We really do need fewer cars in general, though. Replacing all ICE vehicles with EVs isn’t good enough. EVs still need tires and plastics and roads to drive on, all of which require petroleum. We need people living in relatively dense urban areas, that are highly walkable and bikable, with robust public transportation.
The frontman for the #1 EV car in America (Tesla) ain’t exactly a liberal you know.
EDIT: Note that Elon Musk is very much a hate-filled memer. His arguments kill other clean technologies, such as California’s high speed rail project. (See how Hyperloop was proposed as a fake project to kill the high-speed rail public transit politics).
I’m not “against EVs”. I’m mostly against the bullshit that Elon Musk has brought to this discussion. EVs can be more efficient (especially as LFP chemistry is mastered, unfortunately by the Chinese, but hopefully we can bring that tech to the USA). We need to work on more advanced chemistries (LFP, or better), we should work on cleaner technologies, more durable batteries, etc. etc. Biden is right to also focus on American Workers / American Built batteries (so even if the Chinese LFP chemistry is superior, we need to “bring it home” or build a superior tech like Silicon Batteries, etc. etc. )
Tesla is falling behind technologically. Their only trick so far has been to kill other projects that threaten them (ex: ethanol, hydrogen, high speed rail projects, etc. etc.). That’s fine, Tesla has played its role in meming pro-environmentalism to the greater public, we just gotta remove the toxicity in the EV argument and bring us back to a pro-Environmental stance IMO.
Elsewhere, I’m pushing green tech like Hydrogen and Switchgrass Ethanol, Kerosene and Syngas. Experimental tech should remain that: experimental. We need to keep investing into them and hope for the best. EVs are just one potential future, experimenting with other chemistries in the meantime (“just in case” we find something better) needs to be left open. There is a potential future where H2 is superior if some problems are solved. EVs are just ahead right now, but not necessarily over the next 10 years. An environmentalist would support scientists continuing to explore these other paths as long as a green future / carbon-neutral technology remains in view.
Only asshats like Elon Musk try to shit on competing technologies. So try not to be that kind of toxic EV supporter.
I'm in a position to buy old vehicles only. My current vehicle is more than 20 years old, and I don't plan to replace it soon. However, from my view, the sooner more options exist, the sooner folks like myself won't be driving otherwise reliable, but more polluting, vehicles. I don't even drive that much, about 1000 miles this year. So I could be driving what, 6000 or 7000 miles a year but having a smaller impact, but not until something like 2040 or even later at this rate.
Anyway, why push back? My winter climate isn't ideal for electric but people do it and I expect that to improve over time. We need it now, so others can have it then. My thoughts. For disclosure, I wasn't able to read the article. I apologize if I am off point 🙂
But losing Hybrid and diminishing PHEV is dumb. Toyota Prius and Ford Maverick are very popular cars today, and calling those buyers anti-green and outlawing those vehicles over the next 10 years seems extreme to me.
This is definitely an overstep by the environmentalists IMO.
There’s nothing wrong IMO with making new standards. But outlawing even the Prius is… extreme. This won’t have traction in the long run.
I wanted a non ICE car but was priced out. Car companies are making it tough to buy electric. Ended up with a hybrid while I wait for more choice in the electric arena that are not stupid expensive.
Honda Accord Hybrid and Corolla Hybrids are so efficient they still are top 15 cars on the Greenest list of ACEEE.
Depending on the Hybrid you bought, you can still feel very good about reduced emissions and saving the planet (etc. Etc). Don’t let the extremist faction make you feel bad for missing out on the more expensive vehicles in the top10 or top5
Someone made a good point to me the other day on this though, the PHEV is the worst of both worlds because you lug around the wrought of the ICE engine, have to pay for a lifetime of maintenance with it and when electric, you have diminished range due to the weight of the ICE engine
PHEVs are lighter than every EV on the market of equivalent size.
Prius Prime is 3500lbs, while Nissan Leaf is 4000 and Model Y is like 4300.
EV batteries are the real waste when you actually measure how heavy the battery packs are. The engine + transmission system of ICE is far, far, far lighter.
you have diminished range due to the weight of the ICE engine
More like the 800lbs of extra batteries you carry (and rarely use) are a waste on the full size EV. Like, how often are you running your battery down and using all 1000lbs of Li-ion effectively?
Yes, an Ioniq 6 is over 1000lbs of battery. Most engines are just a hundred or so lbs. You seriously can’t make any kind of “weight” argument here, EVs are so heavy its not a reasonable comparison. Any weight argument immediately swings in favor of ICE, Hybrid, or PHEV.
The far lighter weight of the Prius (3200lbs) and Prius Prime (3500lbs) is one of the reasons why they have much better efficiency than their pure-EV competitors. And is likely a major influence on why they reached #1 on ACEEE’s greenest car of the market list.
have to pay for a lifetime of maintenance with it
$35 an oil change x 15 oil changes == $525 over ~10 years of a car’s usage. People are seriously overdramaticizing the costs of oil changes.
Tesla’s Model Y has a 100,000-mile maintenance cost estimate between $8,250 for base trims and $15,000 for the performance trim. This does not include repairs. By comparison, a Toyota Highlander in the Car Talk fleet had a 100,000-mile maintenance and repair cost of $14,029. A Honda Accord had a 100,000-mile maintenance and repair cost of $7,684. If there is a cost advantage to Tesla with regard to maintenance and repair, we cannot find it.
Meanwhile, a single Tesla 3 set of tires is like $1000, and because the weight of the vehicle, the tires wear out faster and spew microplastics everywhere.
And because Tesla vehicles have absurdly overpowered motors, people tend to wear out their tires faster.
You decided to zero in and fixate on weight alone? The conversation is weight along with range/efficiency, emissions and lifetime maintenance. Yes, some cars weigh less… which also means they have less electric range. You also think an American lobbying group is your shining example of integrity in their endorsement?
You focus in on tesla as your main example of EV maintenance - they are a known bad actor generally, in a walled garden that gouges cost for every single thing and lives near exclusively to cater to out-of-touch tech bro class and their families on corporate expense accounts.
“It’s impossible to cook at home! Wagyu streak costs $4000 a pound!!!”
You decided to zero in and fixate on weight alone? The conversation is weight along with range/efficiency, emissions and lifetime maintenance. Yes, some cars weigh less… which also means they have less electric range. You also think an American lobbying group is your shining example of integrity in their endorsement?
No. I use ACEEE’s numbers because they factor into:
Many factors determine the environmental impact of a car or light truck. Tailpipe emissions and fuel efficiency are clearly important, but impacts also depend on the type of fuel used and the materials that go into manufacturing the vehicle. A scientific approach for estimating the environmental impacts of a product is known as lifecycle assessment, since it traces the impacts of a product from “cradle to grave”: materials production and product manufacturing; emissions and other effects when the product is in use; through end-of-life effects of disposal and recycling. We developed the green scores and class rankings according to the principles of lifecycle assessment, using available data that are sufficiently standardized to be applicable to all makes and models.
Four types of vehicle-specific data form the basis of the ACEEE’s ratings: tailpipe emissions, given by the emissions standard to which a vehicle is certified; fuel economy, based on EPA test cycles; vehicle mass (curb weight); and battery mass and composition (for hybrids and plug-in vehicles).
And #1 vehicle after their analysis is the Prius Prime and Prius respectively. Weight is one factor, but there’s other factors (such as Tesla’s use of NCA chemistry for their Li-ion) that drops Tesla down severely compared to cleaner chemistries from other companies. But even when we look at the best EVs on the market for environmentalism (such as Nissan Leaf or Ioniq 5 or whatever…), the Prius reigns supreme from above.
You focus in on tesla as your main example of EV maintenance - they are a known bad actor generally, in a walled garden that gouges cost for every single thing and lives near exclusively to cater to out-of-touch tech bro class and their families on corporate expense accounts.
Prius beats even well recognized brands and environmental cars like Nissan Leaf on ACEEE’s study.
There are also cheap economy-cars / hybrids, such as the Toyota Corolla Hybrid and Accord Hybrid (not in the top 10, but still a score of >60) that are popular and green choices despite using gasoline as their primary transportation, because tailpipe emissions aren’t the only environmental effect at play here. When Hybrid / ICE cars reach 50mpg (or high 40s, like the Accord Hybrid), tailpipe emissions start to matter less-and-less, and yes… weight of the car starts to matter more and more (particulates from tires wear becomes the #1 pollution factor on EVs). There’s also significant issues with how dirty the mining industries are to make EVs (Lithium, Nickle, Cobalt, etc. etc.) And a lack of recycling today. Meanwhile, Steel is 90%+ recycled in the auto-industry, making for some of the most environmentally friendly manufacturing in practice.
There’s a lot of little things that add up. EVs are not the silver-bullet that EV fans think they are, but I’m glad that EVs have brought efficiency to the forefront of the minds of people. But we need to think holistically: what is the best path forward that overall reduces pollution (including CO2) from our system?
The answer may surprise you, especially if you’re one of the people tricked into the EV-only mindset. There’s many other technologies that are competitive.
Say we proceed with the premise that the lobbying group you link is valid, you still share it there, black and white on your cited chart - 4 of the top 5 vehicles on their list, the vast majority, are EVs. You just have tunnel vision for the one outlier PHEV. I’m sure the Prius is fine AND I’d need to pay for maintenance on BOTH an ICE engine, related non-EV components and a full electric infrastructure for the life of that vehicle if I purchased it over an EV.
Electrical engineer degree but I’m doing software now.
I’m not against EVs. I’m against y’all bad-mouthing PHEVs and Hybrids when they still constitute the top of the green lists with our current level of technology.
I recognize that better batteries are coming next year and soon Silicon or Sodium batteries will be even better after that. But tomorrow is not today. People making decisions need to make decisions based on today’s level of technology.
If all the cars available today, the Prius Prime does the best job. And anyone who doesn’t have enough money for Prius or a Leaf or other EV can go buy a Honda Accord Hybrid or Corolla Hybrid and feel good that they still got a top15 vehicle on the green lists.
Those ACEEE numbers are predicated on placing an economic cost on pollution. If you assign a larger price to the pollution, even the PHEV’s fall right off the chart. The E in their name stands for “Economy”. They’re focus is framing clean as a function of the economy. In their model, you can kill a bunch more people and the price of pollution only goes up a little. They even say they’ve left that number constant since 1998. If you value pollution in a logarithmic scale that gets way worse as time goes on, it becomes obvious that the only acceptable vehicles are the ones that have negative pollution costs. Since we dont have vehicles that can remove pollution from the air, getting one that gets as close to zero is the best bet. Right now, EV’s get the closest to zero.
weight doesn’t really matter. Trains weigh a FUCKLOAD but are the most efficient means of travel simply because they don’t stop once they start rolling, and are shaped such that they’re not affected much by wind resistance.
Cars go fast enough that air resistance is a much greater contributing factor to their efficiency than weight is. In general cars are the problem regardless of their efficiency, because they’re always going to be the worst choice for moving anything: they’re useful because of their convenience.
So, since we can’t get rid of cars, the best choice is to make their impact on our carbon problem as lessened as possible, and the best way to do that is to stop burning things to make them move.
So, since we can’t get rid of cars, the best choice is to make their impact on our carbon problem as lessened as possible, and the best way to do that is to stop burning things to make them move.
No. The best way possible is to calculate the various effects of differentt fuel sources and make sure we choose the best one. ACEEE’s calculations suggest that burning things (ie: Toyota Prius) remains the #2 best vehicle, only beaten by Prius Prime PHEV (partially plug-in electric + burning things).
Lighter weight, lower-polluting PHEVs can beat EVs (!!!) once we add up all the pollution events.
Therein lies your hubris. You think EVs are the best, but the math suggests otherwise. EVs can be pretty good, as long as you get a small battery pack (like Nissan Leaf) that minimizes the effects of dirty Li-ion mining, and avoid the dirtiest chemistries like NCA (Tesla has a score of 55 on ACEEE’s green-list, meaning even a full ICE/Hybrid like 2024 Accord Hybrid’s 62 rating is better than a Tesla).
A PHEV still has a battery. We’re going to be doing that mining anyway. And we’re definitely going to be using every single battery we can make. So, what’s the point of burning fuels if you can do it all with batteries, which should continue to get better over time? It doesn’t matter if EV’s are slightly less efficient than a handful of PHEVS if they’re using clean energy to charge. Once the lithium and rare earth minerals are mined they’re recyclable, and their value over time will actually make it important to do so.
And, yet again, burning fuels has to stop. We need to stop putting sequestered carbon in the air. And no, switching the globe to “renewable carbon” via biomass isn’t going to work.
Proof is in the pudding. Prius Prime, after accounting for “lifetime” emissions (which include the incredibly dirty mining process behind mining 80kW-hr worth of batteries instead of 13.6kW-hr), is far more efficient and environmentally friendly than a large number of EVs. Even EVs with small battery packs like the 40kW-hr Nissan Leaf
The issue with say, larger Tesla-like vehicles is that their battery packs are too big, too heavy, too redundant, and cause too much pollution during manufacturing. A Prius Prime has ~70% electrification in practice / 30% ICE, and the 30% ICE part is at over 50mpg. Once all the math / weight / costs / environmental effects are added up, the 800+lbs of extra Li-ion batteries from Tesla (and even smaller say ~500lb battery packs from Nissan Leaf) will easily out-pollute the miniscule amount of gasoline the Prius prime uses.
We need to re-evaluate EVs as different battery packs come out. LFP is much less pollution, but its also much less kw-hr and thus heavier per energy.
Their formula for calculating greenness drastically underestimates the impact of carbon emissions. That’s the only reason there’s a PHEV at the top of the list.
Problem is that CO2 concentrations stay elevated basically forever once we dump it into the atmosphere.. This means that the temperature we hit is determined by the cumulative total emissions, not by the rate of emissions. So you can calculate how much we can afford to emit to have a 50% risk of crossing any given temperature threshold, such as 1.5°C or 2°C, between which we lose a lot of major ecosystems, and beyond which we end up outside the envelope where it’s clear that we can maintain civilization. This is a very limited emissions budget, so actually keeping temperatures under 2°C means cutting emissions roughly in half before 2030, and to zero by 2050. Since cars last on average about 20 years, deploying new fossil-fuel-burning-cars after 2030 is effectively a commitment to risk ending civilization.
Yes, it’s politically tough, but the alternative is to take on a really insane risk.
You’re throwing away the baby with the bathwater here. Hybrids, such as the Prius, reduce CO2 emissions by 30% to 50% compared to a normal vehicle by achieving 57mpg.
Switching all of our ICE vehicles to Prius (or other Atkinson Cycle hybrids, such as Ford Maverick) would instantly cut out 30% to 50% of our greenhouse gas emissions. And yet this is apparently not enough for yall. That’s insanity.
Secondly: Hummer EV (and other poorly designed EVs) will pollute more than some ICE cars (see ACEEE’s Greenest list of cars). 9000lb EVs use up so much electricity, that a typical ICE has fewer emissions (once we factor in the amount of coal / natural gas that turns into the electricity that’d power a Hummer EV).
Fortunately, these EPA rules are better written than the Advance Cars II standard (and really, that’s the one I’m pissed off about). But the extremist pro-EV groups have gone too far, to the point where EVs are more pollution causing than some other quite legitimate vehicles (ex: Prius).
As I said before: banning the Prius is a mistake. People will wake up to the madness as these kinds of regulations take effect, and we will miss out on our goals. At very minimum, the rules need to make sense and truly progress us as a people. Writing down bullshit because the extremist environmentalist faction is braindead is… well… counterproductive.
The alternative is go take a bet on the agricultural underpinnings of civilization being viable in a hotter world. That’s an utterly mad uncontrolled geoengineering experiment to try.
The alternative is to allow Prius, so that your political views don’t get laughed out of every discussion over the next decade and utterly ignored.
No one will seriously try to accomplish this goal if yall ban the Prius from the lineup of future cars for being “not environmentally friendly enough”.
You are literally banning the best car for our environment. Literally. There’s a lot of greenhouse-emissions and pollution from mining Lithium, Cobalt, and other rare-earth metals (magnets) needed to make an EV move ya know.
The ACEEE is a long-running pro-environmentalist groups that I’m citing as well. If that’s not “green enough” for you, you seriously won’t get any traction with this.
Filling your future economy with Hummer EVs will cook the earth faster my man.
9000lb EVs are worse for the environment than Prius. We need to have the correct regulations if you actually want to improve the world. All of that Hummer EV electricity is going to come from coal + natural gas, and with 3x the weight and like 4x the drag compared to a Prius, its going to literally burn more carbon and wreck the world faster.
If you can’t see that, then you’re an extremist EV fan who is beginning to literally hurt the environment with insane decisions.
Speak truth to power. And the truth is… some EVs are very, very, very bad for the environment. We need proper rules/regulations that truly improve our environment. Not just EV fanbois running the show.
There are plenty of sensible EV options, both cheaper and better than the $120,000 Hummer EV @ 9000 pounds. Actually, pretty much literally every other non commercial EV is better. That said, even the Hummer EV is still about 50% better than its ICE equivalent.
There are plenty of sensible EV options, both cheaper and better than the $120,000 Hummer EV @ 9000 pounds.
And all of them are less efficient than the 2024 Prius Prime for our environment. (See my ACEEE citation from above). Literally all of them.
You’re underestimating the efficiency of Prius, much like other EV fanbois. Prius is the most environmentally friendly vehicle today, even beyond small / efficient EVs like the Nissan Leaf or the GM Bolt.
The best vehicles for the environment is the Prius Prime PHEV, and #2 is Prius Hybrid. Other cars like Accord Hybrid, Camry Hybrid, and Corolla Hybrid are in the top 10.
EVs can win and seem to have significant advantages. But not enough to make the #1 slot. For EVs to win you need a relatively small battery pack (ex: 40kW-hr Leaf), and relatively lightweight. The Prius has a 800lb+ advantage over most EVs (most EVs, even small ones like Nissan Leaf, are 4000lb behemoths, far above the 3200lb Prius).
Yeah, EV Battery tech sucks today. Its still too heavy. Fortunately, 60% efficiency of large-scale Nat. Gas combination cycle plants magically gathers more energy than small ICE (like 40% Atkinson or 30% Otto Cycle engines), so EVs get some degree of advantage even when the grid remains highly Fossil Fuel based.
But you still have weight + mining + other dirty issues (rare-earth metals for significant magnets on those motors…) that add up to bad environmental effects.
Corn Ethanol is solar-powered, as all the CO2 was absorbed from the air as the corn grew thanks to photosynthesis, and is largely compatible with ICE engines actually. Ideally we use Switchgrass Ethanol in the long term, when we need bio-fuels to replace fossil fuels. But there’s a lot of practical advantages to Carbon + Hydrogen bonds at the molecular level.
Switchgrass Ethanol is possible but not commercially viable yet though. And Corn Ethanol has downsides (farmland is worse for our environment than natural prairies).
There’s also Hydrogen -> Syngas -> Kerosene, a process of electrification to Hydrogen + CO2 -> Fuel.
So you gotta keep your mind open to all the possibilities that science can provide, including chemistry.
In the U.S. alone, we’d need about 200 million acres of farm land to go from 10% ethanol to 100% ethanol. That’s using corn and accounts for about 25% of the total farmland the U.S. has. And that’s just the U.S. and only counts retail gas with the 10% mandate, - not industrial fuel use of diesel fuel use, which would increase it dramatically. It’s not feasible to run the country on biomass , especially as climate change is going to make farm land less viable overall. Given that agriculture is already roughly a third of all carbon emissions, massively ramping up agriculture to replace fossil fuels doesn’t really help overall.
On top of that, we need to start sequestering CO2. Moving it from the biomass into the air, even temporarily, keeps it in the air where we do not want it! The only viable long term solution is to move net amounts of carbon out of the air by all means possible, as well as minimizing all the other greenhouse gas produced (like methane). ICE engines cannot be a significant part of this future without ramping up clean energy use elsewhere to sequester more carbon than those fuels are contributing - which leads right back to solar and fission. (and wind, waves, geothermal etc of course).
Okay, recalculate using switchgrass. Corn is not the end-all be-all of biofuels. Switchgrass is the next step. After all, yall are pretending that “fusion” is on the table, so I’m allowed to pretend in magic future tech for my arguments as well.
And if we both are pretending in today’s technology, then we have to remember that most EVs are run on coal+natural gas today and account for significant emissions of CO2.
Switchgrass is not “farmland”, its the natural prairie / natural state of the USA’s original land usage. Its significantly more efficient than farmland and will be resistant to future climate issues. The switchgrass refineries have been proven btw, its just a matter of investment today to bring Switchgrass biofuels to the mainstream.
Ok, so convert 25% of all U.S. farmland at a minimum to a completely new crop. That’s sure to be carbon neutral 🙄. What should the other 7.7 ish billion humans do?
Burning things was always a bad plan, and continues to be a bad plan!
Switchgrass is the natural prairie grass of the USA. It’s already growing, no conversions needed.
Seriously, look up this shit before making dumbass assumptions.
In fact, converting unnatural farmland back into natural grasslands would likely improve USAs environment.
I always find it hilarious how bad EV fanbois are when it comes to environmental issues, or the state of nature, plants and biology. An actual environmentalist would love the opportunity to return USA’s farmlands back into natural prairies.
An Ethanol crop that doesn’t need fertilizer, that grows in natural conditions of the USA and returns our damaging farmlands back to a more natural state? This is win/win/win for the environment in every aspect.
there would be nothing natural about it if you’re cutting it all down and fertilizing it on a cycle, that’s just agriculture.
yes, it would probably be less impactful than corn, but at the scale you’re talking about, were shifting all the ethanol corn + all that land times 10 from whatever it’s doing over to industrial scale farm land. that means making it flat, building machines, securing water sources (yet another resource we don’t exactly have an overabundance of), scaling out the logistics of shipping and processing by 10X for a distributed fuel making infrastructure.
There’s only ~ 2 billion acres of area in the U.S. and you want to use 10% of it for making fuel, and that’s just for people who drive cars, not Trucking, not Trains, not Planes, not anything that runs on diesel. That’s about a third of what we use for cattle, and cattle use land that’s not good for growing anything at agricultural scale.
That much land could produce 2560 terrawatts from solar alone, and we can spread that out over existing land, like roofs, deserts, parking lots and roads, which would account for half the power the U.S. uses annually. So using less land we could increase U.S. power production by 50% (and doing that only with solar would probably be the least efficient way to do it). Cheap, clean, distributed power is far more useful than expensive distributed not clean fuel.
Biomass as a fuel can’t scale. It does ZERO to help with our carbon problem, and it perpetuates current infrastructure that is actively killing everyone.
There’s probably a case for replacing gas power plants with biomass powerplants that grow and process locally, cutting out all the transport logistics to increase efficiency while reducing overall carbon footprint, but in general burning things is a bad plan. Using small inefficient engines to burn things on demand everywhere is an even worse plan.
@nxdefiant@dragontamer clearing forest land for agriculture to feed ever increasing population does seems the baseline solution but then the argument pops up ... isn't knowledge of agriculture by we humans responsible for climate change and all the misery the human race is in?
Pretty much. We have scientists looking into high density, multi level automated hydroponic crop production in order to stop relying on having enough sky and land for food. Using more land for biomass to produce fuel feels willfully evil at this point.
All the more reason we should convert land back to native Switchgrass. A native plant that grew from Nevada to Maine that the pioneers / pilgrims saw 500+ years ago. Converting our harmful farmlands back into more natural-looking grasslands is going to improve our environment and ecology.
That’s what makes this entire discussion so hilarious. I’m advocating for native plant species of this continent, and yall environmentalists are shitting on the idea. Because modern environmentalists are braindead and don’t even think about the natural state of our country, its plantlife or other effects.
That’s fine. So I’m just pointing out: switchgrass is an incredibly eco-friendly way forward. Even if we don’t use it for biofuel, its already being used to restore marshlands and other areas. Switchgrass also has a carbon-capture profile similar to trees (!!!), outperforming many other plants in terms of CO2 capture. One way or the other, the people who know better are planting switchgrass and improving our ecology, even if yall can’t get behind the idea.
Corn Ethanol is solar-powered, as all the CO2 was absorbed from the air as the corn grew thanks to photosynthesis
Nope, that's bullshit. Biomass is only co2-neutral if it grows on its own and is used up on the spot.
There’s also Hydrogen -> Syngas -> Kerosene, a process of electrification to Hydrogen + CO2 -> Fuel.
So while I pay an amount X for electricity to load a battery you are wiliing to pay 5 times as much for eFuels just to support your strange political views? That's in some way commendable...
So you gotta keep your mind open to all the possibilities that science can provide, including chemistry.
So while I pay an amount X for electricity to load a battery you are wiliing to pay 5 times as much for eFuels just to support your strange political views? That’s in some way commendable…
Go figure out a better path of electrification of the large 737 airplanes.
Go on. I’m waiting. Kerosene is 100% compatible with airliners.
Even an open mind can’t cheat thermodynamics
100% renewable electricity is a pipedream. The “mouth” of that graph is bullshit. Today we’re still using coal + natural gas for the majority of the grid.
You’re also ignoring the gross amounts of pollution that EV Batteries emit during production. H2 and ICE are made of far simpler, and more efficient, materials. You’ll need substantial numbers of batteries to power the world at night as well (IE: an impossible number as no battery technology can handle daytime-charge vs nighttime usage of the USA).
You can’t cheat impossibility. The assumptions of that graph are already impossible and you know it.
EDIT: The real advantages to H2 are multiple fold:
Hydrogen is energy storage. You can store H2 for months in various forms. Solar does not have any energy storage and needs to be factored separately.
Clean Hydrogen is needed to clean up our food supply. As you might know, our food supply relies upon ammonia / fertilizer made from fossil fuels right now. This isn’t necessary, H2 -> Ammonia is a well known and well proven path, and seems to be the only way to electrify our nitrogen-fertilizer production.
If we are already mass producing clean H2 (for #2), then #1 becomes cheap, and then we might as well use it for transportation as well to help spur investments and consolidate resources.
Go figure out a better path of electrification of the large 737 airplanes.
Why would I when we were talkiong about cars? Sure, you will need some synthetic fuel for air travel. But if you want to pay the same sums to power your car, when you could do it for a fraction of that cost that's still stupid.
H2 and ICE are made of far simpler, and more efficient, materials.
No, you can actually build batteries from very simple materials that are far more efficient that fuel production and then burning it (both times with a huge loss). Just because the world focussed on lithium-ion batteries in the last decades (because of small portable devices where energy density was key) and thus used what was already widely available for cars in the beginning, rare materials for car batteries are not actually a requirement.
You’ll need substantial numbers of batteries to power the world at night as well (IE: an impossible number as no battery technology can handle daytime-charge vs nighttime usage of the USA).
That also a big nope. In reality solar and wind can power the world through the day, wind can power the world through the night. The only storage needed for a day/night cycle is a small fraction fo the prodcution. Just enough to shift parts of the production peaks at the afternoon and in the middle of the night ~5 hours forward to the consumption peaks in the evening and early morning.
And don't let me even start with how cheap you can produce massive batteries if you don't care for energy density at all because no one gives a fuck if the warehouse-sized installation for your town or city district is 20% bigger and a few tons heavier. Quite the opposite actually... Li-ion batteries nowadays are incredible bad for such a task. We accept their bad thermal properties in our smartphones and laptops, in cars it's already a drawback that prompted the development of other materials that are already serial produced. For fixed storage they would basically be a unneccessary fire hazard.
The real advantages to H2 are multiple fold
The real drawback of H2 availability. You lose energy to produce it. You lose more energy when you consume it. You will never see cheap H2 as the production is just too inefficient, so there will only be demand in sectors that simply cannot be electrified (air transport, some industries) as well as in chemical production as a raw material and for long-term seasonal storage.
Again... if you want to compete with high-energy demanding industries for the gas to power your car, that's your decision. Everyone else will use batteries for less than a ¼ of the cost. If your ICE is worth it for you, go for it. But don't pretend that the world will collectively decide to use a mode of transportation needing 4-5 times as much energy just for laughs and giggles.
You’re ignoring that energy will literally be free for significant parts of the USA as we overdeploy solar panels.
The most expensive part of solar is storage (aka: batteries), and H2 storage is near infinite, as a cheap steel container can contain more-and-more hydrogen (liquefied hydrogen, pressurized hydrogen, etc. etc. Doesn’t matter, its just steel and concrete to hold it all).
Between the costs of near-$0 storage and literally free energy as we overproduce, H2 plays a role in being long-term seasonal storage of power. No other “battery” technology has anything close to the chance of storing enough energy for days, weeks, or months like H2 does.
This isn’t even theoretical. California’s grid is so chock-full of solar panels that there are times where the 1-hour market goes negative, as in the price of electricity drops below $0 (you get paid to use energy). Its already happening, there’s not enough storage in practice and solar panels must be overdeployed for them to be anywhere close to effective. There will be questions about how to actually store (and use) all the extra solar panels as we move forward.
H2 plants are one of the best solutions I’ve heard of for addressing this phenomenon. Store H2 in the summer (where we get excess 15-hour days), and use the H2 later in the winter months when the daylight times drop to 9-hours… depending on latitude of course. But any solar-based grid will have to deal with the fundamental problem of seasonal variations in energy… having far excess (aka: $0 / free) energy in the summer, and not enough in the winter.
H2 naturally smooths out this curve. We can overproduce electricity, send it to H2 plants and store H2 with the excess energy.
I’m far from an EV fan. We’re better off with a lot fewer cars in addition to electrification of those which remain.
I’m just more of a fan of a civilization-supporting planet than burning fossil fuels. And that’s a physics-driven choice, not one constructed for ideological reasons
Hummer EV. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Hummer EV is worse for the environment than the typical ICE car, by huge margins.
If you don’t get this right, you’ll end up hurting USA (and the world) more than you think. That’s just physics. Sending 9000lb cars around with huge profiles with Coefficient-of-Drag in the 0.5+ range will eat up our energy and burn more coal/natural gas than any more reasonable car (even traditional ICE cars like Chevy TRAX).
That’s just physics. And organizations like ACEEE + Argonne National Labs are busy calculating / number crunching these statistics. Random assertions aside, pure EV is worse than many other possible regulations we could be doing. (In particular, encouraging the most efficient vehicles regardless of technology).
EVs in particular are going to be natural-gas powered for the near future. Fortunately Nat. Gas is 60% thermal efficiency rather than 30% (of typical ICE), but your margin for efficient vehicles is much smaller than you might expect. And there’s probably Coal-plants (~30%) that’d drag down the efficiency of our energy grid in practice anyway.
You have to look at this problem holistically. Randomly just white-knighting EVs all day every day is going to lead to more environmental problems.
This isn’t even some “theory” I’m trying to show you. Its real. This is a real vehicle that’s causing more pollution right now in our country and world to measurable effects.
If we actually succeed, we end up with a decarbonized electric grid too, and the big EV’s emissions drop to zero.
Lithium is made by pouring acid down mountains and collecting the acid that leaks out. There are incredible environmental effects you need to account for in the creation of EVs, even if we had a 100% decarbonized grid.
In fact, a 100% decarbonized grid would likely favor H2 (Hydrogen) vehicles since those have fewer environmental effects in the production process. And H2 can be made out of just electricity and water.
Prius is literally better than EVs for the environment. You can’t get rid of these hybrids, they’re surprisingly good for the environment.
Banning the #1 best vehicle for the environment because they don’t conform to your “insane” idea of environmentalism is stupid. Actually run the math, actually calculate the environmental effects of various metals and the real world turns out to be more complex than braindead “duh go EV” arguments.
You have to run the math, its not as easy as it looks to make good environmental decisions.
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