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People love to talk about combustion engines being pollutants but few people talk about just how damaging it is mining for rare metals to make those batteries. Nor how harmful for the environment it is disposing of old batters (we haven’t yet solved the problem of recycling them either).
And that’s before you even touch on problems at the power grid. Eg many addresses don’t have high quality enough power infrastructure to cope with everyone switching to electric, so that would need to be upgraded. And a lot of countries still rely on fossil fuels to generate electricity to begin with.
Electric cars are likely the future. But they’re not as green as people like to think. In fact for some use cases they can actually work out both more expensive to run and less environmentally friendly once you total up their carbon footprint in full. And I think it’s going to be a long time before they become the greener option of everyone.
Whereas in the meantime, research into combustion engines can provide benefits for more than just petrol-fuelled sports cars.
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ICE engines and every type of motor have a Power Curve. Many things go into the power curve including the construction, configuration, fuel and general type of motor. The power curve graphs engine power output as it relates to engine rotational speed. Every one of these different motors and transmissions out there including electric as well, have differing characteristic curves which effect the handling of the vehicle to great effect. This affects their possible applications.
Controlling the power and efficiency curves of motors is the entire story of the very well known "VTECH" Variable Valve Timing technologies, super and turbo chargers or other forced air intake, and even the way that Tesla electric motors arrange the magnets in their electric vehicle motors.
Inventing a new way to operate an ICE is good for many things. This patent looks cumbersome, and a bit complex. In my mind the long-term future of ICE for vehicles is in more specialized use cases as fossil fuels reach the long tail. Certain highly reliable, or certain types of safety prohibiting voltage or battery chemistry, types of standby vehicles, certain rugged vehicles, industrial equipment, small motors, these might be better off being petro-like. It might be better to make corn-gasoline than to stash a huge battery onto your lawnmower all year in this case.
But please do not discount: They are enjoyable.
Even during the end-of-days, we can process something like biofuels into "gasoline replacements". We can use waste vegetable oil to create biodiesel today. Small volumes are pretty easy and although we desperately must reduce fossil fuels to near zero (I dont need to have a blast gunning my Porche in bumper-to-bumper traffic, for example...) I don't see a reason why people can't still buy a motorcycle, even if we are living under sci-fi-like domed cities.
All else, people would simply make them themselves in their own garages. For Fun.
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Electric cars still consume fossil fuels. It’s just earlier in the pipeline. People love to talk about combustion engines being pollutants but few people talk about just how damaging it is mining for rare metals to make those batteries. Nor how harmful for the environment it is disposing of old batters (we haven’t yet solved the problem of recycling them either). And that’s before you even touch on problems at the po…
Even thought I'd agree mass EV would not be carried by the current grid, or that charging density and time is not satisfactory (in most of Europe)... LiFePO4 doesn't contain rare earth metals, unless you count Li for 'rare'.
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"There were an estimated 20 million horses in March 1915 in the United States" [1]. In 2023? Almost 7 million.
Internal combustion engines will be around for a long time, in part because they're beautiful.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_States#St...
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Electric cars still consume fossil fuels. It’s just earlier in the pipeline. People love to talk about combustion engines being pollutants but few people talk about just how damaging it is mining for rare metals to make those batteries. Nor how harmful for the environment it is disposing of old batters (we haven’t yet solved the problem of recycling them either). And that’s before you even touch on problems at the po…
- Electric motors use low amounts of rare earth metals, or in some cases none. Batteries generally don't use them either.
- Automotive batteries have been demonstrated as >90% recyclable, far better than most materials we consider "recyclable" today such as plastic
- The electric grid has sufficient capacity to onboard millions of electric cars without issue, and will not be impacted by the transition to EVs
- Cost of ownership of EVs is significantly lower than ICE vehicles in their class, as is the lifetime carbon footprint
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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So if you built your fortune on IT running in datacenters which consume magnitutes more energy to feed your customers; or else - if your business is about delivering stuff with 1000s of vehicles regularly being wasted... Tell me, at what point you start giving a damn about environment, and what pollution are we talking about at all? Sorry, but HN is full of people who made fortunes not giving major fucks about lots o…
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electric cars still consume fossil fuels. It’s just earlier in the pipeline. People love to talk about combustion engines being pollutants but few people talk about just how damaging it is mining for rare metals to make those batteries. Nor how harmful for the environment it is disposing of old batters (we haven’t yet solved the problem of recycling them either). And that’s before you even touch on problems at the po…
>how damaging it is mining for rare metals to make those batteries. Even thought I'd agree mass EV would not be carried by the current grid, or that charging density and time is not satisfactory (in most of Europe)... LiFePO4 doesn't contain rare earth metals, unless you count Li for 'rare'.
Also probably unaware that with the rise of extremely low cost, solar and wind, Fossil fuel use on the grid is economically nonviable long term.
Even so, the fossil fuels consumed on the grid are very likely to be combined cycle natural gas, which has less carbon emissions than have equivalent. Amounts of energy were burned in ice engines.
Also, The energy efficiency of electric vehicles is much higher than an ice car, so if solar and wind do not generate the electricity, it still will emit less carbon than an ice.
The only useful new engine technology I am interested in is an extremely compact recharging engine for use in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. There was something about the inside out rotary engine a couple years ago but nothing has come off of it.