Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

wkk.usa.mybluehost.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 207 posts

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#141

Post by bluGill »

xnzakg wrote: post #69
PaulHoule wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qatar claims their Methanol-to-Gasoline based factory is profitable at a world price of $40 a barrel based on natural gas as a feed stock. What people are hoping for today is to get CO₂ from the atmosphere and hydrogen from H₂O with electricity from solar, wind or nuclear. (Though w/ nuclear you might use thermochemical hydrogen if you can get the temperature up) The best use case for that I've seen is that the US Na…

Not to mention leaded fuel still being a thing in aviation

Not on aircraft carriers. They only handle jet fuel.

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#142

Post by mdorazio »

Orangeair wrote: post #137

Does anyone know what ever happened to Mazda's skyactiv thing? Was supposedly going to help ICEs be more fuel efficient by adding an extra stroke cycle with water? Seemed very promising, but I haven't heard anything about it in years.

You’re probably thinking of Skyactiv-X [1] which is kind of hybrid between a normal spark ignition and compression ignition. It’s been in the 3 in Europe for a couple years but never came to the US. I’ve heard it’s a combination of cost and not-great horsepower, plus it runs louder. Basically for a lot more cost you get something inferior to hybrid in a lot of ways.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyactiv

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#143

Post by Gasp0de »

PaulHoule wrote: post #7

There is no surprise that synthetic fuels work. They worked for the nazis in the 1940s and they still produce them in South Africa, Qatar and other places. In fact in a lot of ways they are better than today’s gasolines because they have a low aromatic and olefin content. The question revolve around affordability and sustainability. Most of the interest was driven by fears we would be running out of oil, now it is dr…

My chainsaw runs on Aspen, which is a synthetic replacement for gasoline. It doesn't cause a headache when I'm exposed to the exhaust fumes for long times. It's quite expensive though, about 4€/l (15€/gallon).

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#144

Post by marcosdumay »

enkid wrote: post #111
marcosdumay wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This means that we are discovering oil faster than we are burning it. Nope. All this means is that oil is getting more expensive.

I don't understand. Can you explain?

Reserves are defined by economic viability. When the thing gets more expensive, they grow.

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#145

Post by briffle »

ajross wrote: post #57
mfer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost to transition away from fossil fuels isn’t really talked about much. For example, our electric grid can’t handle everyone using electric cars. Everything from electricity production to distribution needs to be upgraded. There is a massive cost to that.

> For example, our electric grid can’t handle everyone using electric cars. Everything from electricity production to distribution needs to be upgraded. There is a massive cost to that. Cite for that? That's simply not true. In fact of all major infrastructure media in modern society, electrical transmission is by far the cheapest to upgrade. Even discounting industrial electricity and adding on DC charging of the EV…

plus there are other significant changes that can change in that time. HVDC power transmission lines lose something like 3% of their power over 600 miles, where AC ones lose closer to 7%. And use much less precious metals, since they require 2 lines instead of 3.

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#146

Post by marcosdumay »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #83
marcosdumay wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you mean some non-zero investment is required? What change doesn't require investment? In all likelihood, gasoline transportation costs an order of magnitude more than electricity. And that's not just infrastructure that is already paid for. There is a much larger maintenance cost, an ongoing labor cost, and a much shorter useful life for anything related to fossil fuels.

>In all likelihood, gasoline transportation costs an order of magnitude more than electricity. This statement just doesn't pass even the most lax economic sanity check. Why don't all the use cases where people don't care about anything other than the bottom dollar and don't run up against the weaknesses of modern batteries already run electric vehicles. I'm thinking like low daily mileage fleet of small vehicles in a…

Well, you seem to not have read my answer...

But anyway, your answer is because transportation costs are irrelevant for both gasoline and electricity. So, even tough they are much cheaper for electricity, none makes any difference, and nobody picks a power source based on them.

But some people makes a huge effort to focus on this non-issue and turn it into a showstopper on their discourse. People resorting to this is good evidence that there aren't any large showstoppers for cars electrification.

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#147

Post by MuffinFlavored »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #136
kuschku wrote: post #15

> it’s safe to assume that it’ll likely charge a hefty premium over traditional gasoline. > Also worth noting is that while, yes, this synthetic fuel appears to make vehicles slightly more efficient, it still greatly trails the efficiency of EVs. Consequently, vehicles using this fuel will likely always be more expensive to drive per mile than their electric equivalents. So why are we doing this again?

Because we could move the entire current stock of cars over to less carbon intensive fuel without having to build an entirely new fleet. Keeping in mind that manufacturing new cars (and the associated resource extraction) is extremely carbon intensive, then a carbon neutral-ish fuel might actually be the best option overall on a meaningful timescale.

if 87 octane gasoline is $2.99/gallon and this is even 30% more, I’m not sure how you can expect to force the majority of the population (who is supposedly scraping by) to switch

maybe the government could subsidize it as national debt?

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#148

Post by tmpburning »

pornel wrote: post #133
tmpburning wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it is the worst on the market?

It’s Doug DeMuro’s Worst Car of the Year. Every other review I’ve seen is also overwhelmingly negative. It has a range of a “city car”, but a price of EVs with double the range. It has max 50kW DC charging, while the competition has >100kW speeds. This makes the short range even more limiting. It’s not even powerful, even though high torque is the one easy trick for EVs. It’s a conversion of a gas car, not a dedicate…

> It has a range of a “city car”, but a price of EVs with double the range.

I agree that the price is too high, but that is the case for all EVs

> It’s a conversion of a gas car, not a dedicated platform

Maybe because the platform was so safe/good... I love my current Mazda CX-5 (not EV)

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#149

Post by MuffinFlavored »

CrazyStat wrote: post #53
driverdan wrote: post #12

It sounds like they ran it on straight ethanol. This isn't new or news. Many production cars can run on straight E in good weather. The mileage claim doesn't make sense though because ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline. It'd be nice if this blogspam linked to the source so we could verify details.

Coryton (the fuel supplier) has a PR post [1] about it with a few more details. Their Sustain fuel is "blended bioethanol and biogasoline" [2]. Sustain 100% might mean either it's 100% bioethanol or 100% biogasoline, I haven't been able to find anything saying what the percentage means. [1] https://coryton.com/lab/news/mazda-using-sustain-100-per-cen... [2] https://coryton.com/sustain/

what goes into making bioethanol other than corn? what goes into making biogasoline?

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#150

Post by MuffinFlavored »

davewritescode wrote: post #112
driverdan wrote: post #12

It sounds like they ran it on straight ethanol. This isn't new or news. Many production cars can run on straight E in good weather. The mileage claim doesn't make sense though because ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline. It'd be nice if this blogspam linked to the source so we could verify details.

Believe it or not most passenger cars won’t run on ethanol unmodified these days. Even running on 50 or 80% ethanol blends usually requires custom ECU maps to run. Let’s not even talk about all the things in the fuel system that seem to have a shorter life with ethanol involved, particularly injectors.

you need to spray 30% more fuel if it’s ethanol than if it’s gasoline, no?
Post reply on HN