What will drive our cars when the combustion engine dies? It’s the end of the road for the internal combustion engine, right? Volvo will only make electric and hybrid vehicles after 2019 while Britain, France, Germany and others have pledged to stop the sale of diesel and petrol vehicles during the next 20 years. But while there’s political will, can the technology deliver the way to …
There is only one question to answer about when we stop using the internal combustion engine:
Where will the watts come from?
All that other shit about "ooh , oh no , i dont want to wait to charge" , " i havent got the range" " the batteries need renewing every x years", " they cost too much" dosent matter -
There Wont Be Any Fucking Electricity To Put In Your Car.
Where will the watts come from?
There is ONLY one long term near indefinite source which has little or no environmental effect. In fact, the little effect it has is in the exact opposite direction to global warming so it is likely to be beneficial too. It is not fusion, nuclear, solar and not even wind (which is actually somewhat of a proxy for this).
It is the Tropical ocean thermocline. Unfortunately, we are nowhere near extracting that technologically and politically. Our energy extraction tech has always been optimized for hot/cold differences in the hundreds of degrees. Our energy transportation tech is also fairly primitive. Even if we figure out how to pump energy efficiently out of a 25C hot/cold difference, we also have to figure out how to store that energy into a transportable form in the middle of let's say Indian ocean and ship it to somewhere where it is needed.
Once we have figured how to tap into this we will have little to worry about for a few hundred years which should be enough to figure out how to harvest energy in space into a transportable form and ship it earthside (no, microwave and laser is not the answer here - you will be producing NOx at insane rates along the beam route).
It's bollocks anyway.
The entire equatorial land belt is ideal for vast amounts of solar energy. Solar cells or reflective arrays. All the energy that mankind requires.
Of course having all the energy right there isn't much use, so it needs to be used to produce fuel which can be transported. Synthetic hydrocarbon or liquid hydrogen for instance.
"It is the Tropical ocean thermocline"
nice pipe dream, but just one problem: when you alter the thermal characteristics of the ocean, will it create YET ANOTHER ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM? I say "probably".
Keep in mind that MANY of those behind shoving electric cars up our as down our throats are really the elitist types that will ALWAYS "have theirs", but to feel good about their 'rich guilt' they foist their idealism upon THE REST OF US, like it's for our OWN GOOD or something.
The best potential technology for portable energy that can be easily transported, stored, and dispensed at a filling station, is hydrogen with fuel cell systems. Those would be electric, but the battery requirement would be significantly smaller, and efficiency WAY higher than a standard hybrid.
but fuel cells have some logistical problems _LIKE_ cold weather. and hydrogen has potential being stored as "complex hydrates" but the temperature extremes needed to extract and/or force it to store cause some problems.
In the mean time, before this tech becomes _absolutely_ _necessary_ (and not the 'artificial' 2040 time frame), why don't we just keep burning dead dinosaurs and dead prehistoric plants?
At some point, it will no longer be cheaper to dig it out of the ground or drill for it and frack to break up the rocks so we can extract nearly all of it [instead of just the first 50%].
When the price of gasoline is in the $5-$6/gallon range in the USA, it starts to become viable to produce fuel from GARBAGE. On an industrial scale, organic waste can be turned into oil, and then fuel.
Also, gummints and enviro-wackos need to STOP IT with their opposition to nuclear energy. Make it SAFER, sure. But stop getting in the way. We *NEED* the nuke plants if you don't want COAL and OIL and GAS plants to be producing electricity for those electric cars _EVERYONE_ will have to drive by 2040...
So many feely "solutions" without thinking things through, and it's JUST gonna screw average people's lives all to hell... so a bunch of elitists can "stop feeling guilty" about having those things that make life easier (when the rest of us no longer can).
icon, because, SAD
Factor in the staggering amounts of energy for all the infrastructure required to drill, extract, pump, refine, transport and dispense petrol and diesel. Then imagine that you didn't need to use all that energy any more, and that it could be used for another process, say, charging car batteries...
For example, a 2008 study estimated that the energy use in the refining stage alone was equivalent to 6kWh lost per refined US gallon of petrol. For an average 50 litre fuel tank, that's about 80kWh, enough to fully charge a Tesla model 3 almost twice over.
When you add in all the other infrastructure costs involved, it really is a no-brainer. Then you get the added bonus of reduced particulate emissions, reduction in respiratory diseases, NOX emissions, smog. etc, etc etc.
-NAS (2009), Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use, The National Academies Press, www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12794&page=1
I think you're missing the point Dan.
Its true you need to to drill, extract, pump, refine, transport and dispense petrol , extracting and pumping being the most variable .Oil dosent jump out of the ground anymore , it has to be pumped . The EROEI - Energy return on Energy Invested has been dropping for years (from about 24:1) as Oil gets harder to find.
BUT - your Tesla needs all that as well (except the last stages) , where do you think the electricity comes from?
And where does all the plastic come from to make the 'cruelty free and vegan' interiors of Teslas?
And what do we do with that highly flammable distillate, leftover from the 'plastic' refining process, which if we aren't going to be putting it into millions of combustion engines will rapidly become rather a large waste problem.
Solving that problem is much easier. We can already make many plastics without needing fossil fuels and this will doubtless get better with research.
And then consider the amount of plastic used in a car, with the amount of fuel burnt over it's life time. The argument electric cars are bad because they use many kilograms of plastic is either horrendously ignorant, or deliberately manipulative.
I think Prst you're missing the point.
For a start, you now only need to distribute fossil fuels to one location not all over the place. For a second, you can burn the fuel far more efficiently and cleanly in a huge power station.
For a third, the Tesla doesn't care where the Watts come from. We can burn things, use fission and renewable sources in whatever mix we can manage. So a Tesla can consume energy from any power source - including petrol - whereas your combustion engine is inflexible and inefficient.
"Electric cars still need fuel to be burnt" is a daft argument anti-electric people use trivially, and largely, ignorantly.
"staggering amounts of energy for all the infrastructure required to drill, extract, pump, refine, transport and dispense petrol and diesel"
I believe that for some supplies such as tar sands it costs 9 units of energy to produce 10 units, which is a terrible waste. However it is still providing net +1 unit. Same with all other hydrocarbon sources, however much is wasted, there is still a net positive output that, if hydrocarbons are no longer used, needs to come from somewhere else. So massive increase will be needed in solar, hydro, geo, plain old fission and pretty much every other technology that can be thrown in because we're going to need a lot of everything, plus probably major grid upgrades to tie it all together.
What will help hugely is efficiency in the vehicle itself. Besides all the refinery etc energy requirements, ICEs are about 30-35% efficient. Electric motors, battery charging and high-voltage transmission all have efficiencies in the 90s, so even combining the losses, net efficiency would be in the high 70s, more than double that of ICE. Even if electricity is produced by hydrocarbons, best combined-cycle turbine efficiency is in the high 40s, so will in any case be at least as efficient as the most efficient ICE. So moving to electric vehicles greatly reduces the energy consumption required.
GGE is 33.41 kWh/gal so 6kWh is less than 20% loss, which is not that far from average 8-15% loss in electric grid.
For an average 50 litre fuel tank, that's about 400 kWh of stored energy in case you can't use basic math.
And if you think you can store more energy in a solid battery without turning it into explosive you're out of luck, next step up from lithium in energy density is a gunpowder and after that it's TNT and that's still 10 times less than gasoline, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
You're ignoring the conversion inefficiencies of the IC engine. You may have 440 kWh of potential energy in a 50 litre tank, but it has taken another 80 to get it there, and you'll be lucky to get much more than 130 kWh of energy out of it. 520 kWh of potential in to get 130 kWh delivered to the road isn't a good ratio.
I actually never said that burning fuel to run ICE is the most effective use of petrol and there is lots of space for advances in getting that stored energy back rather. But liquid fossil based fuel is not going anywhere, we just need to learn use it more efficiently.
And assuming that 130KWh delivered to the road requires about 370KWh of energy at the generating station to generate that 130KWh of energy for your electric car (assuming 35% efficiency at the power station) - and that doesn't include the energy to mine the energy source or deliver it to the electric generating station. That also is not a good ratio. So, don't ignore the inefficiencies on your side of the IC/electric debate.
> For an average 50 litre fuel tank, that's about 400 kWh of stored energy
The vast amount of this stored energy is used to warn the air just behind the vehicle. Of the remaining, a rather substantial proportion is used to warm the brake pads. Only a very small fraction is actually able to be used for propulsion and running ancillary systems (A/C, radio, lights etc) which we would consider as "useful work".
Unless an EV needs to replicate such wastefulness, it doesn't need that sort of energy density. Frankly, a 1 minute fast charge is a pipe dream, but a 1 minute swap and go is not beyond our engineering capabilities today. Creating a non patent encumbered standard that is somewhat future proof and workable for all manufacturers. That's a much tougher nut to crack.
I don't know about iithium/ion batteries, but I know that producing your lead-acid car battery is so environmentally fraught that in the U.S. it basically costs more to shut down and decontaminate a lead acid battery factory than it does to keep it running. So basically you keep it running and hope that the battery manufacturer doesn't go bankrupt and leave a big brownfield Superfund site in your town/city.
Good points.
The only possible REAL alternatives are liquid hydrogen, used in fuel cells or IC engines or battery swap tech.
In any direction the UK would need another 50 nuclear power stations to charge the batteries or crack the H2O.
So if you want cleaner but not horses it's cleaner petrol engines or LPG engines for 50 years to come.
Whoa up there, LPG is not good, not good at all. The particulate from LPG is very small and gets right into the pores of lungs. Some years ago Calor in the UK did some experiments with Calor into diesels at max speeds and found the particulate was not good but the engines ran clean, guess where the particulate went!
Bring back trolley buses and there is no reason why lorries cannot run for delivery in say central London at night!
"And if you think you can store more energy in a solid battery without turning it into explosive you're out of luck, next step up from lithium in energy density is a gunpowder"
I had a minor LiPo 'scare' the other day when I was doing some battery capacity/behavior testing on a device. I soldered up what SHOULD have been a simple current monitoring 'thing' that went between the battery and device, so I could do long-term measurements with a microcontoller. Unfortunately, even under the magnifier, I couldn't see a tiny solder finger that shorted out the LiPo battery. Within 10 seconds it swelled up like a balloon and started melting the vinyl covering on the table it sat on. I rapidly disconnected it, and when the swelling didn't go back down, I quickly ran with it to a nearby sink and doused it with water (and within a few seconds, it suddenly collapsed to being 'flat' again) until it was 'cool to the touch'.
Unfortunately the battery couldn't be charged any more (must've melted inside). I really didn't need the thing blowing up in my face, so I'm glad it stayed "contained". THAT was only a 400maH battery. I can't imagine what the battery of a vehicle would be like, if something shorted it out [like a traffic accident?]
icon, because, that's almost what happened. having a fire extinguisher handy is helpful, but I'd rather not use it. Having a shower nearby to wash the burning lithium off won't be that much help, either.
just putting it into perspective...
/me points out, safe LiPo disposal: cut battery in half with scissors, drop into plastic cup with water in it. When bubbles stop, you can rinse the lithium out and toss the rest in the garbage. at least, that's what I'm inclined to do...
And in 40 years time...
...Factor in the staggering amounts of energy for all the infrastructure required to drill, extract, process, refine, transport and package Lithium batteries. Then imagine that you didn't need to use all that energy any more, and that it could be used for another process, say, just moving oil around.
/sarc
Seriously though, have you seen how awful the manufacture of current battery technology is for the environment? It's not just the energy costs, it's the toxic byproducts as well. Electric cars are not a panacea for our environmental problems, they're just part of an overall picture of unsustainable human activity. Solving this isn't going to be as simple as just choosing a different means to power your car.
No, all that energy can't be used to charge batteries. In 2016 in the U.S., sources for electricity were about:
1% - Petroleum
15% - Renewable (geothermal, hydro, biomass, solar, wind)
20% - Nuclear
30% - Coal
34% - Natural Gas
source: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=107&t=3
So, that electric car is belching fossil fuel by-products from at least 65% of its energy sources. Mining of coal, nuclear feedstock, natural gas all take energy. Electricity production from various heat sources appears to be about 35% from what I could glean from the U.S. EIA data.
I didn't look long and didn't find reliable data on efficiency of internal combustion (IC) engines, but they are probably in the range of 20 to 36%. So, in the best case of comparing the electric to IC, they are about equal in converting heat into energy. Electric cars will have the advantage in slow stop and go traffic as energy is only used as needed. The IC engines typically will be constantly running in all types of traffic. Modern IC engines are quite clean, although here in the U.S., not as clean as other countries because of stupid laws that require emissions measurement in percentage rather than gm/mile.
So, yes, you could use all the energy to charge batteries, if you didn't have to use it to generate electricity and mine energy sources to generate the extra electricity to charge those batteries.
Your electric car burns coal, natural gas, biomass, etc. My IC car burns just gasoline. I know of several individuals who have converted their cars/trucks to run gasoline, natural gas, or LP, depending on what is available. Natural gas and LP are much cleaner than gasoline and decreases engine wear.
Pick your favorite, but don't force me to use your choice.
"Fisker says it has a solid state battery that has a range of 500 miles and recharges in a minute."
That means a capacity of somewhere in the order of 300kWh, which is equivalent to 30 litres of petrol. To recharge that in one minute, you would need an 18MW power supply. At 230V, that would mean 78kA of current.
Where did you get that math from? A current Tesla Model S will get you between 280 and 320 miles from 100 kWh. 500 miles should need between 150 and 180 kWh.
There's also no way you'd use 240V for charging at those power levels (though a suspect a 1 minute charge to be a pipe dream).
"OK, so a 9 - 10.8MW supply then. Still a lot more than the 3kW you get through a domestic plug."
But if your car can do 500 miles on a charge then you don't actually need to charge it in a minute. In fact over night is more than good enough for 99.999999% of people. Put another way if I could recharge a car overnight and get 500 miles of range then in my entire life that would have been more than adequate for *EVERY* journey ever I have ever made in a car including all the journeys when I was child.
For a 500 mile range from an overnight charge to be insufficient you would need to tag team drive, because 500 miles cruising at 70 miles (aka the speed limit) is over seven hours journey time. At a minimum I would need out the car for a comfort break even if tag team driving. So the opportunity to boost the charge with a supercharger or similar. Though like I said the number of times one would need to do that in your life is zero for the vast majority of people.
500 miles range, but I'm guessing that's *just* for driving the vehicle. Any *real* trip is going to have the additional need for AC or heat, your radio/CD/digital audio player/GPS/Nav systems, the DVD player(s)/handheld game(s) for the kid(s),
I think it's time to make the roofs of cars out of solar panels. And we need small-size windmills for our houses.
We frequently do an all round trip of 1500 miles, going 750 one day, and return 2 or three days later. now if we were to rely on public transport, bring our shopping back would be untenable, we would not be able to recharge, and the whole thing will be a fiasco as pubic transport would take as at present at least 3 days going, no hotels available, I am disabled, impossible to carry ought, frankly a no no. Therefore the whole thing is going to crash.
Incidentally, aeroplanes eg Cessna run on 101 grade gasoline, they have to fly at 10,000 feet. The guarantee is for this fuel to be available for about the next 40 years. Now heres the rub, currently the fuel has a life span and after expiry has to be destroyed, so it is burnt. Yes burnt, at least 10,000 gallons a month, in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and so on. Why cannot the fuel be used in vintage cars! No its far more politically correct to burn it. Now let us go 1 step further. You have put shit gasoline eg with bensol in it and after about 3 weeks it should not be used due to water absorption and such like. so where do you dispose of this time expired gasoline. You cannot. I know how dangerous this shit is, I am badly burnt through it. I can go on but believe me it is politically better for you to be burnt than use time expired leaded gasoline.
Why would you need to recharge from a domestic plug? Even current EVs don't do that. If it's at home on your driveway then a 32A 240V charger then you should be able to add 200+ miles on an overnight charge.
At a an on-route charging point you can charge a local battery at a constant rate and dump the charge into a vehicle on demand. Allowing the time to drive up, connect, charge, disconnect and drive off you should be fine with a 2-3 MW supply from an industrial feed. That's assuming you ever charge at that speed in the real world. I suspect 5-10 mins would be quick enough for most people.
The claim was that there exists a battery with a 500 mile range that can be charged in one minute. I was exploring how practical it would be to implement this in real life, not whether or not we need the technology.
An average petrol pump can dispense 50 litres of petrol per minute, and depending on the car, that would probably give you around 500 miles of range, so such a battery, if it is possible, would make electric competitive with petrol in that respect.
no we are not, not even the national grid say this.
Forget the made up analysis based on what we currently produce and use and what we might use
There's a reason for the limited overhead and that because the overhead costs money and is pure waste.
The national grid will always only ever and deliberately have the tiniest amount of spare capacity, when it gets too big it gets cut back, when it gets too small it gets added to.
We have a dedicated 30A circuit to charge our Model S 75D. It charges at 7.5KW and is usually charged overnight. The actual range for a full charge varies from about 150 miles in the winter to 250+ miles in warmer times all depending upon journey length (less power is used when the battery is warm). On the road we can charge from a Tesla and it takes about 45 minutes for a full charge. The few minutes charging rates speculated are pure fantasy. Even charging it in 5 minutes would require nearly a MW of electricity (meaning a rather thick cable).
Thats good for you, however as we have night storage electricity, live in the country, have a limit on the amount we can have, and need the vehicle to get to the store some 10 mile distant, it seems that we will be phucked, worse I am registered disabled.
Can some one PLEASE tell me why all these city types that are totally stupid have not legislated that by next year every town and city bus route will start to be converted to trolley bus working. Little infrastructure problems, minimal other problems and the biggest hit on less pollution as buses in town cause more than most other REGULAR traffic! OH the reason why not, well its like this, it is government money, causes government problems with lack of electricity, and does not create any where near as frightening scenarios as saying the car has to bear the brunt.
I have an answer. everybody forsake the towns, do not visit, use out of town shops, get bosses to move businesses out of town and then there will be no town, just an empty derelict area with no pollution, magic!
"There is only one question to answer about when we stop using the internal combustion engine:
Where will the watts come from?"
An alternative question for the long term is where will the fossil fuels come from?
We keep using them where other alternatives exist instead of confining their use to situations where there are no effective alternatives.
From solar and wind power mainly, with a dash of hydro and tidal energy perhaps. My 16 solar panels supply enough power to drive my Nissan Leaf 8,000 miles a year.
Actually you might be surprised how much electricity is used by oil refineries: enough to power a decent sized city, so that's a saving.
Actually, a Canadian company located in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada called "General Fusion" (look it up on Wikipedia) is using a technique called "Magnetized Target Fusion" compression to create the high-enough pressures to super-heat CHEAP and EASY-TO-MAKE fuel into a plasma which is compressed by a pulsed or continuous magnetic field at enough energy to create VIABLE fusion!
The beauty of this technique, is that it is SCALABLE DOWNWARDS to the size of a beer cask which means it can eventually be put into any lorry, car or caravan! The first tests at a larger scale are being done NOW and within 5 years the first large lorry size versions will be Alpha tested and after that another 5 years until a typical saloon-size car version will be tested.
Fusion-power for cars and homes is coming MUCH FASTER than many people realize all because NEW fusion techniques which DO NOT NEED megawatt lasers to start the heat-producing fusion process!
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