• MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Let’s say you have 1kw of electricity. And you have two choices for that electricity.

    One, you take that electricity, use it to crack hydrogen from water, then use more of that electricity to synthesize the fuel with atmospheric carbon, then transport that efuel to a station, then burn that efuel in an engine that wastes upwards of 75% of the energy in that efuel as heat loss.

    OR, you take that electricity, and you charge a car, and the car uses that electricity to move via motor that only wastes 15-20% of the energy.

    The solution is obvious yes? You’re basically wasting grid capacity to keep gasoline cars alive.

    Bonus, instead of just being carbon “net zero”, you can use the carbon capture to sequester it and be carbon negative instead, since with efuels you’re just releasing that captured carbon back into the air. Isn’t it better to be carbon negative than carbon neutral?

    Extra bonus? How about not giving everyone near a major road increased amounts of asthma and lung cancer due to tailpipe emissions, since carbon dioxide isn’t the only thing coming out of cars.

    Extra Extra Bonus? How about not polluting the water table of every city in the world with oil leaks.

    Efuels make zero sense. It actually makes MORE sense to just fucking burn good old fashioned gasoline and do carbon capture than to waste grid capacity.

    The only purpose Efuels exist is to brainwash people like you into fighting electric vehicles so fossil fuel companies and auto makers can try to run out the clock.

    • bedrooms@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I don’t understand your main part, which is the energy efficiency (edit: I mean, that’s bot the point). I’m talking about the regulatory problem with the EV manufacturing that makes is very hard to actually achieve net zero with EVs.

      The rest is fine.

      • MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I don’t understand your main part

        Yes, people who like to pump efuels share that problem. If you can’t understand it you will be stuck believing in oil-industry claptrap.

        I’m talking about the regulatory problem with the EV manufacturing that makes is very hard to actually achieve net zero with EVs.

        The main issue with gas cars is the gas, what you’re saying is a red herring that doesn’t even make sense.

        Answer me this: Is manufacturing gasoline cars carbon free?

        Of course not!

        EVs and Gasoline cars both currently involve carbon output. So you’re trying to imply that somehow making a battery pack (the big differentiator) is a process that produces such a huge amount of carbon, that it outweighs the 10k+ gallons of gasoline an ICE car burns throughout its lifetime.

        That’s an extraordinary claim. Where is the extraordinary evidence?

        • bedrooms@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Answer me this: Is manufacturing gasoline cars carbon free?

          I stop here. Manufacturing EVs aren’t carbon free either. Actually, manufacturing the battery emits far more carbon than manufacturing an engine.

          So, all I see from you is move the goal post repeatedly while not countering my main point: difficulty of regulation in manufacturing EVs.

            • bedrooms@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              You don’t get the point. Efuel is net zero.

              Efuel is made from the CO2. Therefore, even if you run your car, you are not increasing the CO2.

              On the other hand, EVs actually do put more CO2 in the sense that manufacturing the batteries adds CO2.

              Finally, my point is that this battery manufacturing process is hard to regulate. Do you now see how my opponents don’t properly reply to my argument!?

                • bedrooms@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Can you give me source on efuel not being net zero?

                  Yes, it’s expensive, but that’s I wrote “future” in my first comment.

              • BehindTheBarrier@programming.dev
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                1 year ago

                Here’s my view:

                Efuel is less efficient, simply because engines that use it are. We waste at least 50% of the energy put into it. Google also says most common cars waste between 60-80% of the energy. This means while Efuel is net zero in terms of production, assuming the energy put into creating it is all clean and 100% efficient. If we view the production and use of efuel as a cycle, you’re wasting half the energy every time. Every time the tank is fueled.

                Electric engines generally waste roughly 20%. There’s some additional loss across the charging of a battery, but it’s still far better than a gas engines efficency.

                The problem is the energy and waste from battery production, which makes them worse than gas car manufacturing. But they pass gas cars as long as they are used long enough. And here’s the important part, we can improve and change batteries and their production process. We are seeing massive research into this and especially into batteries not involving rare materials. We can also improve recycling of batteries. These are all things we can do to avoid oil and gas. Because gas engines are less efficient, and even with Efuel as net zero, the process of production and loss in use is just worse than electricity based use.

                And electricity can be clean energy. If we just find better batteries, we can move to a much cleaner process. But a long as we remain on inefficient gas engines, we will always have co2 pollution, along with other pollution. Eg. If Norway with 98% clean electricity swapped to all electric, and battery with the car got on the same level of gas engine in terms of production waste/pollution, we’d be saving so much energy and waste because of the much higher efficiency of electric engines, and reduction in gas use. Efuel can never do that, it will need green energy for production, and waste more energy in use. Thus I see no reason to push this over electric vehicles.

                There’s other downsides, such as heavier cars cause more road tear and air pollution. So ideally we’ll also move away from cars as much as possible. But trains, busses trams and so on can also be all electric and thus more environmentally friendly.

                • bedrooms@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  I honestly don’t understand why everybody talks about energy efficiency like it’s a problem to net zero. It’s not.

                  Do you guys mean that, because efuel is energy inefficient, it is net-positive? That’s wrong.

                  And therefore my point stands. I’ve been reiterating this logic like 10x already in this post, but somehow there will be always another reply with the same flaw.

                  • BehindTheBarrier@programming.dev
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                    1 year ago

                    It’s simple. We can go that way and effectively spend double the energy to drive a distance. I don’t think it’s exactly double but from 40% efficiency to 80% is the engine efficiency. So the number is just a simplification.

                    Reducing energy use by 50% would mean less energy having to come from other sources. Which aren’t necessarily green today.

                    Both solutions are improvements, but again, why go for the less efficient one when electricity is better?