It might make it to truck stops, shipping ports, and airports. BEVs don't have all the conversion losses on the same electricity, so they're cheaper than eFuel in any lightweight use case.
As an engineering student, I really appreciate the nuances you provided! Unfortunately, I don't see synthetic fuel being practical until we have cheap, abundant energy from nuclear fission/fusion. Even then, the low efficiency you mentioned (≤50%) makes it extremely difficult to compete with electric cars since the electricity could be used to charge batteries directly instead of powering electrolysis and ending up as gasoline. Energy is lost as you convert from electricity to hydrogen to efuels. And the final nail in the coffin is that internal combustion engines are only 20-30% efficient (the rest is wasted as heat). Therefore, the max overall theoretical efficiency is 15%. Compare that to the 80-90% energy transfer efficiency of EVs. The one place I could see this being possible would be long range aircraft since batteries don't have anywhere near the energy density of jet fuel (even when you include the most advanced batteries currently being researched). Because they can't be electrified (at least, not fully), efuels or hydrogen must be used. Hydrogen takes less energy to create from electrolysis, as opposed to efuels where you need to perform electrolysis AND extract CO2 from the air AND convert the H2 and CO2 into gasoline. In all, nothing is impossible, but many engineering challenges remain, some of which could easily remain insurmountable for decades
I remember my shop teacher introducing my class to the diode cir 1990. The class thought wow there's the longer lasting light bulb. This is what the class was about, how it wasn't possible and low voltage wouldn't be something in our lifetime. How the diode wasn't capable of handling light that would be brilliant enough to light a dark room.
@@tobiasreichelt888 This is ignorant; batteries store 40x less energy than jet fuel. Also, if such planes are possible, as you say they are, then why don't they exist yet??
@@tdk99-i8n yeah briefly, but with all the cancellations, restrictions and quarantine requirements, you really think 2020 should be part of the Golden Age, bro?
the thing that is nice about efuel is that for nations or places that have abundant renewable and cheap electricity production, it opens up a potential market for them to go into for revenue. Even though it's miniscule scale compared to the energy the world used daily it's still a good progress to complement the adoption of EV because EVs aren't able to go widespread yet
E fuels aren't the answer they spew out as much poison as normal fuel from the exhaust pipe! We want totally clean air in our cities and in traffic jams! E fuel is just a numbers trickery. Claiming the way it is produced makes it carbon neutral. It's as bad as wokery! Hydrogen is totally unsuitable for cars, the 8 x different types of hydrogen it's not made in a carbon free way, and it's another liquid that the government can tax.
The Molten Salt Reactor is needed to make this happen. For now I use renewable diesel (not bio diesel) which is made from bio-wastes. This is a much cleaner fuel.
Zero say they have a "TARGET" of 50% energy efficiency. Great, but what is the actual number today? You sure it's not closer to 10%? I've tried to research this a bit in the last few days and that's the number I see mentioned for this type of technology. The hard part seems to me to be the carbon capture from the air. That's the bit that is always talked about the least. Probably it's the least economically viable. The Porsche funded plant in Chile don't do this bit yet. Does Zero actually do it? In the video they show it happening at a university and not their site. When I saw that I thought "ohhhhh".
A kwh in the desert will cost around 1 cent or less. In the blue zone it's 1,4 cent. You need 27 kwh for 1 liter e-fuel. With producing hydrogen more efficient. E-fuel can be produced 50-75 $cent a liter. A barrel of raw oil cost 30 cent a liter. With all additional work it will be around 55 cent. This will put a serious cap on oil prices.
@@pituife no, CCS as well as CCU are so expensive that we should focus on getting our emissions down instead of relying on technologies like these without shutting down coal mines.
In my opinion eFuels have no advantage in road cars compared to EVs. The amount of eFuels will be so limited that we will have to use them for Airplanes and other industries that require it because other solutions are not feasible. And by the time we have enough eFuels through green energy EVs will have evolved so much that you will look back and say why didn't we switch sooner to EVs. I think not banning all combustion vehicles will hurt the European economy in the long run. It might save a few jobs in the next years but China will be so far ahead in terms of EV technology.
I would like to offer a hot tale for motordport performance engine vehicles: liquid hydrogen with a garage installable electricity + water conversion system with liquefaction provided alongside engine and tank modifications. It's easy to be snotty about the efficiencies and cooling required, but in all seriousness liquefied hydrogen is the fuel that is most unambiguously capable of the following conditions: 1) Effective if moderately expensive onsite production without the carbon step, producible on an immediate basis. 2) Effective volumetric energy (1/3 gasoline is enough for most cases) due to classical engine vehicles being recreational and thus the longevity of the fuel retaining only being appropriate to the 'day out' in question 3) The ability to provide auto-densification of air due to cold temperatures, thus mitigating the ethanol and methanol advantages of power 4) Light enough to be swapped out OR fuelled at any capacity at common pressure 5) contiguous weight and cheaper materials advantage over other fuels
The better and faster way to get clean alternative power, is to use revenue neutral carbon taxing. Simply by putting a large tax on fossil fuels, and giving all citizens an equal rebate check that covers the cost of living increase, industry and consumers can choose the best alternatives without economic harm. In fact, this would create massive investments.
Essentially this is a way of storing the energy you put into it for future use in a sustainable way. How is that any more useful than an electric battery? Surely the storage efficiency will also be better in the latter, so I don't see any use in these products unless its a way to sustainably change from a carbon-run world to an electrically powered one.
Efuels will only be affordable and be profuced enough for performance and hypercars cars . Its costs a lot to produce efuels and no matter what converting energy into efuel and then buring it is not as efficient as EVs or even existing ICE car fossil fuels .
Yeah... Let's use some water we could drink Let's use some electricity we could use to charge EV's Let's use some fuel to transport the fuel we made. And let's burn it to make vroom vroom!!! Great idea...
Well some people are like me. Catfish= no claws or teeth, just white meat. Cat=fur, claws, teeth and so on. Which one do you think is the EV and what do you think some of us really really wants? I want my car to purr like a cat ❤️
you can't build battery without material. while you will collect material from soil. you need dig. its mean. you polluting environment. so, battery is not pure friendly environment.
much better option is hydrogen combustion engines, in efule apart from splitting hydrogen we need to capture co2 and mix them with hydrogen, efule is a 3 step process. Hydrogen combustion engines require only hydrogen and to create hydrogen its a 1 step process, so its much more efficient than efule.
9 months on, and the answer is still clearly no. eFuel is not carbon neutral. Any electricity used in making it would be better used charging a BEV. The end to end efficiency of eFuel, wasting two thirds of it in a heat engine makes no sense when you can do much better by using a simple battery and electric motor. As soon as viable batteries were available, ICE was doomed. If decent batteries had been around at the start, ICE cars would probably never have existed.
Why would you want to save the gas engine??? It has been superceded by a much simpler smoother quieter economical power source. Sorry but you can't put the genie back in the bottle!
As long as we don't have the necessary battery tech, we need tech like hydrogen fuel cell or efuel for stuffs battery cannot do: speedboats, ships, planes, helicopters, locomotives, long rang truck haulers, war equipment and vehicles (you don't expect armored carriers waiting to charge every 200 miles into the war). Lastly majority of the people in the world that aren't rich and can't afford to buy an EV every 5-10 years, they can make do with efuel as long as it reached cost parity with fossil fuel.
Sorry, but you just have not kept up with the current state of technology. Nor even, over the last ten years of battery and EV and all clean energy developments. Your like an old grandad talking who has never used a PC! No offence.
Do you think eFuels will make it to the gas pumps?
It might make it to truck stops, shipping ports, and airports. BEVs don't have all the conversion losses on the same electricity, so they're cheaper than eFuel in any lightweight use case.
Yes this highly anticipated by Deutsch and one of the condition to accept EU regulations on cars in 2035
No
yes, definitely
We can hope. It’s crazy that electricity is offered as the only solution.
As an engineering student, I really appreciate the nuances you provided! Unfortunately, I don't see synthetic fuel being practical until we have cheap, abundant energy from nuclear fission/fusion. Even then, the low efficiency you mentioned (≤50%) makes it extremely difficult to compete with electric cars since the electricity could be used to charge batteries directly instead of powering electrolysis and ending up as gasoline. Energy is lost as you convert from electricity to hydrogen to efuels. And the final nail in the coffin is that internal combustion engines are only 20-30% efficient (the rest is wasted as heat). Therefore, the max overall theoretical efficiency is 15%. Compare that to the 80-90% energy transfer efficiency of EVs.
The one place I could see this being possible would be long range aircraft since batteries don't have anywhere near the energy density of jet fuel (even when you include the most advanced batteries currently being researched). Because they can't be electrified (at least, not fully), efuels or hydrogen must be used. Hydrogen takes less energy to create from electrolysis, as opposed to efuels where you need to perform electrolysis AND extract CO2 from the air AND convert the H2 and CO2 into gasoline.
In all, nothing is impossible, but many engineering challenges remain, some of which could easily remain insurmountable for decades
Thanks for the detailed note. Especially agree on airlines, tough to decarbonise given demand is set to grow in the developing world
I remember my shop teacher introducing my class to the diode cir 1990. The class thought wow there's the longer lasting light bulb. This is what the class was about, how it wasn't possible and low voltage wouldn't be something in our lifetime. How the diode wasn't capable of handling light that would be brilliant enough to light a dark room.
Battery electric aircraft can be transoceanic with today's battery though
It's not a 15.000 km range, but 4.000 km is enough to cover almost any route
@@tobiasreichelt888 This is ignorant; batteries store 40x less energy than jet fuel. Also, if such planes are possible, as you say they are, then why don't they exist yet??
2015-2019 was the Golden Age of air travel. We will never again see a $750 round trip flight from SF to Tokyo.
Idk 2020 was pretty cheap
@@tdk99-i8n yeah briefly, but with all the cancellations, restrictions and quarantine requirements, you really think 2020 should be part of the Golden Age, bro?
@@Feelthefx it was a part of the pyrite age
Ahh
Paddy Lowe. I always wondered what happened to you post Williams. Good to see you are doing some brilliant work.
Not “a little bit of energy”. A LOT of energy!
the thing that is nice about efuel is that for nations or places that have abundant renewable and cheap electricity production, it opens up a potential market for them to go into for revenue. Even though it's miniscule scale compared to the energy the world used daily it's still a good progress to complement the adoption of EV because EVs aren't able to go widespread yet
E fuels aren't the answer they spew out as much poison as normal fuel from the exhaust pipe! We want totally clean air in our cities and in traffic jams!
E fuel is just a numbers trickery. Claiming the way it is produced makes it carbon neutral. It's as bad as wokery!
Hydrogen is totally unsuitable for cars, the 8 x different types of hydrogen it's not made in a carbon free way, and it's another liquid that the government can tax.
The Molten Salt Reactor is needed to make this happen. For now I use renewable diesel (not bio diesel) which is made from bio-wastes. This is a much cleaner fuel.
Solar and wind can't be applied everywhere.
Zero say they have a "TARGET" of 50% energy efficiency. Great, but what is the actual number today? You sure it's not closer to 10%? I've tried to research this a bit in the last few days and that's the number I see mentioned for this type of technology.
The hard part seems to me to be the carbon capture from the air. That's the bit that is always talked about the least. Probably it's the least economically viable. The Porsche funded plant in Chile don't do this bit yet. Does Zero actually do it? In the video they show it happening at a university and not their site. When I saw that I thought "ohhhhh".
A kwh in the desert will cost around 1 cent or less. In the blue zone it's 1,4 cent. You need 27 kwh for 1 liter e-fuel. With producing hydrogen more efficient. E-fuel can be produced 50-75 $cent a liter. A barrel of raw oil cost 30 cent a liter. With all additional work it will be around 55 cent. This will put a serious cap on oil prices.
A little energy... It's ton of energy which makes it so expensive that people won't be able to afford it...
A "little" energy... not really + other emissions. Probably capturing the carbon from fossil is more efficient.
@@pituife no, CCS as well as CCU are so expensive that we should focus on getting our emissions down instead of relying on technologies like these without shutting down coal mines.
In my opinion eFuels have no advantage in road cars compared to EVs. The amount of eFuels will be so limited that we will have to use them for Airplanes and other industries that require it because other solutions are not feasible. And by the time we have enough eFuels through green energy EVs will have evolved so much that you will look back and say why didn't we switch sooner to EVs.
I think not banning all combustion vehicles will hurt the European economy in the long run. It might save a few jobs in the next years but China will be so far ahead in terms of EV technology.
3:31 Bold statement claiming it will be the same in a decade. I’d love to see it but that is bold.
I would like to offer a hot tale for motordport performance engine vehicles: liquid hydrogen with a garage installable electricity + water conversion system with liquefaction provided alongside engine and tank modifications.
It's easy to be snotty about the efficiencies and cooling required, but in all seriousness liquefied hydrogen is the fuel that is most unambiguously capable of the following conditions:
1) Effective if moderately expensive onsite production without the carbon step, producible on an immediate basis.
2) Effective volumetric energy (1/3 gasoline is enough for most cases) due to classical engine vehicles being recreational and thus the longevity of the fuel retaining only being appropriate to the 'day out' in question
3) The ability to provide auto-densification of air due to cold temperatures, thus mitigating the ethanol and methanol advantages of power
4) Light enough to be swapped out OR fuelled at any capacity at common pressure
5) contiguous weight and cheaper materials advantage over other fuels
😂
The better and faster way to get clean alternative power, is to use revenue neutral carbon taxing. Simply by putting a large tax on fossil fuels, and giving all citizens an equal rebate check that covers the cost of living increase, industry and consumers can choose the best alternatives without economic harm. In fact, this would create massive investments.
I like the nuances included in the video, a shame the title doesn't reflect that.
Essentially this is a way of storing the energy you put into it for future use in a sustainable way. How is that any more useful than an electric battery? Surely the storage efficiency will also be better in the latter, so I don't see any use in these products unless its a way to sustainably change from a carbon-run world to an electrically powered one.
I hope this will work out.
The only place this makes sense is aviation.
Volkswagen clean diesel. Enough said.
The oil companies will never let it happen
Its in their best interest that it does
E-FUEL = ESS for Energy
Efuels will only be affordable and be profuced enough for performance and hypercars cars .
Its costs a lot to produce efuels and no matter what converting energy into efuel and then buring it is not as efficient as EVs or even existing ICE car fossil fuels .
Yeah... Let's use some water we could drink
Let's use some electricity we could use to charge EV's
Let's use some fuel to transport the fuel we made.
And let's burn it to make vroom vroom!!!
Great idea...
Carbon capture from air is a BS idea !!! So much energy wasted just to capture carbon from air. Carbon capture at source can be a ok idea
That is not "a little bit" of energy
Well some people are like me. Catfish= no claws or teeth, just white meat. Cat=fur, claws, teeth and so on. Which one do you think is the EV and what do you think some of us really really wants? I want my car to purr like a cat ❤️
who cares?
you can't build battery without material. while you will collect material from soil. you need dig. its mean. you polluting environment. so, battery is not pure friendly environment.
Any combustion with hydrogen produce water. What will happen to oil on engine. Think about it?
much better option is hydrogen combustion engines, in efule apart from splitting hydrogen we need to capture co2 and mix them with hydrogen, efule is a 3 step process.
Hydrogen combustion engines require only hydrogen and to create hydrogen its a 1 step process, so its much more efficient than efule.
No, this is no option
It's cost more
Dont need saving
We don’t want to save petrol engines…🤦♂️
9 months on, and the answer is still clearly no. eFuel is not carbon neutral. Any electricity used in making it would be better used charging a BEV. The end to end efficiency of eFuel, wasting two thirds of it in a heat engine makes no sense when you can do much better by using a simple battery and electric motor. As soon as viable batteries were available, ICE was doomed. If decent batteries had been around at the start, ICE cars would probably never have existed.
The lost is profit
Hydrogen carrier
E methanol
How it COULD save the gas engine is a laughable response......the gas engine WILL prevail regardless because electric vehicles are not sustainable
Why would you want to save the gas engine??? It has been superceded by a much simpler smoother quieter economical power source. Sorry but you can't put the genie back in the bottle!
Where’s your EV?
As long as we don't have the necessary battery tech, we need tech like hydrogen fuel cell or efuel for stuffs battery cannot do: speedboats, ships, planes, helicopters, locomotives, long rang truck haulers, war equipment and vehicles (you don't expect armored carriers waiting to charge every 200 miles into the war). Lastly majority of the people in the world that aren't rich and can't afford to buy an EV every 5-10 years, they can make do with efuel as long as it reached cost parity with fossil fuel.
Sorry, but you just have not kept up with the current state of technology. Nor even, over the last ten years of battery and EV and all clean energy developments. Your like an old grandad talking who has never used a PC! No offence.
Scam