I'd be curious what you think that better tech would be.
I like Corn Juice - and so does my Mustang - one of the great things about cornjuice in California is its >85% EtOH all year round
Hydrogen could become quite promising if a breakthrough in electricity production is realized in the next 20 years. I know fusion is the perpetual longshot, but it certainly may become possible and commercially scalable. Pure EV rollout will be really slow because of how much infrastructure investment is required, and because we don't actually have any good way of recycling lithium ion batteries yet. Like, at all. There's going to be a resource bottleneck as all the manufacturers are competing for batteries. They're a pain in the ass. Hydrogen conversion of existing infrastructure would be much easier.I'd be curious what you think that better tech would be.
Hydrogen has been tried since the 1970s, both in combustible liquid fuel and fuel cell form. Energy density and energy cost to produce hydrogen are both massive barriers.
Biofuels (ethanol) have been in use for decades, heavily subsidized, but have several challenges that haven't been worked out: still carbon-based, low conversion efficiency (enzymatic cellulose conversion works well in labs but has failed at scale), also limited energy density, and hard on vehicle fueling systems.
People have been looking around for better solutions than a long time. Oil and gas work really well, which makes it hard to replace traditional gasoline and diesel ICE vehicles. But, batteries have overcome more challenges than the other technologies.
Here's the cost/kWh progress in just the past 7 years:
Also have to recall we are comparing a 140-year-old technology that has had hundreds of billions of development dollars spent on it to ~20-year-old technology that has only recently received major investment. When you couple improved battery tech (like solid state batteries), distributed electrical generation, and recycling capabilities, not to mention re-use opportunities like home backup batteries (which spent vehicle batteries can do quite well), it starts to look like a pretty good ecosystem with network scale possibilities.
I'd be curious what others think is the better tech that is somehow evading the billions of dollars on alternative fuel development. The only other tech still kicking is hydrogen fuel cells, and it seems like a longer shot to me. On the topic of this thread, higher gas prices will only accelerate whatever changes are coming.
Yes. I was told about 10 years ago from a Ford engineer/designer that Hybrid and EV's were coming but, not because of market demand but from Government manipulation through regulation. EV has been around a long time but like other technologies, has not been practical. Its still not practical for me and many Americans except as an around town vehicle. There are still challenges to the EV that we face (yes, they are working on it) such as a finite, unrenewable (AT THIS POINT)resource that is toxic (Lithium). Like others here, I dont believe EV is the future, it is the now. When gas and oil are cheap, there is little incentive to develop alternative energies. Government then inflates the price of fossil fuels to make alternatives seem more attractive
EtOH is fantastic for many applications, but less so for others and can't be done at a scale to replace gasoline without a major disruption to food production capacity. As a niche performance fuel, hell yeah. As the fuel to get granny to the store and back in her Camry, probably not.
Great point - the petroleum industry isn't going away anytime soon, and every manufacturing process uses a ton of petroleum products.
EVs don't fall into that category more than oil, IMO. It does veer into politics when one starts to discuss subsidies, so I'll respect that.
You raise a good point. The EV tech 'til recently wasn't fit to take share. That is changing pretty rapidly. EVs are now what, 2% of new vehicle sales in the US and ~8% of new vehicle sales in EU? Somewhere in the middle in China. It's not a tidal wave, but with each generation, more and more people will make the leap, and at some point the tech will stand on its own. It's worth remembering that the vast majority of vehicle miles driven are not by enthusiasts like us, it's people who think about their car about as much as they think about their refrigerator, and they buy soulless appliances based on price, "styling," and electronic features. Once the total ownership cost of EVs starts to catch up - and it's getting close for high-mileage use - we'll hit the steep part of the adoption S-curve.
All good points. Alternative to fossil fuel is not a new topic, it's been around for a long time since beginning of last century(Germany during WWI). However, there're two major factor that oil is still around - easy to produce due to it's natural resource and oil companies lobbing alternatives(read money and politics). As to EV, as you know most of the products that we use came from oil including the batteries. So, oil industry will still be around more or less for a long time. There're few other alternatives to the oil. One as you mentioned hydrogen fuel cell and synthetic fuel. I believe EV battery powered car is far from ideal solution. Here is interesting article about synthetic fuel:I'd be curious what you think that better tech would be.
Hydrogen has been tried since the 1970s, both in combustible liquid fuel and fuel cell form. Energy density and energy cost to produce hydrogen are both massive barriers.
Biofuels (ethanol) have been in use for decades, heavily subsidized, but have several challenges that haven't been worked out: still carbon-based, low conversion efficiency (enzymatic cellulose conversion works well in labs but has failed at scale), also limited energy density, and hard on vehicle fueling systems.
People have been looking around for better solutions than a long time. Oil and gas work really well, which makes it hard to replace traditional gasoline and diesel ICE vehicles. But, batteries have overcome more challenges than the other technologies.
Here's the cost/kWh progress in just the past 7 years:
Also have to recall we are comparing a 140-year-old technology that has had hundreds of billions of development dollars spent on it to ~20-year-old technology that has only recently received major investment. When you couple improved battery tech (like solid state batteries), distributed electrical generation, and recycling capabilities, not to mention re-use opportunities like home backup batteries (which spent vehicle batteries can do quite well), it starts to look like a pretty good ecosystem with network scale possibilities.
I'd be curious what others think is the better tech that is somehow evading the billions of dollars on alternative fuel development. The only other tech still kicking is hydrogen fuel cells, and it seems like a longer shot to me. On the topic of this thread, higher gas prices will only accelerate whatever changes are coming.
That e-fuel concept is cool. I suppose if it becomes a mechanism for CO2 sequestration also, that's even better (closed loop carbon cycle). When I was in grad school I studied solar energy conversion in synthetic biomaterials. Labs I was in touch with were doing work on algae that actually secrete a hydrocarbon that is effectively like diesel fuel. Because it's a biological product, the end-to-end cycle is carbon-neutral. There's all kinds of cool stuff out there. Next 20 years should be interesting.
