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

81–90 of 207 posts

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

#81

Post by marcosdumay »

enkid wrote: post #54
mrtksn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's kind of obvious that the supplies of oil aren't infinite, isn't it? Is there even a theory that the oil is infinite? The peak oil is about timing and and cost, maybe it didn't happen according to the predictions but it will definitely happen. Besides the environmental concerns it also seems wasteful to burn away the stuff that is used for so many more things. The synthetic stuff is interesting because it m…

The proven oil reserves have steadily increased for the last decade, even as consumption has increased. This means that we are discovering oil faster than we are burning it. The Earth obviously can't have infinite oil, but we don't know how long until we run out, and it's likely well over fifty years from now.

> This means that we are discovering oil faster than we are burning it.

Nope. All this means is that oil is getting more expensive.

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

#82

Post by Semaphor »

kybernetyk wrote: post #74
brk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the crypto mining dying off should free up a lot of grid resources for EVs. I've heard the "grid can't handle all EVs" statement, but have not seen anything backing up the claim. I believe the grid can in fact handle EVs becoming prevalent. We might need more power generation , which could be new plants, and/or residential solar. Baring some kind of crazy legislation requiring ICE vehicles to be crushed or perman…

In Germany the government asked people not to use electric heaters this winter because the grid could break down. An ev drains way more power then a 2kw space heater.

Well, yes. If tomorrow everyone replaces their ICE cars with EVs, then the grid won’t be able to handle that. Completely different situation, though.

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

#83

Post by dsfyu404ed »

marcosdumay wrote: post #79
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.

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 warm climate somewhere with high fuel costs. Like why doesn't an EV Fiat Promaster exist and why doesn't every tradesman in Sicily run one? If the numbers penciled out then surely we'd have it, at least in some niche somewhere. We are starting to see mass EV adoption but it's right on the margin and the details on any specific use case make it cheaper or maybe not.

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

#84

Post by folmar »

thinkcontext wrote: post #46
firecall wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run a diesel engine on vegetable oil!

Not as useful as one would hope. The world produces 20M tons of vegetable oil vs 4B tons of petroleum.

20 M is rapeseed alone, the total is slightly more than 200 M.

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

#85

Post by binarymax »

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #20
Mistletoe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you tell yourself graphs like this are faked or that they don’t matter? https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

You and I will be six feet under before any of those graphs will even put a minuscule dent in our quality of life and lifespan. And I am saying us, but the same is true for 2-3 generations down the road. Perhaps more. There are countries with millions of people which have a median lifespan of 48 years. It's high time to get priorities straight.

I disagree. Climate change doesn't mean that things are slightly warmer, it means that there are more frequent catastrophic weather events. We're seeing this now. It WILL impact you during your lifetime.

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

#86

Post by Loic »

elif wrote: post #75

1. Synthetic fuels still take a minimum of 110g CO2 to produce one MJ of fuel. 2. Synthetic fuels still emit CO2, sox, nox etc. at the tailpipe 3. "Synthetic" fuels still use natural gas as the feedstock in production.

4. We do not have enough renewable biomass to use as feedstock to replace our current use of non synthetic fuel.

Synthetic fuel from renewable feedstock should only be used where we cannot replace ICE, for example planes.

Synthetic fuel for cars is pure heresy from the environmental point of view. We already are at the limit in the production of wood pellet for heating (the forest are suffering enormously from climate change), bio gas is using not only waste but also corn and "good" crops to be produced.

And of course, the process to convert all this biomass into a fuel is consuming a lot of energy.

Please, do not dream of everything green with synthetic fuels everywhere, this can only be part of a small part of the transition.

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

#87

Post by delecti »

brk wrote: post #66
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.

All the crypto mining dying off should free up a lot of grid resources for EVs. I've heard the "grid can't handle all EVs" statement, but have not seen anything backing up the claim. I believe the grid can in fact handle EVs becoming prevalent. We might need more power generation , which could be new plants, and/or residential solar. Baring some kind of crazy legislation requiring ICE vehicles to be crushed or perman…

The global energy usage from crypto was in the ballpark of 120-240 TWh/year, but a couple figures repeated the specific 150 TWh/year figure, so I'll use that.

The US's annual gasoline consumption is 135 bn gallons (2021 figure). At around 20 mpg (random estimate because I have to pick something), that works out to 2.7 trillion miles. At 30 kWh/100mi (figure from google), that works out 800 TWh if every gas vehicle in the US was suddenly switched for an electric one, or about 20% of the US's annual electricty generation of 4222.5 TWh (2018 figure). Also, that's about 5x the global crypto energy usage, vs just America's cars. [Obvious disclaimers: some of those estimates are arbitrary and not perfect, but they're in the right ballpark, and we obviously wouldn't switch to electric cars overnight]

Crypto was bad because it didn't actually accomplish anything with that power usage, but it was a pretty small footnote on the grand scheme of things.

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

#88

Post by dsfyu404ed »

theshrike79 wrote: post #16
cuteboy19 wrote: post #2

I think heavy duty trucks and such will still work on gasoline even in an EV future. So why don't these companies try to solve that problem in a carbon neutral way?

Heavy duty vehicles will move to either diesel/biogas hybrids (they can replace ~30% of the diesel with gas nowadays without any major engine mods) or to full CBG with combustion engines. Farms can produce their own CBG with relatively minor investment, basically fueling all work vehicles with cow farts =) Some kind of hydrogen/biogas generator hybrid might be viable too. Some will become fully electric, but it's hea…

Diesel will slowly go away because of the ever tightening emissions noose. It's just getting harder and harder to have something that's both compliant and has a lifetime TCO that's lower than equivalent gasoline engines that can more easily meet their (more stringent) emissions requirements.

The bar for what kind of usage makes diesel cheaper than gas over all is constantly creeping higher. Notice how a huge fraction of smaller medium duty trucks have gasoline engines these days.

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

#89

Post by Retric »

mfer wrote: post #51
i_am_proteus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and: the question revolves around total financial and material capital needed to transition away from fossil fuels. Synthetic fuels are potentially valuable because they allow existing capital assets (internal combustion engines and the industry that produces them, fuel distribution infrastructure) to continue to be used. I am glad to see research into them continue- it's difficult to predict what will scale wel…

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.

The EV transition is really slow and easy for the grid to adapt to.

Assuming 100% of new cars where EV’s you’re talking 25 years before adoption approaches 98%. Plus on average each EV is only using ~50,000kWh / year or 400 watts average load.

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

#90

Post by tigeroil »

delecti wrote: post #87
brk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the crypto mining dying off should free up a lot of grid resources for EVs. I've heard the "grid can't handle all EVs" statement, but have not seen anything backing up the claim. I believe the grid can in fact handle EVs becoming prevalent. We might need more power generation , which could be new plants, and/or residential solar. Baring some kind of crazy legislation requiring ICE vehicles to be crushed or perman…

The global energy usage from crypto was in the ballpark of 120-240 TWh/year, but a couple figures repeated the specific 150 TWh/year figure, so I'll use that. The US's annual gasoline consumption is 135 bn gallons (2021 figure). At around 20 mpg (random estimate because I have to pick something), that works out to 2.7 trillion miles. At 30 kWh/100mi (figure from google), that works out 800 TWh if every gas vehicle in…

The main thing your comment highlights for me is how much of a push we need for more sustainable methods of transportation in general.

There's always going to be people who will need to drive, but there's a hell of a lot of people who could be perfectly adequately served by strong public transportation.

Post reply on HN