitigated disaster. If you use TELSA's own numbers, it's over 70 kg of CO2 per KWH over the total lifecycle of the battery.
A Tesla battery is 100kwh. That's 7000kg of CO2 before the TESLA leaves the factory. That's the equivalent of 650 gallons of gasoline.
Then you produce CO2 from dirty grids like america which is 76% non-renewable.
A Biodiesel car is more carbon neutral than an EV.
And before you reply "ice cars require CO2 to make, too":
1. Every other component is one fifth the CO2 to produce than the battery
2. Tesla's, without the battery, are still heavier than the equivalent ICE car, meaning the electric vehicle is equal or worse with the battery removed.
This is using TESLAs numbers.
But Tesla doesn't produce 100% of their batteries. Infact. They use Chinese batteries for all the vehicles not in America
Chinese manufacturing produced batteries at up to 135kg CO2 per kWh, or 13500kg CO2 per Tesla. That's the equivalent to 13000 gallons of gasoline.
EV'snare green washing.
@@coreyfro Yes the recycling of waste food oils is really a good point.
With dirty I mean it is still burning stuff and blowing the dirt (much more than just clean gases like co2) out in the air.
I don't care that much about co2, it doesn't mean we shouldn't reduce the production of it. I just think our climate is MUCH more complicated than our governments say.
I think our planet can still handle the amount of co2. Take a look at big smog filled city's and tell me again that combustion engines are clean, no matter what you burn in it😉.
Like I said, the only technical problem with EV's is the energy storage.
@@-Tris- my 30 year old truck running on biodiesel doesn't produce soot. Sorry diesel is a bygone era before turbo diesel engines.
Modern diesels don't even produce NOX emissions.
They are very clean. Practically only CO2.
@@coreyfro do you know anything about how they produce diesel? Because if you did truly know anything at all about diesel production.
You'd know that just refining it consumes cobalt, water and massive amounts of electricity.
How about that little injectable blue fluid for all those supposedly clean diesels? Hmm something about urea used to make it requiring mining and more energy. 🤔
The real question is: should we use as many cars as we do?
Converting to an electric ecosystem is a minimal optimization. Mass transit, urban design, telecommuting, and efficient distribution networks are where the real savings are at.
Yeah that's great for farmers, miners, mechanics, carpenters, construction men, police, EMCs, and any other professional that doesn't follow the transportation arteries.
@@mrwelshi7201 And? The majority of people moving away from reliance on automobiles makes the experience better for those who still need them. We need to move away from automobile dependence and allow people the freedom to walk, cycle, and utilize efficient and fast public mass transit to fill their transportation needs. And those vehicles that remain need to be electrified.
I'm missing the consideration for the upfront cost of EVs. Gas cars can be bought used and parts can be replaced by a reasonable handy person. Also, people living in apartments in cities with little parking space. In times when both parents have to be working to sustain a moderate family in Europe with a moderate to good income around €2800 both are working and €1900 one is working full time.
E-Fuels can follow the ICE cars that are exported to other countries. EV’s will replace ICE in the EU, US, Canada, Australia/NZ and Asia ( China, Japan, South korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong) first so the newer ICE that are no longer wanted are exported to Africa, the rest of Asia and South america. Incorporating E-Fuel’s in those countries can make those cars cleaner for the atmosphere untill there countries will get more EV’s eventually.
Unfortunately the countries you have mentioned also have lots of sunshine and potential for solar power, therefore they could electrify faster and get rid of the shackles of the oil industry even if they do it via electric scooters and motorcycles rather than cars.
@@eclecticcyclist You can make Efuel with the fischer tropsch process based on solar energy, in this way each country can have his own source of fuel, even remote locations because you dont have to rely on transport so much. The countries should offcource focus on electric mobililty, specially in the urban cities but lack of production capacity for EV's, batteries and battery materials will be a bottleneck for the speed of transition. So when the countries i mentioned are rapidly switching to EV's and the second hands are exported to other countries, they could focus on switching from oil to E-Fuels untill the EV's can catch up with demand. Replacing the older and dirtier cars they use now with newer cleaner versions but can use E-Fuels from local production.
@@PM_82 When very few of Africa's population even has motorised transport, why would they opt for an expensive system like E-fuelled ICE vehicles and not go with super efficient EVs after all they'd save on electicity production expenditure?
@@eclecticcyclist You are not seeing the big picture, with the ICE vehicles lossing use in the countries i mentioned the second hand cars are beeing exported to for instance africa making motorised transport more availible for cheap because traders will take all they can get for those cars. Super efficient EV's will not be availible in enough supply to fill the need of all the world, they can not build them fast enough and battery materials are not availible like lithium hydroxide, graphite anode materials etc. With the downturn of gasoline use in the EV countries they will try to move the oil towards but those countries but also the E fuel that is now mixed with gasoline to E90-E85 will seen less demand and Africa countries can make these E fuels themself with better technology without having to rely on the oil companies. Use EV where possible with new vehicles but the used ICE fleet could move towards E-Fuel
@@PM_82 It is you who is not seeing the big picture. In Asia the big growth area is in cheap to fuel e-scooters and micro EVs, there's no reson to imagine that not being the case in most of Africa.
The real solution to the issues of both EV and combustion engines is to design cities so that public transit, walking, and cycling are better than driving. And to make cities appealing to people instead of whatever most US cities are at this point. The issues of vehicles will be a lot more manageable once the majority of people no longer want or need to drive.
So who is going to pay for 100 trillion deal? In case you are not aware of something called humanity, all its existence people have wanted to own things. We do not want to live in cookie cutter apartments. If your masters really think that humans will be happy not owning anything at all, not even the clothes on their backs, they do not know humanity.
@@roberthicks1612 wtf are you on about? $100 trillion to who or what? I never said anything about soulless apartments. I'm not sure if you're unable to read, are a bot, or are just so mentally incoherent that you are unable to comprehend what I wrote.
Another thing to think about is not just the environmental impact of EV. Cobalt is one of many minerals used in the production of EV batteries and its Waste generated from mining cobalt and other metals can pollute water, air and soil, leading to decreased crop yields, contaminated food and water, and respiratory and reproductive health issues. I just watched a youtube video on this subject (Toxic cost of going Green) and it is eye opening documentary at the Human costs and the health issues and genetic birth defects of the villagers who mine this mineral or live within proximity of the mine. What about Direct Air Capture Scrubbers to capture the CO2 out of the atmosphere and convert it to fuel I saw something on this not long ago. I found it quite interesting
I don't know if that's a point, but maybe this should be a way to store energy temporarily ? You produce biofuels with electricity during peak solar/wind, then use it to power generators when demand is high. If you manage to do it well with carbon capture points to ease the production, maybe that would be a way to refactor current gas/coal plants into electricity storage even if the whole process is not as efficient as batteries. It would probably be greener overall since you capture emissions or, in some case, produce fuel.
When introducing the concept of taking CO2 from the atmosphere then combining it with hydrogen in the creation of synfuel, I wish you had addressed even a little the problem with creating the hydrogen. Hydrogen is not found by itself on Earth but must be created (usually through electrolysis), stored, and transported in order to be used. Each step has its own energy cost and losses even before the energy costs in the synfuel creation.
you don't have to use hydrogen. there is a process that Texas university that uses co2, water, high temps, and pressure to make the fuel. the big problem with it is that it takes more energy in then you get out. this isn't really problem if we combine it with say nuclear reactors, or possibly solar plants where the goal is to produce the fuel rather than grid energy. Most alternative fuels suffer from this inherent issue. the reason fossil fuels are easier is nature already did the work of converting that biomass over a long period of time into a fuel we can use.
For any interested, the song from the intro is Ganja by Ooyy.
Palm oil derived biodiesel is actually a feasible synthetic fuel simply because the yield. Oil Palms produces 10 times more oil than any vegetable oil plants. In Indonesia biodiesel can be sold less than $1 with profit. Now 30% of biofuel mix is mandatory and it cost 50 cents per liter. Only in Indonesia 🇮🇩.
You forget two main aspects of power transfer and energy efficiency: where the energy comes from and how it is used:
(1) it matters greatly if energy has to be produced during the charging process, like EVs, which run the risk of charging when everybody else also is, while e-fuels can be produced during storms or sunny days, stored away and used later. This is of crucial importance if we were to rely more on renewable energy!
(2) EVs have a heavy battery, a part of the energy is used to merely move the battery. If an alternative vehicle is lighter, this has to be considered too!
(I take it for granted that we use electricity or heat to produce e-fuels and abandon biomass as this has a disastrous environmental footprint)
Nobody is going to build an e-fuel plant to only run it when there's a surplus of clean energy. If all you want is longer-term storage you might as well skip all the extra steps and triple (or even quadruple) efficiency by sticking to hydrogen.
"the process from storage to the wheels" -- I don't think that is how the energy electricity of EV's should be measured. For all types of fuel, we should start with the initial acquisition of the fuel or feedstock for the fuel. (And for biofuels, this should include the "fossil fuels" that go into modern agriculture.) I don't know whether synfuels, biofuels, or electricity come out as more efficient, but I'm pretty sure both will come out lower than the numbers in this vid when all energy inputs are factored into the equation. Also, cost should not be counted as "cost per ton of CO2." The economy does not run on CO2 except to the extent that it feeds our plants.
One thing I didn't see in your analysis. The cost of the cars themselves over say 10 years.
1. EV at $60K and low energy cost to recharge + battery replacement(s)
2. Internal combustion engine at $30K + cost of fuel.
As a battery. Fuel.production would be more convenient for long term storage and use. It would be more practical for places that have cooling or poor sunlight in winter. And also for remote areas not close to a grid
Honestly i think syn/e fuels have a significant advantage in terms of range due to that sweet energy density, in more rural areas it's viable where EV's just aren't so it's going to be a necessary tool in the toolbox if nothing else.
Also for long haul trucking, shipping, and airliners, and let's not forget the needs of the armed forces. But where do you get the energy for electrolysis? Wind and solar? Then you need huge and probably unavailable quantities of minerals, plus the EROI is low and probably overstated for both energy sources even before it falls further as you convert it to synfuel the distribution process for synfuel. To me, our energy future looks like a chess game where every variation leads to a losing position. People are following their hunches when they should be thinking the process through from beginning to end, step by step, with all the inputs and outputs accounted for. I think the end results of those calculations are going to be quite unwelcome.
@@michaels4255 I completly agree, all the more reason to diversify as far as possible so each method can support the failings of the others and only use the absolute best fit for each use case rather than assuming EV's, biofuel or fuel cell tech is the only right answer across the board.
i think EVs have an edge because of fewer moving parts and better torque.
@@michaels4255 the armed forces argument is interesting. if that's a genuine reason, then why are we using the tools for war to fuel our daily economy? seems like it's making america weaker and more vulnerable to attack. if the army ever genuinely needed fuel for war, then how would we fuel our economy? the way i see it, the "army needs gas" argument is more a reason to switch to electric so the economy is insulated from what the war machine needs.
@@sandrafrancisco Torque is an advantage especially at slower speeds for sure but at range it'd be fair to assume motorway type usasge which i don't think would benefit from the torque so much.
Fewer moving parts are always a plus, less wear, lower upkeep costs ect. but it's probably only an edge case benefit, it's not mile modern engines wear out that fast.
It's funny that at 8:26 you included a scene from Bucharest and I was just looking at the gas prices nearby :))
I worked for a company that recycled tyres, an often forgotten waste product of all vehicles.
When I left they were looking at making diesel from the rubber crumb, although I'm sure this would have a very similar environmental impact it takes care of a waste product that is often dumped.
I'd also be interested in learning more about bio fuel made from hemp as it is a fast growing plant
Sometimes that type of upcycling is the best we can do with those waste products.
There are diesel engines that can run on straight vegetable oil (svo). This option was the original idea of the inventor of the diesel engine. SVO doesn't need big processing, and can be produced from many, many sources.
It feels like the answer to this question might not be one or the other, but a combination of both.
Hybrid vehicles are a compromise we've used in the past to make cars use less gasoline, bringing their fuel efficiency up to 100+ MPG. No reason one couldn't use the same technology, but optimized for biofuels. Make hybrid electric/biofuel engines to reduce the demand for Biofuel in the first place, so you just need less of it to run your car. Sure the price for Biofuel will be higher, but when you only need to buy gas a couple of times a year, thats a lot less of a big deal.
You could potentially mitigate the weaknesses of both platforms with this solution. If your EV runs out of power, it takes hours to recharge, and charging stations aren't super common. With a hybrid, you just start up the biofuel engine, and run on that for a bit, and recharge the car off of that. Meanwhile you can use the electric engine most of the time to save that expensive biofuel for when you really need it, mitigating the issue of the price of biofuel.
You can use the best parts of both of these technologies to cover the weaknesses of the other. And as the technologies independently improve (batteries get better, biofuel generation becomes more efficient/cheaper) these cars will only get better.
The only biofuel worth considering is biogas (renewable methane). It's the same gas as natural gas, but carbon neutral since it's not from a fossil source.
Methane is made anyway naturally by bacteria so why not capture it? The best part is that by capturing and storing methane you're actually removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
In summary, capturing methane reduces global warming, can be used as a backup fuel for generators. Bio methane will also replace natural gas since it's not needed anymore.
If the methane is made from pyrolysis it could actually be net carbon sequestering so long as the solid carbon product of the pyrolysis is turned into a stable product (soil fertilizer or concrete aggregate for example)
I would also think its worth noting that although you can look at these biofuels as carbon neutral they still produce the same population as gas like Nox which we know is a major cause of asthma in children. For most people an electronic car with a reasonable range will cover most of the journeys they make and donit without damaging their own local environment anywhere near as badly as combustion.
Sugarcane also grows in some of the most productive ecosystems in the world, meaning that each acre of sugarcane replaces what would’ve been a natural ecosystem that takes A LOT of CO2 out of the air while also taking away what should be habitat with high biodiversity. So sugarcane may not be the best option… (if we all drove less, this wouldn’t be nearly as big of an issue)
What if you also take into account the production of those batteries?
In the past I was assigned to a project that worked on the development of native prairie grass cultivars as an alternative source of biomass for biofuel production. It's far from a perfect solution, but what we were finding is that we were able to convert marginal (less than productive) crop land into restored native grassland that could source cost competative biofuel. What's more is that we were finding that as we altered the management of these grasses (i.e. delayed harvesting compared to forage grass), we could encourage nesting of certain native bird species (bobolink in particular) among other things. Again, I don't believe that biofuel is the best solution moving forward, but there can be amazing benefits to them if implemented properly!
They've done studies that prove corn is a horrible option in production of ethanol. The sustainable fuel act that forced corn on us is expiring and I'm hoping they will review the results. If they could make the switch to switchgrass and hemp as the primary source of ethanol, they'll see 5x more production over corn. As a bonus, a lot of the areas affected in corn production was once prairie land, which switchgrass is native to and will return biodiversity to the region. Studies show a switch to the prairie grass will not only produce more ethanol but also at a far lower carbon impact, effectively increasing the ability to go carbon neutral.
Have you factored in how liquid fuels volatilize and slowly escapes from a vehicle’s fuel system? I track my car’s fuel economy every fill-up, and it always takes a significant hit when I drive less frequently, despite the trips and driving style being the same, just spaced further apart in time.
how often do you drive your car to notice the fuel "volatilize"? Once a decade?
Because escaping fuel vapors were a contributor to air pollution here in California, we passed laws mandating limits on fuel vapor emissions, and the auto companies came up with updated systems and gas caps to minimize leakage.
A greater concern is if the fuel system is based on hydrogen, and automakers have been coming up with better bottles to prevent hydrogen from escaping (and hydrogen LOVES to escape from containers, even coated metal bottles).
So no, this has not been a thing for about 15 years now.
@@MMuraseofSandvich even without California's bureaucracy, it would take weeks if not months for gas to go noticeably worse in a gas tank. And if you drive as much as not needing to refuel for 2 months, your carbon footprint is definitely something you shouldn't care about :)
What a stupid comment...
@@MMuraseofSandvich Minimized doesn’t equal zero.This is a consistent pattern across our vehicles and their emissions controls systems work as designed. It is worse during summer months, especially for the one that is parked outside. They also eventually fail, despite attempts to repair them.
But I agree hydrogen is worse as those pesky little hydrogen atoms slip through materials easily.
Good job! Two points that are implied by your video, but ought to be more explicit: First, the ethanol-from-corn requirement in the US has raised the price of food worldwide and this has a disproportionate impact on the poor. Second, come cynics have suggested that it's not coincidental that Iowa is both a big corn state and an early primary state and possible swing state. I actually think we'll in time make a success of synthetics for planes and ships, but from cellulose biomass and not from ethanol.
Methonol is the alcahol fuel made from biomas
@@kennethspencer7402 You can make either.
Synthetic-Fuels used in ICE will still produce Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) during combustion.
This is in particular true for ICEs with high compression ratios (high temp and pressure = more NOx output). NOx have many non eco-friendly properties and there is a growing movement to reduce these types of emissions.
Ya I use e85 for my car because it provides more power and my commute is like 4 miles round trip. So idt its feasible for everyone considering my gas milage is way lower but I've seen e85 tuned race engines pass smog emissions tests without even having a catalytic converter which means the fuel must be burning really clean which is another selling point. Only bad thing is more frequent oil changes and the price of ethanol jumped from 1.85 to over 4$ recently.
If you generate methanol, it should be possible to use a 2 stage fuel cell, first converting it to syngas, and then consuming the syngas.
Surprisingly unbiased. This is what informational videos should be. Good work.
I think the question that this video failed to address is how prices of electric vehicles and synthetic fuels will change with developing technologies. It’s a much harder question to address since it’s speculative and you have to have a deeper understanding of the technologies, but without it this conversation feels incomplete.
For the bio Fuel to be cheapest for the day to day running of cars the governments have to take charge. 1, Subsidies to fertilizer and other material contributing to farming of corn and other related plants. 2, Use of solar or other renewable energy to produce the fuel. If the governments commit to this and giving more land then the bio fuels can be cheaper. Let us also consider the impact of used batteries to the environment. How are they disposed? The cost of electricity is also not cheap when it comes to charging the EV cars.
Algae fuel is probably the best biofuel. It's not that we can't make it. The trick is finding a way to upscale it. It can be put into industrial areas, or even using wastewater. They are still working on a way to be able to mass produce it, at a reasonable cost.
Synthetic fuels will be an important part of the energy mix, but it is likely that the bulk of personal vehicles will shift to electric.
Except that we have already blown through our yearly capacity to produce Lithium... meanwhile, we can grow fuel for free.
Most biofuels are derived from waste, which requires no additional water to produce since the product is recycled. A fact totally ignored by this video.
As I cannot share links, I will simple give you the keywords "Neste Oakland 750000 pounds" for an example of how Oakland has a net zero fleet of diesels without any additional water, fertilizer, arable land burden.
eh, sorta. One thing missing from this and maybe someone else has said it already in the comments, ICE burn a tiny amount of oil over time. The oil coats the cylinder sleeve and in the combustion process, some of that oil gets burned. It's not a lot for naturally aspirated engines, but it's more for turbo and supercharged engines. Turbos themselves also are at risk of small amounts of oil consumption. An individual car probably isn't note-worthy, but multiple that by millions and millions of cars... it starts to add up.
what is missed in efficiency is how the power goes from source coal oil nuclear sun wind to the charge point. transmission losses and if fuel burn to make power the boiler is 60 to 40 percent efficient. just throwen that out there. good episode tho!
By the sound of all the variabilities and limitations of each, I don't think a single fuel type will be best for all applications, thus multiple fuel types will continue in the foreseeable future.
What about heating/ industrial processes (which represent 50% of overall anthropocene energy use)? Filling the gas grid in Europe with e-fuels made with summer PV to heat buildings in winter- wpuld love to see a deepdive on that.
I had a flex fuel minivan that I drove across the US and filled exactly once with E85. There were 2 reasons why only once. The 1st is because I've only every seen it sold once. The 2nd? Fuel economy dropped by 25% immediately. People talk about range anxiety. That was major range anxiety when you're out in desolate stretches of Nebraska.
So why the drastic drop? Again, 2 reasons. 1st, lower energery per unit volume. 2nd, while E85 has a much higher octane rating of 100-105, the engine can't take advantage of that because the compression ratio is built with a maximum ratio when new from the factory and can't adjust on the fly.
Last, if you build an alcohol only engine, then methanaol is the choice of fuel. And at least in the US we have truly massive quantities of yard, landscaping, and farming waste that if we could convert it to fuel easily would make an amazing supply. But alas, that is still pie in the sky even 20 years on.
In the Philippines and some other countries they are making ethanol out of water lilies that are a real nuisance plant. Strangely enough, Commiefornia is having a big problem with these plants as well.
I used to have this director who got used cooking oil from McDonald to run his bio-diesel car
Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a fuel cell design that eliminates the need for a methane reformer and requires temperatures of only 500°C.
Although carbon neutrality would depend on the source, use as a fuel cell would produce a lot less carbon than an ice engine. The fuel will be a lot cheaper and easier to store than hydrogen. And a fuel cell car is basically an electric car with an onboard generator. Therefore advances in battery electric motor and other electric car would translate fairly directly.
according to a study by the u.s. government biofuels actually release more carbon than is removed so they aren't a neutral fuel. not only does biodiesel generate more carbon dioxide, biodiesel produces more than does petrodiesel. Furthermore, biodiesel engines are considerably less fuel efficient.
Just imaging, that there was a way to turn used plastic waste into fuel for gargo boats, trucks, gasoline vehicles and plains...
And that this proces had no byproducts and that this fuel is 10 times cleaner than that we use now...
And that it gives everyone to become plastic neutral and could even profit from it...
And imagine that it was allready there!!
Corsair, from plastic waste to sustainable oil
Also what about wind energy to complement solar energy. The tyre rims can collect so much wind.
It may be a stupid idea, but what if we gave cars some sort of storage chamber where they could store exhaust gas. It would make capturing CO2 a lot easier no? You just come to the gas station and use a special hose, that would both put gas into your vehicle and at the same time extract exhaust gas, which then could be filtered and made into synthetic fuel.
Did I miss it, Matt, or did you not give the efficiency of e-fuels vs syn fuels and EV cars? Also, you didn't mention the ozone production of EVs, the lifespan of the batteries or the cost of replacing them, did you? Maybe I missed it all at 1.75x speed. ;) Please advise.
What you omitted is convenience, travelling long distances in an EV would require recharging, which would require massive car park charging stations, with huge electrical infrastructure !
They just need to keep trying to make energy from waste. And as you said, corn is not a good crop. They need to find better crops and figure out "what is wasted from this crop?" then use it to make something useful
Great video. There is also the environmental cost of not taking carbon dioxide from the air down to pre industrial levels, and when you take that into account, what are the numbers?
End to end efficiency and environmental analysis needs to keep an eye on the amount of development headroom left for each technology. Battery technology has a lot, ICE has a little. Using arable land to produce combustion fuels, is ghastly, for a number of reasons. The one that really concerns me is the phosphate load on the Gulf of Mexico, but the cumulative global effect is going to choke all aquatic life, eventually. US citizens don’t feel the subsidization cost of corn for ethanol, but it is not trivial and does belong in the ranking calculations.
the only thing that is not very clear to me is whether you have taken into account the energy losses in the production of electricity and the long-line transport of electrical energy. this is where the biggest losses occur in the electric network, not only when charging and discharging the battery on an electric vehicle.
EV still comes out the winner just because they're so much more efficient.
The cheapest Diesel near where I live in the U.K. is currently $2.09/L so at the low end $2.64/L isn't much higher than I'd be paying anyway.
Sure, prices are higher right now than they would be normally because of the pressure on Oil right now, but in theory synthetic diesel should be less sensitive to the global oil market, and could potentially take advantage of global underproduction.
I would like to see how Battery Electric and Synthetic fuel would stack up against Hydrogen fuel cell though.
please include more info about annual or lifetime costs of the respective types of vehicles. i've read that EVs have very low maintenance requirements & the motors have a much longer lifespan. longer lifespan & much better torque from electric motors also makes them more suitable for trucking. i've also read that lithium batteries are highly recyclable ergo, at some point in the future there will be less need to mine minerals for battery components.
Even if bio fuels are less efficient and more expensive, as someone who loves cars I’m willing to take that trade off. Chances are I’ll drive an electric car to work and back and drive a ice car on the weekends or on the track. I’m sure a lot of people would agree with me too
I'm reminded of a MythBusters episode that had to do with moonshine and vehicles. The more modern car was actually able to run on moonshine.
10 dollar a gallon syn fuels doesn't sound like a bad deal with gas prices the way they are now. I'd imagine that would come down a little over a few decades.... First we will see only partial syn fuel blends, as a supplement to blending components. That's what we need right now. Syn fuels could even be processed locally when we have standardized IP you can franchise. These companies do offer franchises, I saw some nice stuff from DuPont...... The shipping costs could really be cut down and we could use short run pipelines......produce fuel on a county level in small facilities that dont have huge local impacts..... Insulate ourselves a bit from those global market forces.....
Why not both? Energy dense fuels suit power hungry modes of transportation like trucks and planes while cars and bikes can go electric. Also, is bamboo an option when it comes to making biofuels? It grows at a fast pace and we won't be running out of it anytime soon.
The best ways to ride bicycles ,horse or Bullock carts and even public transport can reduce the carbon emission but not net zero
I will admit that biofuels may help with the dilemma of farmers. What to do with your crops. They wouldn't have to deal with the Food Cartels dictating prices.....
Question on ev market? Is there really enough lithium out there to Power the cars & the products we need next 50 years, if every country is
Using the same Technology.
I still don't understand why hybrid vehicles seem to be overlooked. An electric car with fuel generator seems to be the best solution, the fuel engine could be steamlined because it would run at a constant rate under consistant conditions. And it wouldn't be as battery intensive to get range.
Rather than merely staying on topic, this video by Matt is probably the Best video on energy aka transportation, money, climate. Like many of you, I have skimmed through many, vids, and will view many more. The reason for this is that it is the most concise description of the world as it is regarding energy for transport IF chemists every get to use algae, or some inexpensive catalyst to make limitless affordable fuels, this would change civilization. Until that golden time, I am betting on electric driven by solar. I look at what the South Australia's are doing as civilians all on their own, and see a winning model. No, I don't work for Tesla, nor own their stock. Just the way I analyze.
One huge factor to consider is biofuel's impact on the world food supply/cost. Using foods or lands to produce biofuel can and has dramatically increased food costs in many parts of the world where people are barely surviving as it is. This is unacceptable.
I think the main consideration is land use. Biofuel from crops is very unsustainable for the reasons described in the video.
And fully synthetic biofuels require a larger area of solar panels or wind turbines to produce the same amount of useable energy than a battery system, due to the energy loss in creating the synthetic fuels (as mentioned in the video). Conversely, I think the synthetic fuels could be a cleaner way to store energy than lithium-ion batteries which require destructive mining. I think the big issue is finding a clean and efficient energy storage solutions.
An interesting option for combined generation and storage could be seaweed and algae grown in the sea in a regenerative way. E.g. regenerative ocean farming, or 3D ocean farming. I want to look into this more.
Fully synthetic
This video would deserve more analysis because as presented here I could have issues at deciding for the best. And I’m an E engineer… By the way I think your final point makes sense. Each energy form will have its niche and advantage. I am sure we switch and stay quite long on flight transport on synth fuel, just because you are not going to fly ev anytime soon. For other applications such as maritime transport of containers should run on different tech, such solar and as nuclear as possible. And by the way a lot of attention is currently spent on the transportation piece of the pie. Cement for building is a huge protagonist of this problem we face and is certainly discussed much less than needed.
At the end of the day I actually share pretty much your view, even considering the differences of our living environments that affects inevitably us, when evaluating 1to1 opinions across the Atlantic :)
Have we forgotten that photosynthesis takes in CO2 air for plant life ,cleaning the atmosphere so that “we”can have oxygen to breathe just the reverse what your suggesting speaking from a perspective point?
I call this the Liquid Battery approach. The greatest benefit is that you can pipe them for minimum distribution cost per kW-hr. $60,000 electric vehicles, however, aren't cutting it.
For bio fuel to maintain a closed, carbon neutral loop, there must always be an available supply of plants / algae to reabsorb the car emitted from vehicles, right?
Could the biofuels be used to generate electricity? If so then that would reduce the emissions from e-v even more.
technically but its alot more efficient to build a nuclear powerplant
i assume we will run out of lithium soon and price of electric vechicle or battery replacement will be untouchable...
in the end of the day it looks to me that "they" just dont want people to transfer with personal vechicles..
keep it up man. These videos always help me with a starting point on general ideas and research.
You missed the most important point of it... the fact that syntectic fuels do still create other emissions besides CO2 IN CITIES! which means that it's something bad for everyone in that city (potentially killing many people) as shown in several studies about pollution in cities, and population/fauna in that place
Biofuels leaves us using the same type of engines we are now. Internal combustion engines use oil for lubricant. That oil is emitted into the environment in tiny amounts through the exhaust but in much larger amounts due to poor maintenance. Leaks. Which isn't about to change so long as these engines are in use. As a result hundreds of millions of gallons of contaminated oil are leaked out onto the roads all over the world by billions of vehicles. This inevitable soaks into farm land, and flows in rivers into lakes and oceans. So regardless of what fuel an internal combustion engine is using this problem remains. Electric vehicles are not lubricated the same way and so while the problem isn't completely eliminated it is drastically reduced.
The biggest problem with biofuel is the enormous amounts of farm land it takes to grow the corn or whatever you are making the biofuel out of. You could produce 10x as much energy if you covered that same land with solar and wind. That doesn't get your car down the road though unless you convert to an electric vehicle. Obviously both transitions need to happen simultaneously.
There are a lot of issues with bio and synth fuels. I have made bio-diesel from used cooking oil and used it in a relatively old diesel engine on a daily driver suv. I managed to achieve ~27% reduction of costs compared to getting fuel at the station. However, legal, social and economic problems are a hindrance, or put simply it bothers certain corporations, that one can be self-sufficient. Arable land for crop production is a premium all over the World, and there is still malnutrition, yet we throw away so many tons of food, while people in certain areas of the World have nothing to eat, but we don't send them anything, because economics talks about dumping. While certain climates and soil are great for certain crops, in most deserts there's nothing that thrives, unless you add huge amounts of water, which is also scarce. Mass-producing on a large scale requires energy use, which adds to pollution, some processes are more energy-intensive than others (i.e. desalination of sea water). Another thing is companies like Monsanto and DuPont suing farmers when their GMO seeds take over natural fields and you can't keep and resow, because patent ownership. Single crop fields actually erode soil far more than multi-crop, and you have to use tons of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and what not "natural" chemicals also provided by said companies. For the past 5 years I have made an experiment with a patch of land I own in Europe. I run semi autonomous circle farms with multi-crop fields, powered by PV energy and the excess is sold back into the grid. Water is my number 1 cost followed by having to use tractors and other machinery in field preparation. I made an experiment, collected 3 tons of used coking oil from fast food restaurants, friends and other businesses, invested in storage and made my own bio-diesel to run tractors at 9:1 ratio used oil to station diesel. The cost of additional chemicals required for the bio-diesel process was not high at all, given my volumes and needs and actually saved a lot of expenses, since I don't own heavy machinery but rent out, but supply my own fuel. The process can be completed given the seasonal nature of crops (it takes months for these volumes). One negative side-effect I have observed is the degradation of certain engine seals (using 30+ yr old tractors) since they were made of different materials, but engines ran smoother, started easier, with a bit less power overall and smelled of french fries out back. I wouldn't bother with modern common-rail engines at all, given the small tolerances and high-pressure fuel systems. I think the option is viable if we move away from industrial farming and go back to collective cooperations on a smaller/local scale but with many players involved. Major issue is the state wants to fine me on legal grounds, since I am "producing fuel" and not paying additional taxes on it. So my government is showing me the finger, unless I jump out of my pockets. Current price for a kilogram of cucumbers in my country is 3 EUR, but they all have to be straight and exactly the same as soldiers (GMO), Nature doesn't work this way.
P.S. Industrial Cannabis is more energy potent than Corn or Soy and can be used in paper, rope making and textiles, but it's illegal where I'm at.
Why don't city busses run off of Sterling hot air engines?
They don't work well in cars because most of them are start and stop but busses run day-and-night.