The energy used to make ICE fuel

[Kenp1]

Of course you could turn it around and say that you used 2.8 kWh of energy to produce a product that contains 9 kWh of energy. I had to block his posts appearing on my Facebook feed as a lot of them were as bad the the anti EV ones, it's all about the clicks.

 

[Gadget Geek]

I'm probably missing something here, but I thought the point was that ICE cars consume all that electricity (that goes into making the fuel) as well as burning the fuel. That it's not an either/or. That you can use all that electricity to produce the fuel, and then burn it, or you could just put the electricity straight into the car. That ICE cars consume electricity too, and on the same scale as EVs.

No, I think you hit the nail on the head there. Why use the electricity to make a product to move a vehicle when you can just use the electricity to move the vehicle much more efficiently.


It's similar to the hydrogen fuel cell idea. Waste a lot of energy splitting natural gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide so that the hydrogen can be used to produce electricity in a fuel cell . . . madness. (Except to the fossil fuel industry who can carry on buisness as usual).

 

[Bam Bam]

I think that mentioning green hydrogen and e-fuels are instructive.

It is possible to create these products from (surplus) renewable electricity, air and water and make a fuel that powers motion.

The losses involved are absolutely staggering and so it makes absolutely no economic sense, unless there really isn't a grid/battery electric option available. Inter-continental flight and shipping, for instance.

Oil and gas appear great because we haven't had to make them - they were just in the Earth.

But even without having to make them, getting them out of the ground, refining and transporting them does require a lot of energy and materials.

The current goings on in the Gulf are hopefully going to make people realise this.

 

[fnegroni]

yeah i think some look at it wrong.

oil and gas are not renewable, and pollute where they are burnt. Therefore making the entire cycle open at both ends.

The only fuels worth thinking about are synthetic fuels, because rockets.

Anything that can use electricity directly, such as EV motors, can be powered by anything that produces electricity, with zero emissions at the consumer end and reduced or virtually non-existent emissions at the other, creating a closed cycle.

Batteries arent the only way to supply an EV motor with electricity. They are the most practical right now. Yet electricity per se can be produced in so many different ways.

 

[Bam Bam]

EVs will get less and less wasteful over time as well.

Wind, hydro and solar energy waste negligible amounts of energy in the act of producing energy (virtually no heat exhaust).

Power plants that turn turbines with steam (gas, coal, nuclear), end up with a lot of hot air exhaust that needs to be cooled with the energy lost to the atmosphere.

So the more renewables supplying the grid the cleaner EVs will get.

 

[Gadget Geek]

yeah i think some look at it wrong.

oil and gas are not renewable, and pollute where they are burnt.

Not just where they are burnt. Check out the Niger Delta.

 

[Rolfe]

No, I think you hit the nail on the head there. Why use the electricity to make a product to move a vehicle when you can just use the electricity to move the vehicle much more efficiently.


It's similar to the hydrogen fuel cell idea. Waste a lot of energy splitting natural gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide so that the hydrogen can be used to produce electricity in a fuel cell . . . madness. (Except to the fossil fuel industry who can carry on buisness as usual).

I think this line of argument actually started as a counter to "if all cars are electric, there won't be enough electricity to go around" nonsense.

If all cars are electric, then all the electricity that's currently used to refine petroleum, cart it around the country and pump it into cars will be freed up to run cars directy.

There's also the little matter of about half the world's cargo fleet being used to transport petroleum products to refineries, so cutting that step out puts an enormous dent in maritime diesel emissions, which are particularly dirty. Also subtract the petrol tankers on the roads, and their contribution to both diesel emissions and road carriageway damage, and it's pretty much a win on all fronts.

 

[Bam Bam]

Jan Rosenow appeared on the Everything Electric Podcast talking about his latest research in this area.

Other people who make interesting, sometimes provocative, points on the efficiency of the energy transition are Michael Leibreich and Mark Z. Jacobsen.

 

[Coulomb]

I think this line of argument actually started as a counter to "if all cars are electric, there won't be enough electricity to go around" nonsense.

There may be something to it. In parts of Melbourne, Australia, they are having low voltage issues recently. Supposedly all the people converting from natural gas to electricity for their homes due to the surge in gas prices is overwhelming the low voltage electricity network.

A lot of that will be due to poor planning and a lack of will to spend money that doesn't need to be spent right now. But I bet that's not the only part of the world where the electricity network is marginal.

EVs need a lot more energy to charge them than an ICE car's share of the infrastructure needed to produce fuel. That's because EVs use all that energy to actually run the vehicle; ICE vehicles just need the "overhead" to move the energy that came from the sun millions of years ago into the vehicle's fuel tank. The sun did all the "heavy lifting" long ago for ICE vehicles.