Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use • Hacker News Board

Re: Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use

#81

Post by wqaatwt » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 8:18 PM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #34

lukevp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the EV better? Because electricity transmission is more efficient than gas? What about the losses in the electricity transmission and the batteries and the conversion to motive force in the motor? Is it way less than that 40%? And wouldn’t there be more than 0% losses because refinery -> power plant shipping? I’m pro EV by the way, I just want to understand your point better. Being able to go all the way to tr…

>> The “dirty electricity” angle is less obvious to me. A power plant typically gets about 60% of energy from a fossil source. A car does about 30%. So even if the electricity comes from say coal, it's still more efficient than buying gas in a car engine. Of course, these days, it's likely that a substantial portion (up to 100% in some cases) is not "fossil electricity" but rather comes from solar, wind, hydro etc. I…

Coal burns dirtier and and is more Co2 intense than gas though.

Re: Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use

#82

Post by 486sx33 » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 8:19 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #27

The top graph makes it seem much more dramatic than it is. Maritime shipping is very efficient, and consists of a very small fraction of overall petroleum usage. Road transportation uses about 20x as much fuel as ocean shipping, planes use about 2x as much, and trains about the same amount. The typical rule of thumb is that about 40% of the energy in a barrel of petroleum is lost before it goes into your gas tank. An…

[dead]

Re: Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use

#83

Post by elsonrodriguez » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 8:20 PM UTC

qsera wrote: post #72

HPsquared wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, solar panels and EVs are the way of the self-sufficient rugged individualist. It's an amazing PR and marketing coup to make it the other way around and presented as something for "liberal weaklings" etc.

>It's an amazing PR and marketing coup to make it the other way around and presented as something for "liberal weaklings" etc. If there is such a marketing, then people relate to it because EVs are not suited for handling unpredictable situation. You got stuck in a ditch in the middle of nowhere at night, you loss all of your battery getting out of it, and now you are stuck. So you can't take it to unforgiving places…

If you run out of gas you’re also stuck. Only upside is that the recovery service can bring you a few gallons of fuel instead of a tow.

Re: Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use

#84

Post by mercutio2 » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 8:22 PM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #36

tsss wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares about motor efficiency when you can only take 10% as much fuel. At the end of the day, cost is the only metric that matters.

The cost of EV energy (to the driver) is about half that of the cost of gas energy. And that's if you buy electricity at charging stations [1]. If you charge at home it gets less. If you have solar at home it approaches zero. Yes, the cost of the car itself is a factor, but even there prices are dropping all the time. >> when you can only take 10% as much fuel effeciency makes all the difference when we discuss % of…

Before I drove an EV, I drove a 50 mpg Prius. At California prices of ~$4/gallon, that’s $.08/mile.

My post wildfires NEM2 off peak rate for electricity is $.40/kWh. My Bolt gets 4.5 miles/kWh. That’s $.1125/mile.

If I were driving a Tesla it would be worse (my wife’s Tesla lies mercilessly about its range when full; it’s like Elon Musk recapitulates himself; real world it gets about 3.5 miles/kWh), and if I drove a Rivian it would be MUCH worse.

So, in California, it isn’t true at all (mostly because rate payers are funding PG&E’s liability) that the most efficient EVs are cheaper than a good mileage gas car. No where near a 2x advantage (it was better, but not nearly 50%, when I bought it, more like 90% of the gas cost). At no point has it ever been close to 50% cheaper for fuel in California (which, as it happens, sells by far the most EVs).

Generally speaking, I think EV proponents (like me!) should spend a lot less time promoting “it’s cheaper”. It is, in practice, cheaper, because maintenance is cheaper. But Americans don’t care about levelized costs, they care about the highest salience variable expenses, and trying to convince them to do otherwise is a losing argument.

Re: Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use

#85

Post by mercutio2 » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 8:24 PM UTC

kaydub wrote: post #71

kleiba2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the Iran war, I did a back of the envelope calculation for the price of gas of your average ICE for a certain fixed range vs. the price of electricity an average EV uses for the same range. This was under the assumption that you buy electricity at a random charging station that you don't have a contract with. Based on these average values I used, EVs fared slightly worse. This was not factoring in costs of pur…

I've only had an EV 3 months now, but it'll never see a charging station. I pay around $.12/kw and get 4 miles per kw. So my "energy" costs are $.03/mile. I have a Mazda cx50 as well, it gets about 20-22mpg, with the gas prices here in Seattle that's around $.30/mile. Even where gas is cheaper that's still $.20/mile. Literally 10x the cost to run a gas car vs an EV. I'm honestly shocked at how many people have EVs an…

The pacific northwest’s vast hydro capacity makes it maximally attractive to own an EV. The rest of the country isn’t nearly so lucky.

Re: Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use

#86

Post by epistasis » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 8:27 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #53

epistasis wrote: post #43

Oh wow, that's far higher than I've been using in my estimates, I'd been rounding down to 1/3. The massive reduction in oil supply from the sudden and unexpected closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with gas prices jumping but minimal economic contraction, has been great evidence that we could perform a global energy interchange far faster than anybody ever expected without causing massive damage. However, the pushback I…

Where are all of the emissions coming from? I keep hearing that automobiles account for a small % and that trucking and shipping account for the majority, but you're saying shipping is only 1%.

There are two ways of doing the accounting, and the more common one is from the producer side such as by industry, by country, by use.

Our world in data is linked in a sibling comment, for the breakdown of the transport side. As is the California ARB inventory. There are other national inventories.

One thing to be very careful about is people making arguments for a national or local policy, that uses worldwide inventory numbers rather than an inventory applicable to where the policy applies. I see this a lot with local old New Leftists trying to argue that their old Toyota Tacoma isn't a big deal, but everybody had better become vegetarian right away, because worldwide beef accounts for a much larger proportion than cars (but locally cars dwarf anything from food production)

And the production side inventories are very poor at making consumption level decisions, because people always complain that we've merely shipped all our production emissions from manufacturing to China. In reality there are great Our World In Data pages showing that yes, cars really are much bigger emitters for Americans than exporting emissions to Chinese manufacturers.

So my favorite inventories of climate emissions are consumption based, and show that lifestyle is one of the biggest drivers of climate emissions in the US:

https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps

There are rich cores of cities that are very low emission, surrounded by wealthy suburbs with sky-high emissions, and then rural areas with very low emissions. EVs have the chance to change high emission wealthy suburb life into low emissions. But if we simply legalized more housing in the wealthy city cores, it would allow a lot more people to choose to have lower emission lifestyles right now without technology change, while also spurring massive economic growth.

Re: Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use

#87

Post by roelschroeven » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #34

lukevp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the EV better? Because electricity transmission is more efficient than gas? What about the losses in the electricity transmission and the batteries and the conversion to motive force in the motor? Is it way less than that 40%? And wouldn’t there be more than 0% losses because refinery -> power plant shipping? I’m pro EV by the way, I just want to understand your point better. Being able to go all the way to tr…

>> The “dirty electricity” angle is less obvious to me. A power plant typically gets about 60% of energy from a fossil source. A car does about 30%. So even if the electricity comes from say coal, it's still more efficient than buying gas in a car engine. Of course, these days, it's likely that a substantial portion (up to 100% in some cases) is not "fossil electricity" but rather comes from solar, wind, hydro etc. I…

60% efficiency? How do these power plants manage to circumvent the limit set by Carnot efficiency?

Re: Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use

#88

Post by hinkley » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

tsss wrote: post #33

bruce511 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an EV about 90% of the energy used is converted into motion. About 10% goes to heat. [1][3] In an ICE engine about 30% of the energy becomes motion. About 70% is heat.[2] In other words electric motors are about 3 times more efficient than ICE. [1] an interesting side effect of this is that in cold climates you can't just harvest waste heat to heat the cabin (or batteries. ) So you end up using some battery energy…

Who cares about motor efficiency when you can only take 10% as much fuel. At the end of the day, cost is the only metric that matters.

Very, very few people actually need to drive 500 miles in a day. Tank size is about convenience, about how often you need to go get gas and what times of day the stations are open.

You can recharge your car at home every night. At 2 in the morning.

Re: Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use

#89

Post by lostlogin » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 8:36 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #69

lostlogin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Road transportation uses about 20x as much fuel as ocean shipping, planes use about 2x as much, and trains about the same amount. I’m misunderstanding something. Planes use twice as much fuel while road uses 20x more?

There are way more cars than planes.

Oh, is this a fleet measure rather than a 'per unit moved'?

Re: Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use

#90

Post by slavik81 » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 8:37 PM UTC

qsera wrote: post #72

HPsquared wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, solar panels and EVs are the way of the self-sufficient rugged individualist. It's an amazing PR and marketing coup to make it the other way around and presented as something for "liberal weaklings" etc.

>It's an amazing PR and marketing coup to make it the other way around and presented as something for "liberal weaklings" etc. If there is such a marketing, then people relate to it because EVs are not suited for handling unpredictable situation. You got stuck in a ditch in the middle of nowhere at night, you loss all of your battery getting out of it, and now you are stuck. So you can't take it to unforgiving places…

If you slide off the road and get stuck in a ditch in the middle of the night, an EV is a lot more comfortable. Standard advice for keeping warm is to run the engine for ten minutes every hour and keep the window cracked open due to risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. By contrast, you can leave the EV with the heat on all night.