Electric vehicle war, is gas soon to be toast?

[edslunch]

I find myself wondering why governments don’t continually ratchet up fuel economy standards, including on light trucks, and let the auto industry figure out the best way to meet them. Electric, hybrid, smaller, more efficient ICE, whatever it takes to lower emissions without mandating a specific technology.

In previous decades CAFE standards drove significant improvements, albeit with some really crappy vehicles initially.

Is it because with such a massive fleet of ICE vehicles on the road we need to mandate electric to meaningfully reduce average emissions?

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by edslunch

I find myself wondering why governments don’t continually ratchet up fuel economy standards, including on light trucks, and let the auto industry figure out the best way to meet them. Electric, hybrid, smaller, more efficient ICE, whatever it takes to lower emissions without mandating a specific technology.

In previous decades CAFE standards drove significant improvements, albeit with some really crappy vehicles initially.

Is it because with such a massive fleet of ICE vehicles on the road we need to mandate electric to meaningfully reduce average emissions?

A few reasons, but the biggest is time. No country could hit their commitments by gradually lowering emissions. If we want to hit below 2 degrees warming, cars will need to be emissions free soon. Gradual tightening of emissions has only lead to bigger cars and flat emissions

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by para transit fellow

Does anyone have an estimate of the energy require to liquefy hydrogen?

the theoretical minimum would in the 3-4 kWh/kg range if memory serves and the best out there now is 6 or so kwh/kg. That's still only 10-20% of the total energy content, but then it takles a lot of energy to keep it there and you hace a lot of loss of hydrogen at every tansfer point and simply through storage as it boils off. The losses added up are huge

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

Interesting story on new venture by FuelCell Energy and Toyota Motor North America on Launch of "Tri-gen" production system at the Port of Long Beach. Tri-gen uses biogas to produce renewable electricity, renewable hydrogen, and usable water.
Pretty interesting actually

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fuelc...113000504.html

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Interesting. I wonder what the source is for the biogas and the deficiency of the process?

This process isn't all that new (see this from 2016: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcell...ation-fountain). Essentially, they buy natural gas made from organic matter in an anaerobic digester (about 2-4x cost of regular natural gas). Then, feed that biogas through a specialized fuel cell that ends up making electricty, hydrogen, heat, and a small amount of water. The thing is, there's very little biogas available today and using it to make hydrogen (in a very expensive way), ship it all over the place just to turn it back into electricity inside the vehicle is both very inefficient and a poor use for something really needed elsewhere. This is another project to try to kickstart a FCEV market by supplying fuel when most other fueling stations have closed. Toyota is desperate for FCEV to happen as they've spent so much money on it.

[Fuzz]

That's what I was wondering, the source gas seems not easy to get.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

That's what I was wondering, the source gas seems not easy to get.

There's a lot of digesters out there, as biogas from fermentation is usually the starting point for all bio fuels. And it's even relatively "cheap" at anywhere from $2-20/MBtu, in fact it's cheaper than natural gas on some places in Europe. The issue is that the cheap stuff is only cheap because it uses easy to digest waste that the waste facilities either offer for free or pay the biogas company to pick up. There's only so much water treatment plant waste close to any digester. You can do it with cellulosic waste like corn stalks for example, but it suddenly becomes waaaay more expensive.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by edslunch

I find myself wondering why governments don’t continually ratchet up fuel economy standards, including on light trucks, and let the auto industry figure out the best way to meet them. Electric, hybrid, smaller, more efficient ICE, whatever it takes to lower emissions without mandating a specific technology.

In previous decades CAFE standards drove significant improvements, albeit with some really crappy vehicles initially.

Is it because with such a massive fleet of ICE vehicles on the road we need to mandate electric to meaningfully reduce average emissions?

I think sometimes the bigger issue isn't technology or physical constraints but marketing. I think some people that roll coal literally love the fact it's basically loud and obnoxious. In the long run, I think PHEV will be the future. I think the Japanese automakers are right on this one. Relying too heavily on a single technology for long term change is creating an issue in the pure EV market.

IMO the long run (and I've thought this for a while before Tesla truly dominated) is a modular vehicle that is comprised of 3-5 primary components (depending on the definition of primary components). After a while IMO people will be able to consider keeping vehicle cockpits and then just upgrading their interface/motors etc. IMO it could revolutionize the repair market. Imagine if you could basically go somewhere, standardize an EV design where the electric motor/battery pack swap within an hour or two, then send the vehicle back. Regardless of what issues you had, you could in theory just address it by swapping it all out. Then the repair company/automaker could on their own time investigate the swapped out components to figure out if they could refurbish, recycle etc. whatever is pulled out. This should have helped the rotting EV issue from before.

TBH, I thought Tesla was going to go in this direction when they first said that their biggest breakthrough in production was basically designing a vehicle that was like a battery pack on a skateboard. I was kinda surprised they discontinued it after a while. I thought if they finished off that modular concept and allowed people to upgrade vehicles to basically the latest and greatest, they'd have continued to dominate the vehicle market for more than a decade.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Gradual tightening of emissions has only lead to bigger cars and flat emissions

This was also do to massive flaws with the vehicle emissions regulations that left trucks as a loophole.

[Azure]

I don't think its marketing. Sure there is an amount of education that needs to be done to get people to understand the EV, but I'm with Fuzz on this one. The obsession of going EV only, and not PHEV first is going to make the transition harder.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by DoubleF

I think sometimes the bigger issue isn't technology or physical constraints but marketing. I think some people that roll coal literally love the fact it's basically loud and obnoxious. In the long run, I think PHEV will be the future. I think the Japanese automakers are right on this one. Relying too heavily on a single technology for long term change is creating an issue in the pure EV market.

IMO the long run (and I've thought this for a while before Tesla truly dominated) is a modular vehicle that is comprised of 3-5 primary components (depending on the definition of primary components). After a while IMO people will be able to consider keeping vehicle cockpits and then just upgrading their interface/motors etc. IMO it could revolutionize the repair market. Imagine if you could basically go somewhere, standardize an EV design where the electric motor/battery pack swap within an hour or two, then send the vehicle back. Regardless of what issues you had, you could in theory just address it by swapping it all out. Then the repair company/automaker could on their own time investigate the swapped out components to figure out if they could refurbish, recycle etc. whatever is pulled out. This should have helped the rotting EV issue from before.

TBH, I thought Tesla was going to go in this direction when they first said that their biggest breakthrough in production was basically designing a vehicle that was like a battery pack on a skateboard. I was kinda surprised they discontinued it after a while. I thought if they finished off that modular concept and allowed people to upgrade vehicles to basically the latest and greatest, they'd have continued to dominate the vehicle market for more than a decade.

I was hoping that GM would go down the "skateboard" route in the early 2000s when they introduced the Autonomy platform although it was fuel cell and not battery.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by Azure

I don't think its marketing. Sure there is an amount of education that needs to be done to get people to understand the EV, but I'm with Fuzz on this one. The obsession of going EV only, and not PHEV first is going to make the transition harder.

PHEVs are allowed in the current laws requiring all electrified cars by 2035.

Here's the thing - by 2035, PHEVs will be the expensive option to be used only where BEVs literally cannot work.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

PHEVs are allowed in the current laws requiring all electrified cars by 2035.



Here's the thing - by 2035, PHEVs will be the expensive option to be used only where BEVs literally cannot work.

I actually think it may be sooner than that.

In China, EVs are almost at purchase price parity with no incentives. Their cars have way more to offer from a technology standpoint too and prices are plummeting. Again, that may just be China, but they manufacture both kinds of cars and are able to make EVs cheaper

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

I actually think it may be sooner than that.

In China, EVs are almost at purchase price parity with no incentives. Their cars have way more to offer from a technology standpoint too and prices are plummeting. Again, that may just be China, but they manufacture both kinds of cars and are able to make EVs cheaper

Isn't the major incentive in China that EV aren't taxed at purchase whereas ICE vehicles are taxed based on displacement?

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

Isn't the major incentive in China that EV aren't taxed at purchase whereas ICE vehicles are taxed based on displacement?

Yes, but they're approaching the point where they're at parity regardless of incentives

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Yes, but they're approaching the point where they're at parity regardless of incentives

What’s the average car weight they sell. Essentially EVs save more by being lighter than ICE engines so a culture of smaller vehicles will hit price parity before larger vehicles and larger vehicles will benefit more than PHEVs.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by GGG

What’s the average car weight they sell. Essentially EVs save more by being lighter than ICE engines so a culture of smaller vehicles will hit price parity before larger vehicles and larger vehicles will benefit more than PHEVs.

I'm confused what you mean. EV's are generally heavier than ICE due to the batteries. Regardless, purchase price parity before incentives is right over the horizon. Maybe even this year

And I wouldn't really say "culture of small cars" so much. One of the fastest growing segments is luxury minivans