- 25
- denver
Ethanol alcohol and biodiesel are examples of renewable fuel sources. Use of full synthetic fluids (oil, trans etc) would further remove the use of fossil fuels from vehicles
Alternative Fuels Discussion Thread
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Joey D
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- Lakes of the North, MI
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Fuels like ethanol and biodiesel could potentially cause food prices to go up. We already use something like 45% of our corn crop to make ethanol and making it the standard fuel for vehicles would push that even higher. Biodiesel can be made for a wide variety of biomass, but I'm not sure on it's cost effectiveness.
- 12,389
- Betelgeuse
- Beeblebrox_237
Ethanol has problems. Lots of them. First, eating is generally more important than driving. But there are more:
Ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline, so you will see about 30% more fuel consumption.
Emissions while using ethanol are significantly worse than those while using gasoline.
Ethanol cannot be used with pipelines, so transportation has to be done by lorry, using much more fuel.
Ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline, so you will see about 30% more fuel consumption.
Emissions while using ethanol are significantly worse than those while using gasoline.
Ethanol cannot be used with pipelines, so transportation has to be done by lorry, using much more fuel.
Keef
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Ethanol sounds like a great alternative. Until you realize that the only crops (here in the US) appropriate and plentiful enough to produce ethanol on any scale is corn. Then there's the fact that all the corn available is already accounted for. Then there's the fact that 90% of the foods and drinks that Americans consume have some sort of corn byproduct in them, such as corn syrup instead of sugar, which means that every ounce of corn you divert from food production to fuel production means the food gets more expensive.
Ethanol is the most idiotic idea of an alternative fuel that man has ever invented. It's only practical use is in the farm equipment of the farm that grows the corn, because they already have easy access to it.
I'm not up on the details but it seems like biodiesel is a good alternative especially for the fleet vehicles of industries which produce the byproducts required to make the fuel. Like restaurants, fast food chains, etc. Their waste grease is useful and very cheap, though you also need to add other chemicals if you're making your own biodiesel.
The only problem is that biodiesel isn't very compatible with modern diesel engines. You can run just about anything in an old crappy Mercedes or tractor, but the emissions controls on new engines do not stand up to biodiesel very well. Because biodiesel is not commonplace in the market, the emissions controls have been designed to work with the fuels that are widely available. Anything else will require modification of newer engines and emissions systems.
Synthetic oils are still carbon-based. Nonrenewable sources are required to make them but in smaller amounts than crude-based conventional oils. There are some cases where synthetic oils are destructive to equipment in industry, rotary engines, and are generally not recommended for aviation piston engines.
- 40,808
Plus ethanol is basically just a way to throw tax money at something that doesn't actually accomplish what it was supposed to and never was going to. It was a "feel good" thing that lawmakers could parade around to say was solving the problem when Hummers were the latest fashion accessory.
- 21,286
- GR-MI-USA
- YSSMAN
- YSSMAN
The heat loss alone is a huge waste of energy, that's something Honda has been looking to address. The iEloop system on the Mazdas are a clever and unobtrusive way to limit power consumption as well. Throw on the stop/start systems that are going onto almost everything today, as well as cylinder deactivation, and we're finding good way to cut corners with what we already have.
Still, electric cars seem to be the way to go. I'm ready to make the switch when prices come down enough.
- 25
- denver
To all who have involved themselves in this thread, how's this for an idea... lets stop twisting the ideas, concepts, facts and opinions I have made into things i did not say or even imply. I base my statements on the facts as presented by the major companies who have direct relation to this topic. Please stop taking individual statements I have made and pointing out every little flaw that maybe within. All that really does is momentarily avoid the problem at hand. Fact is THERE IS NO ANSWER, so any ideas, thoughts or opinions I have presented are just as valid as anyone else's.
Bottom line is that it is a known fact that fossil fuels are an exhaustable resource that we, as a species are FAR too depandant on. If there were an easy solution, this debate would not be happening. Regardless what the solution is, changes in TECHNOLOGY, INFRASTRUCTURE AND MENTALITY all must be made and the sooner the better.
There have been a number of good and valid arguments to ideas I have presented here. But there will pros and cons to every plausible solution. I, for one, am currently studying towards an assosiate degree in alternative energies so I'd like to think my thoughts and opinions are valid. Everybody's ideas and opinions are valid. Any facts i presented are based on industry fact, not word of mouth or published media. I strongly encourage everyone to do in depth research (i did list my sources) in an effort to better educate themselves on the matter.
We can debate the topic till we are all blue in the face, or we can do something (significant) to fix the problem. I don't think I can be any clearer than that
Bottom line is that it is a known fact that fossil fuels are an exhaustable resource that we, as a species are FAR too depandant on. If there were an easy solution, this debate would not be happening. Regardless what the solution is, changes in TECHNOLOGY, INFRASTRUCTURE AND MENTALITY all must be made and the sooner the better.
There have been a number of good and valid arguments to ideas I have presented here. But there will pros and cons to every plausible solution. I, for one, am currently studying towards an assosiate degree in alternative energies so I'd like to think my thoughts and opinions are valid. Everybody's ideas and opinions are valid. Any facts i presented are based on industry fact, not word of mouth or published media. I strongly encourage everyone to do in depth research (i did list my sources) in an effort to better educate themselves on the matter.
We can debate the topic till we are all blue in the face, or we can do something (significant) to fix the problem. I don't think I can be any clearer than that
Joey D
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- GTP_Joey
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Fun fact: No one is twisting around what you're saying, we're merely countering the arguments you are putting forth...which you've also made very clear they're your opinions.
And really the suggestions you put out there, while they do have some pros, are almost never going to be as good as a purely electric vehicle for an alternative to the ICE. Bio-fuels aren't a bad suggestion in small quantities, but you have to remember farming can be pretty destructive to the environment, also farming's main goal is to feed us, not power vehicles. I really don't want to pay $4 a gallon for a bio-fuel that gives me worse mileage than a petrol engine and also pay $20 for a steak that used to cost me $10. Bio-fuels also still produce emissions into the environment.
Electric cars, in their current form, are still relatively newbies in the technology world. Give them 10 years and you'll see battery technology far superior to how it is now and cars that get 300-400 miles of range on a charge. You'll also see charging technology greatly improve and reduce charging time down to 5-10 minutes, Telsa's supercharging stations already show what's possible early on in the game.
Power plants will continue to evolve too, coal plants are significantly cleaner today than they were 20 years ago and will probably get even cleaner.
And really the suggestions you put out there, while they do have some pros, are almost never going to be as good as a purely electric vehicle for an alternative to the ICE. Bio-fuels aren't a bad suggestion in small quantities, but you have to remember farming can be pretty destructive to the environment, also farming's main goal is to feed us, not power vehicles. I really don't want to pay $4 a gallon for a bio-fuel that gives me worse mileage than a petrol engine and also pay $20 for a steak that used to cost me $10. Bio-fuels also still produce emissions into the environment.
Electric cars, in their current form, are still relatively newbies in the technology world. Give them 10 years and you'll see battery technology far superior to how it is now and cars that get 300-400 miles of range on a charge. You'll also see charging technology greatly improve and reduce charging time down to 5-10 minutes, Telsa's supercharging stations already show what's possible early on in the game.
Power plants will continue to evolve too, coal plants are significantly cleaner today than they were 20 years ago and will probably get even cleaner.
- 25
- denver
Actually yes, a few people have twisted around what I said, but your not one of them. I'm all ears for any arguments and you do bring up valid points. Thanks for the input
- 23,800
- Philippines
Nobody is really twisting what you said.
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Following the money is one of the few reliable methods for assessing the impact.
Let's look here:
http://m.toyota.com/prius/trims-prices.html
http://m.toyota.com/corolla/trims-prices.html
For the same specs, there's a $5,000 difference. By EPA numbers (which are pretty conservative, the Corolla does 26 mpg in the city, where the Prius does 51.
Ignoring the costs of registration, maintenance and insurance for a moment, one will cost you $15,384 per 100,000 miles, while the other will cost you $7,843 per 100,000 miles. Adding back in other costs, while insurance may be higher for the Prius, maintenance costs less, so that's a wash. Over the typical ownership of 100,000 miles, you gain back some $7,500... for a net positive of $2,500.
That represents the total extra environmental impact of the Corolla over the Prius over 100,000 miles.
Over 300,000 miles, you have $22,624 worth of extra environmental impact for the Corolla over the Prius.
Impact in the form of non-recoverable fuel used. This doesn't include oil changes... more frequent for the Corolla, brake pad changes, more frequent and resale value... lower.
At the end of such period, the remaining useful life of each car, represented by its resale value... shows what portion or percentage of the car is still useful and recycleable. (And that includes the batteries) . And the Prius has some of the best resale value on the planet.
And even if you decide to completely dispose of the battery pack instead of recycling it... that's $8,000 worth of extra damage versus $22,624 worth of extra gasoline used. With all the upstream environmental impact and post-use emissions and pollution that entails. But again... that's a dozen pounds of recyclable battery versus thirty tons of gasoline that we will never, ever be able to use again.
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My beef with hybrids is that the upfront cost means that not enough hybrids will be bought or can be bought to significantly lower global oil demand.
But from the single consumer standpoint, considering they have enough initial cash, yes... they do make sense.
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Following the money is one of the few reliable methods for assessing the impact.
Let's look here:
http://m.toyota.com/prius/trims-prices.html
http://m.toyota.com/corolla/trims-prices.html
For the same specs, there's a $5,000 difference. By EPA numbers (which are pretty conservative, the Corolla does 26 mpg in the city, where the Prius does 51.
Ignoring the costs of registration, maintenance and insurance for a moment, one will cost you $15,384 per 100,000 miles, while the other will cost you $7,843 per 100,000 miles. Adding back in other costs, while insurance may be higher for the Prius, maintenance costs less, so that's a wash. Over the typical ownership of 100,000 miles, you gain back some $7,500... for a net positive of $2,500.
That represents the total extra environmental impact of the Corolla over the Prius over 100,000 miles.
Over 300,000 miles, you have $22,624 worth of extra environmental impact for the Corolla over the Prius.
Impact in the form of non-recoverable fuel used. This doesn't include oil changes... more frequent for the Corolla, brake pad changes, more frequent and resale value... lower.
At the end of such period, the remaining useful life of each car, represented by its resale value... shows what portion or percentage of the car is still useful and recycleable. (And that includes the batteries) . And the Prius has some of the best resale value on the planet.
And even if you decide to completely dispose of the battery pack instead of recycling it... that's $8,000 worth of extra damage versus $22,624 worth of extra gasoline used. With all the upstream environmental impact and post-use emissions and pollution that entails. But again... that's a dozen pounds of recyclable battery versus thirty tons of gasoline that we will never, ever be able to use again.
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My beef with hybrids is that the upfront cost means that not enough hybrids will be bought or can be bought to significantly lower global oil demand.
But from the single consumer standpoint, considering they have enough initial cash, yes... they do make sense.
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Here's the thing: Nobody is doing that. Not even me.
Several people have now pointed this out to you. What you're doing is twisting our words to make it seem like we're twisting yours.
And after you said this (and I quote - like I've done all along):
I'm not sure you're really worth debating with anyway. If you're not doing the decency of reading what I write, or responding to this so-called "flawed" summary with something worthy of countering it, then it's not worth me writing.
Absolutely laughable.
I've spent the last three years "better educating myself on the matter". It's my job.
Out of interest, where did you get the $8,000 figure from? It seems a little high, even considering you've stated scrapping rather than recycling.
I covered Toyota's own replacement prices last year (and thebadwrench with hate this, as it involves facts - though it's from Toyota, so if I was wearing my tinfoil hat I'd say they're feeding me lies so I can mercilessly spread them to the public), and there are two prices involved in getting a new battery.
The first is the cost of the battery itself, which is just under $4,000 for the latest Prii and a few hundred less for older generations. Then there's the "core credit", which is the money Toyota deducts for returning the old battery for recycling, which for Prius is $1,350. So on a Mk1 Prius (the most likely to need a new battery as they've been around longest) you're looking at about $2,299 for a replacement.
It's warranted too, and I suspect this cost is also coming down - I heard some really high figures years ago when people were first worrying about battery replacement.
Of course, if the $8,000 takes into account scrapping two batteries in the lifetime of a Prius, then that figure is pretty much bang-on.
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Admittedly plucked out of thin air... based on what I recall replacement batteries were supposed to cost... way back when the Prius was new and Toyota was still losing money on them. Yes, 4k seems a more reasonable figure. The whole point was that, in the end, the difference in he amount of fuel used outweighs the amount of batteries to be disposed of by quite a bit, whether in dry weight or cost.
And again, that's if we dispose of the batteries, instead of recycling them, which is more likely.
- 12,389
- Betelgeuse
- Beeblebrox_237
I recently read an article, and I believe it was in Car and Driver, that noted that manufacturers are actually seeking out old, worn out batteries, because it's cheaper for them to recycle them and extract all of the metals than to buy the raw materials again and let the batteries go to a landfill. So environmental damage by these cars before and after their useful lifetimes is not nearly as high as certain biased parties would have you believe.
- 27,213
- United Kingdom
That would explain why Toyota is happy to actually give people a grand or so back when replacing packs.
- 27,213
- United Kingdom
ExigeEvan
Premium
- 17,192
I stopped visiting after I got 55 MPG in the Almera. The Alfa is a lost cause.nikyIt's a fun place in that some of the DIY stuff is interesting. Also, helps in brushing up on driving technique. Hoping to break 40 km/l this year when I next get an Alto.
I loved some of the aero work those guys do.
ExigeEvan
Premium
- 17,192
That was on a 500 mile run, on motorway with traffic, and some gridlock. Car had 3/4 grill block, high tyre pressure, didn't run cabin fan, aerial removed, truck drafting.nikyMPG Imp, I presume? Pretty good. But I bet you could do better.
Sadly, Hitting 65 would probably require doing something illegal...
Not bad for a '99 1.4 petrol.
- 27,213
- United Kingdom
Reviving this thread for something quite interesting.
In London in 2010, 50% of PM10 emissions* from road transport come from brake dust, according to this research (pdf file, relevant info on page 26). Exhaust emissions make a further 40% and tyres contribute 10%. Road transport as a whole contributes 48% of Greater London's PM10 emissions.
It's worth pointing out that these figures may since have changed, as emissions standards have improved in the past seven years.
But that's a massive figure from brakes, and it's something you don't really think about. I mean, I've cleaned more brake dust from wheels than I care to think of, but when you think about it it's fairly obvious that some of that dust goes into the air, and it's not overly healthy stuff.
It's a benefit of electric vehicles and hybrids I'd not previously considered though. Regenerative braking (particularly if it's calibrated to bring the car completely to a halt) means these vehicles don't use their brakes nearly as much as conventional cars. Previously I'd thought that this was good simply from a maintenance cost perspective, but it seems like there's much more to it than that.
* PM10s - Particulate matter small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs - not small enough to get into the bloodstream, but linked to various lung diseases, bronchitis, asthma etc.
In London in 2010, 50% of PM10 emissions* from road transport come from brake dust, according to this research (pdf file, relevant info on page 26). Exhaust emissions make a further 40% and tyres contribute 10%. Road transport as a whole contributes 48% of Greater London's PM10 emissions.
It's worth pointing out that these figures may since have changed, as emissions standards have improved in the past seven years.
But that's a massive figure from brakes, and it's something you don't really think about. I mean, I've cleaned more brake dust from wheels than I care to think of, but when you think about it it's fairly obvious that some of that dust goes into the air, and it's not overly healthy stuff.
It's a benefit of electric vehicles and hybrids I'd not previously considered though. Regenerative braking (particularly if it's calibrated to bring the car completely to a halt) means these vehicles don't use their brakes nearly as much as conventional cars. Previously I'd thought that this was good simply from a maintenance cost perspective, but it seems like there's much more to it than that.
* PM10s - Particulate matter small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs - not small enough to get into the bloodstream, but linked to various lung diseases, bronchitis, asthma etc.
ExigeEvan
Premium
- 17,192
@homeforsummer - That's a very good point. Perhaps a good reason to see flywheel KERS on many other vehicles where an electrical system is considered impractical due to load conditions or usage.
- 27,213
- United Kingdom
Searching through the forum for a different thread (ironically one about not-at-all fuel efficient cars) I found @BKGlover's relatively recent unanswered thread below, so going to try and cover some of it here in an existing thread. Sorry for the late reply.
There are then lots of factors that affect how efficient you can make the basic concept of a piston engine before anything you do has smaller and smaller effects - the law of diminishing returns.
Thirty years ago, an internal combustion engine was still a relatively basic thing, and not conceptually much different than it had been for the previous seventy-odd years. All the gains from the early days of the ICE until maybe the 1980s had been from fairly low-hanging fruit - improvements in production tolerances, better fuels, computerised fuel injection, that kind of thing.
Trouble is, you get to a level where you're already burning fuel fairly efficiently, and diminishing returns start to apply. Mostly this is because there's always some sort of tradeoff to making changes. With injection that tradeoff was fairly small - a little extra complexity, most of it electronic - but when you start trying other technologies - direct injection, higher compression ratios, variable valve timing etc - the level of complexity and expense increases quicker but without the same big leaps that the earlier technologies were able to realise because those earlier engines were significantly less advanced overall.
And ultimately, burning something to create energy that you can use to do work - as an engine does - has inherent inefficiencies. There's no way of burning something without those waste products, noise, creating heat etc, so there's a theoretical limit as to how much of the remaining energy you can use to do work.
I believe the most efficient combustion engine currently in a road car is that of the Toyota Prius (not including the assistance of its electric motor), at around 40%. I think Mercedes-AMG has managed to get its F1 engine to about 50% thermal efficiency, which is absolutely remarkable, but the optimum operating conditions for an F1 engine are obviously very far removed from what's realistically achievable in a road-going engine, which has a much wider range of operating conditions and therefore can't be built to such fine tolerances.
The other problem for ICE advancements is that it now simply makes more sense to make a drivetrain more efficient by either combining an ICE with an electric motor, or by junking the inefficient ICE altogether and running electric power alone. The thermal efficiency of an electric motor - i.e. how much energy it can turn into useful work - can be over 90%. In other words an electric motor can do twice the work for the same amount of energy - so it's much more cost-effective to use one instead of an engine. That's not a great incentive to keep developing ICEs.
As far as assisting a conventional engine goes, there's not really much point. I expect you'd get parasitic losses from the concept you mention (using exhaust gases to spin a turbine to then input more power into a system), because you can't get more energy from a system than you put in (thanksObama thermodynamics). And you're better off (again) using an electric motor if you want to say, spool up a turbocharger quickly, because an electric motor is more efficient than using byproducts of combustion to improve power.
In the US at least, as far as I'm aware, most ethanol in fuel comes from corn. And as you know, corn is valuable as food and as feedstock for livestock. The higher the proportion of ethanol you require for transportation, the less you can harvest for food without increasing the amount of land you dedicate to growing corn. That's only possible up to a certain point before it becomes a strain on resources - and strains on resources are bad news bears for things like peace and national security.
There's progress to be made on recycling, but batteries are, as industrial products go, very recyclable items. Many moons ago when I was writing for a green vehicle website, we covered a story that the lead-acid battery is actually the world's most recycled product - in the US alone 99% of old batteries (in 2011 at least) get recycled.
The thing is, all those metals used in batteries don't just disappear into the ether - they're still in there and can still be extracted and used again somehow. Toyota already buys back Prius batteries to recycle (in the fairly uncommon event that the existing ones in the cars die and need to be replaced) and part of Tesla's Powerwall plan involves using old lithium-ion batteries for home storage, which is reuse rather than recycling.
Contrary to the panicked reports in the early days of modern electric cars, batteries aren't dying nearly as quickly as people expected either. While there were reports of Nissan Leaf batteries degrading in really hot climates there's since been very few problems - partly because while a battery might lose say, 25% of its capacity in a relatively short space of time, the drop-off from there is incredibly slow. The batteries used in automotive applications tend to be a little more resilient than smartphone or laptop ones anyway.
As far as oil being replenished goes, that's perhaps a little optimistic. Industry is extracting and using oil at a vastly greater rate than it's being generated by the planet - it's taken millions and millions of years for that oil to be created and a matter of centuries for humans to use all the easily-accessible stuff...
They work well in vehicles in the sense that a few kilograms of compressed hydrogen can offer a decent driving range, and that those few kilograms can be replenished pretty quickly at a hydrogen filling station.
On the downside, hydrogen filling stations are few and far between right now and because they're very expensive to set up, they aren't spreading as quickly as electric car charging stations - which, at a very basic level, just need a high-voltage cable and a plug socket.
Hydrogen also adds a layer of inefficiency into the process of creating and storing energy, because hydrogen requires a lot of energy to produce. While it's the most abundant element in the universe, it's actually quite difficult to find on earth in its pure form - it tends to be attached to other molecules, like oxygen. Splitting hydrogen from oxygen (using electrolysis of water) uses a lot of energy - energy that could be used more efficiently if stored in a battery and used to drive an electric motor directly. And if you don't want to use electrolysis, the best way of getting hydrogen is through steam reforming of hydrocarbons... which requires drilling for hydrocarbons, which environmentally puts us back to square one.
I've driven a couple of hydrogen cars - a Toyota Mirai and a Honda Clarity - and they both work perfectly well. Like electric cars in fact, only with a lot more expense and a lot more behind-the-scenes complication in order to make them work. As with combustion power, research and development money is probably better spent making batteries better than making fuel cell cars viable. Not least because better batteries can benefit regular consumer products too.
Hope all that made sense and answered some of your questions.
The efficiency of combustion engines are governed by how much energy you can extract from a given quantity of fuel, relative to how much of that energy goes to waste as noise, heat, and other byproducts of combustion.
There are then lots of factors that affect how efficient you can make the basic concept of a piston engine before anything you do has smaller and smaller effects - the law of diminishing returns.
Thirty years ago, an internal combustion engine was still a relatively basic thing, and not conceptually much different than it had been for the previous seventy-odd years. All the gains from the early days of the ICE until maybe the 1980s had been from fairly low-hanging fruit - improvements in production tolerances, better fuels, computerised fuel injection, that kind of thing.
Trouble is, you get to a level where you're already burning fuel fairly efficiently, and diminishing returns start to apply. Mostly this is because there's always some sort of tradeoff to making changes. With injection that tradeoff was fairly small - a little extra complexity, most of it electronic - but when you start trying other technologies - direct injection, higher compression ratios, variable valve timing etc - the level of complexity and expense increases quicker but without the same big leaps that the earlier technologies were able to realise because those earlier engines were significantly less advanced overall.
And ultimately, burning something to create energy that you can use to do work - as an engine does - has inherent inefficiencies. There's no way of burning something without those waste products, noise, creating heat etc, so there's a theoretical limit as to how much of the remaining energy you can use to do work.
I believe the most efficient combustion engine currently in a road car is that of the Toyota Prius (not including the assistance of its electric motor), at around 40%. I think Mercedes-AMG has managed to get its F1 engine to about 50% thermal efficiency, which is absolutely remarkable, but the optimum operating conditions for an F1 engine are obviously very far removed from what's realistically achievable in a road-going engine, which has a much wider range of operating conditions and therefore can't be built to such fine tolerances.
The other problem for ICE advancements is that it now simply makes more sense to make a drivetrain more efficient by either combining an ICE with an electric motor, or by junking the inefficient ICE altogether and running electric power alone. The thermal efficiency of an electric motor - i.e. how much energy it can turn into useful work - can be over 90%. In other words an electric motor can do twice the work for the same amount of energy - so it's much more cost-effective to use one instead of an engine. That's not a great incentive to keep developing ICEs.
Turbines can be quite efficient - approaching 50% thermal efficiency - but engineers have struggled to contain things like noise in an automotive environment. They're also only really efficient at a constant turbine speed and take time to spool up, so it's difficult to use one solely as propulsion.
As far as assisting a conventional engine goes, there's not really much point. I expect you'd get parasitic losses from the concept you mention (using exhaust gases to spin a turbine to then input more power into a system), because you can't get more energy from a system than you put in (thanks
This comes down to the whole fuel vs. food thing.
In the US at least, as far as I'm aware, most ethanol in fuel comes from corn. And as you know, corn is valuable as food and as feedstock for livestock. The higher the proportion of ethanol you require for transportation, the less you can harvest for food without increasing the amount of land you dedicate to growing corn. That's only possible up to a certain point before it becomes a strain on resources - and strains on resources are bad news bears for things like peace and national security.
There are definitely issues to overcome here, but many of the problems with batteries are overplayed.
There's progress to be made on recycling, but batteries are, as industrial products go, very recyclable items. Many moons ago when I was writing for a green vehicle website, we covered a story that the lead-acid battery is actually the world's most recycled product - in the US alone 99% of old batteries (in 2011 at least) get recycled.
The thing is, all those metals used in batteries don't just disappear into the ether - they're still in there and can still be extracted and used again somehow. Toyota already buys back Prius batteries to recycle (in the fairly uncommon event that the existing ones in the cars die and need to be replaced) and part of Tesla's Powerwall plan involves using old lithium-ion batteries for home storage, which is reuse rather than recycling.
Contrary to the panicked reports in the early days of modern electric cars, batteries aren't dying nearly as quickly as people expected either. While there were reports of Nissan Leaf batteries degrading in really hot climates there's since been very few problems - partly because while a battery might lose say, 25% of its capacity in a relatively short space of time, the drop-off from there is incredibly slow. The batteries used in automotive applications tend to be a little more resilient than smartphone or laptop ones anyway.
As far as oil being replenished goes, that's perhaps a little optimistic. Industry is extracting and using oil at a vastly greater rate than it's being generated by the planet - it's taken millions and millions of years for that oil to be created and a matter of centuries for humans to use all the easily-accessible stuff...
Some companies are still working with them. Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, and a couple of others in conjunction with those three companies.
They work well in vehicles in the sense that a few kilograms of compressed hydrogen can offer a decent driving range, and that those few kilograms can be replenished pretty quickly at a hydrogen filling station.
On the downside, hydrogen filling stations are few and far between right now and because they're very expensive to set up, they aren't spreading as quickly as electric car charging stations - which, at a very basic level, just need a high-voltage cable and a plug socket.
Hydrogen also adds a layer of inefficiency into the process of creating and storing energy, because hydrogen requires a lot of energy to produce. While it's the most abundant element in the universe, it's actually quite difficult to find on earth in its pure form - it tends to be attached to other molecules, like oxygen. Splitting hydrogen from oxygen (using electrolysis of water) uses a lot of energy - energy that could be used more efficiently if stored in a battery and used to drive an electric motor directly. And if you don't want to use electrolysis, the best way of getting hydrogen is through steam reforming of hydrocarbons... which requires drilling for hydrocarbons, which environmentally puts us back to square one.
I've driven a couple of hydrogen cars - a Toyota Mirai and a Honda Clarity - and they both work perfectly well. Like electric cars in fact, only with a lot more expense and a lot more behind-the-scenes complication in order to make them work. As with combustion power, research and development money is probably better spent making batteries better than making fuel cell cars viable. Not least because better batteries can benefit regular consumer products too.
Hope all that made sense and answered some of your questions.
- 6,115
- Texas
@homeforsummer That all made perfect sense and does answer everything I can think of. Thank you.
ExigeEvan
Premium
- 17,192
@BKGlover - Just to add some further points.
For every compression and exhaust stroke you have what is called a pumping loss, so by having a 5th and 6th stroke of an engine you may be gaining in thermal efficiency but you then lose in pumping losses. The Atkinson (and similarly Miller) cycles try to address pumping losses in 4-stroke by reducing pumping losses. The flip side of all these is generally a decrease in power density and driveability. Atkinson cycle works well in cars like the Prius and Volt where you can aid the engine with Electric motors.
Re: Hydrogen. In my opinion it's the likely solution for haulage vehicles as it allows for similar range and refuelling and will require fewer refuelling sites than if used in cars. Likely battery tech will stay.
Re: Lithium. It's not actually a rare earth metal. It's the 25th most abundant element in the earth's crust and reasonably abundant in the ocean. It is very reactive but concerns of its scarcity are largely related to the limited exploration and known reserves that existed prior to the increased demand from batteries.
For every compression and exhaust stroke you have what is called a pumping loss, so by having a 5th and 6th stroke of an engine you may be gaining in thermal efficiency but you then lose in pumping losses. The Atkinson (and similarly Miller) cycles try to address pumping losses in 4-stroke by reducing pumping losses. The flip side of all these is generally a decrease in power density and driveability. Atkinson cycle works well in cars like the Prius and Volt where you can aid the engine with Electric motors.
Re: Hydrogen. In my opinion it's the likely solution for haulage vehicles as it allows for similar range and refuelling and will require fewer refuelling sites than if used in cars. Likely battery tech will stay.
Re: Lithium. It's not actually a rare earth metal. It's the 25th most abundant element in the earth's crust and reasonably abundant in the ocean. It is very reactive but concerns of its scarcity are largely related to the limited exploration and known reserves that existed prior to the increased demand from batteries.
Danoff
Premium
- 34,011
- Mile High City
My understanding is that this is primarily a weight issue:
http://jalopnik.com/electric-and-hybrid-cars-might-produce-as-many-toxins-a-1775747577
So while regenerative braking might save on brake dust, the added weight of batteries and the use of low rolling resistance tires can result in offsetting non-combustion emissions. Of course, that's not comparing a Prius to a Suburban. There's another element too, which is which non-combustion emissions are the most harmful. Tires? Brakes? Road dust?
ExigeEvan
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- 17,192
A Jalopnik article that links to Daily Fail article, paint me skeptical!
Seems to me that the actual story is heavy car and eco tyres potentially cause increased particulate matter. But that isn't specific to Hybrid/EVs.
Octavia SE 2.0 TDi - 1257kg
Passat GTE - 1647kg
Audi A4 SE 2.0TDi - 1430kg
So yep, GTE is undoubtedly heavier, but there are clearly other factors at play that address the nearly 200kg difference between the Octavia and A4.
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