191–200 of 207 posts
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Alternative for cases where electrification is hard (long haul trucks) or impossible (cargo hauling via planes)
This is Mazda. They have yet to get serious about electrification. Worse than Toyota in that regard. I am beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt that this was anything but “hey we don’t have to make BeVs!!”
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Not OP, but changing from natural gas heat sources to heat pump does increase your house electricity demand, but then that natural gas is no longer consumed. Natural gas is commonly used as the 'peaker' energy source today... so it's likely that you're just going to be burning natural gas at a plant somewhere else to power your heat pump in the peaky cold snap situation. Natural gas power plants are going to be more…
>Overall that seems like a reduction in total emissions, since you're using less natural gas overall to heat the same amount. This just isn't the problem at all; it's obviously a problem , but not the constraint here. Fossil fuels let you store energy in a distributed fashion (e.g. cutting and stacking firewood for the winter), which is way better for handling peaks. If too many people get burnt by oversubscribed gri…
The only thing that using natural gas to burn for a furnace (vs. using it for a heat pump) gets you, is that you need more natural gas generation plants and the infrastructure to handle the additional power on the system. On the other side of the coin, you have all the natural gas infrastructure to each house premise to maintain... which can leak, have issues, etc etc etc.
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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’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?
Alternative for cases where electrification is hard (long haul trucks) or impossible (cargo hauling via planes)
Lithium-Sulfer and/or solid state will also likely come into play.
Aviation though... yeah I think that'll be synth fuel. That'll come down to how cheap solar and wind drop in LCOE in the next decade.
> 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?
Range could be a reason too. EV's have a decent range nowadays, but in wintertime the range could decrease dramatically. With an ICE you always know what your range is. A hybrid can give the best of both worlds. A hybrid with a battery range of 50 miles can reduce your ICE usage by a factor of 10 easily (the vast majority of trips are shorter than that). But a lot of people think that reducing emissions by only 90% i…
I too think the 50 mile hybrid would have been a game changer. In an ideal world, 10 years after the Prius release (1997?) in 2007 the US government mandated a 50 mile all-electric range PHEV for all consumer cars.
But now the car companies face a choice: invest in a BEV drivetrain, or invest in a PHEV drivetrain. Almost all will do the BEV, because CEOs that don't get fired (see: BMW, VW, etc).
This is a cool data point but I personally wouldn't call 45 mpg "staggering" - it's definitely good but not unprecedented by any means, many TDIs or smaller gas engines can get that on the freeway. The research into synthetic gasoline fuels is inspiring but at a certain point seem impractical and too-little-too-late. There are already well established "alternative" fueling technologies that are very easily accessible…
I just did a long highway trip in an MX-5 and got about 38 mpg on the recommended 93-octane gasoline. I was not driving the vehicle to optimize for mileage. The article quotes the same. I mention it because it is an obtainable 38 mpg.
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I just did a long highway trip in an MX-5 and got about 38 mpg on the recommended 93-octane gasoline. I was not driving the vehicle to optimize for mileage. The article quotes the same. I mention it because it is an obtainable 38 mpg.
Driving long distances on the freeway typically is the best way to optimize for mileage though? at least seems you couldn’t have been going too fast ;) Must’ve been fun in the mx5
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This is Mazda. They have yet to get serious about electrification. Worse than Toyota in that regard. I am beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt that this was anything but “hey we don’t have to make BeVs!!”
Good for them. An electric Miata would require a battery with an unheard-of energy density.
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> 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.
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Alternative for cases where electrification is hard (long haul trucks) or impossible (cargo hauling via planes)
I don't think long haul trucking is that hard to electrify. If we take the current (Pepsi) Tesla semi that can (allegedly) do 500 miles, and you also tow a trailer that is a "range extender" trailer (as in UPS already does multiple trailer towing), then you could recharge by just unhitching the depleted trailer and hitching up a precharged trailer. Lithium-Sulfer and/or solid state will also likely come into play. Av…
So you have (conservatively) 5 tons less cargo which is a 25% reduction from the typical 20 tons. Then you have (very conservatively) 20% less distance traveled due to needing more frequent recharge stops.
In practice then, you need double the trucks. So yea it is theoretically possible to electrify long-haul trucking, but it's also ruinously expensive. And that's ignoring any considerations for different maintenance.