Why not convert natural gas to methanol? You can run methanol in cars with slight modifications, and it burns cleaner than gasoline. Plus, we have natural gas in abundance. Why build expensive batteries, when you have shortened the fuel cycle using methyl alcohol?
Yeah, I fully agree with this. Tesla’s battery swap station should have been hugely popular, given their demographic–people with a lot of disposable income and whose time is valuable. But it seems people are fine with the speed of the superchargers.
Stations do look a little thin where you are, but I think we have different ideas of geographical proximity. If you have a 200+ mile range on your car, you only need chargers every 100-150 miles (leaving some safety margin). There are two superchargers in Atlanta and more in neighboring cities. There’s one in Chattanooga, ~115 mi away; one in Auburn along 85; in Macon; and more as you get further out. It does seem that getting to Charlotte is a problem since it’s 245 mi away and there’re no close superchargers, but there still are enough medium-speed chargers along the way that you could just top off part way.
5-10% is huge. I don’t get why people look at single-digit percentage improvements and decide that it’s in the noise. You only need a handful of solutions like this and you’re done.
Cars are not the only thing that can be converted to electric. Huge chunks of industry can also be converted (or already mostly are, like for aluminum). Some cannot, like air transport, so let’s save Earth’s limited CO2 capacity for those industries which need it.
There are all kinds of studies out where demonstrating the advantages of electric vehicles, but kind of study depends on the answer you want. Are you trying to optimize for oil consumption, or CO2 emission, or something else?
As Habeed said, the batteries are easily recycled (as is the rest of the vehicle). So even if there’s an intermediate point where electrics use more resources than gas cars, in the long run they’re a more sustainable mode of transport. Aside from the battery, the Model S is expensive largely because it’s a giant chunk of aluminum. Aluminum is extremely recyclable and hence the Tesla retains a lot of value even as pure scrap. The real cost is not as high as it seems.
You’re still emitting CO2.
Let’s put it this way–what’s our end goal here? We want sustainable energy. Sustainable, to me, means something on the order of the lifetime of human civilization–not a decade or even a century. Millennia at the least, and ideally more.
Solar panels are made from materials that are virtually free (mostly silicon). The US at the least has enormous surface area, and a tiny corner of one southwestern state is enough to meet all of the US energy needs–not just current electric needs, but everything that coal and oil are used for as well.
So I expect that most electricity will come from solar, though we’ll still want a mix of sources. Wind, nuclear (breeder or throium reactors if we’re going sustainable), and hydroelectric will play a part.
We’ll need storage too, but not as much as one might think, because we’ll use industry as a part of virtual storage. We’ll produce more stuff when energy is plentiful and less when it’s not. For the things that need uninterrupted power, we’ll use batteries, pumped hydro, etc. Part of the storage will be distributed (into electric cars, among other things).
Obviously we need to figure out what to do with all this electricity. Electric cars are the obvious first step, since it’s something we can do now and it paves the way for the rest. Other industries will slowly convert–steel foundries will have to use arc furnaces instead of being basically coal-powered. The last conversions will be those that depend on hydrocarbons, like airplanes, but in the very long run (assuming there are no battery breakthroughs), we’ll synthesize methane and other chemicals from the atmosphere.
This is my vision, at least. There will be intermediate steps, but I’d like to see movement in the right direction. Natural gas is still a fossil fuel and to my mind it doesn’t move us to the end goal.
You guys do know that electric cars essentially run on coal, right? Well, 40% anyway. Plus 30% natural gas, and 20% nuclear.
Even if the Tesla was powered entirely by coal-generated electricity, it would still have less overall CO2 emissions than a normal family sedan (IIRC, it’s equivalent to a 40-50 MPG car–high for a large luxury sedan).
Since the actual amount of coal-generated electricity is a fraction of that, the Tesla is commensurately better. Even natural gas is much better than coal in terms of CO2 per joule produced (about half the emissions). Nuclear and renewables don’t emit any net CO2 and make up about a third of electric generation. All told, a Tesla is easily three times as good as a gas car, and it only gets better as our electricity mix moves toward renewables, or at least away from coal.
I’m amazed that people think that $70 / barrel is cheap. Of course it’s less than the highest prices, but it’s still a lot in absolute terms.
Well, powering an electric car goes like this:
-burn oil/coal/natural gas to generate electricity (generation loss)
-charge batteries with electricity 9charging and transmission losses)
-run electric car with battery current (conversion losses)
How is this more efficient than burning ethanol or methanol in the car?
Let me fill in some numbers for ya.
-burn oil/coal/natural gas to generate electricity (generation loss) - about 45% loss. (55% efficient)
-charge batteries with electricity 9charging and transmission losses) -
-run electric car with battery current (conversion losses) - about 15% loss for all of it
So it’s fuel -> car at about 40% efficiency. Car does, at best, 30% or so.
Burning ethanol/methanol : there’s making the crops for the ethanol. Currently, it takes about as much or more fuel to make ethanol as it gives you in energy return.
If you do it with hydrogen, there’s :
generation loss - 45% loss
electrolysis loss - 40% loss of remainder
Sabatier loss - another 50% or so lost of remainder
CH4 -> methanol conversion : exothermic so you get a free lunch there.
Net : about 16-17% of the energy becomes methanol.
As you can see, batteries are actually pretty good in terms of the pencil test. You can also generate the electricity to charge those batteries with solar or wind, which has recently become vastly cheaper than before and is now pretty close to competing directly with the cheapest methods of electricity production.
Habeed’s numbers look fine to me, but the larger point is that fixed generation is more efficient than mobile engines. Extracting mechanical power (to drive wheels or turn a generator) is an inherently inefficient process, and takes a lot of effort to extract as much energy as possible. The very best power plants–Combined Cycle Gas Turbine–use two turbines, with the second one driven by steam heated by exhaust waste heat. These can achieve about 55% efficiency.
The best car engines are more like 30%. Furthermore, they rarely achieve this, because maximum efficiency is at near peak power, which you rarely need because the engine is sized for acceptable acceleration. So in reality it’s probably more like 20% efficient.
Some of this could be ameliorated by reducing the engine size dramatically and using an electric motor to provide most of the power. But you’d need a big battery to climb large hills and such. And it’s still less efficient than the fixed generation. Why not just go full electric at this point?
Some numbers, since I was curious.
Teslas use about 300 W-h/mi. Like MPG numbers, this can go higher or lower depending on how you drive, but it’s a good ballpark estimate for a mix of city/hwy driving.
US electricity production emits 1.22 lb/kW-h on average. Thus, a grid-powered Tesla emits around 0.37 lbs CO2/mi.
You might be surprised to note that burning a gallon of gas emits 19.6 lbs of CO2, since the gallon doesn’t weigh anywhere close to that. But most of the CO2 weight is actually in the oxygen, which it gets from the atmosphere.
Therefore, the Tesla gets the CO2-equivalent of 53 MPG, which is quite respectable for a sedan of that size (noting especially that this is city and hwy miles).
Things get even better depending on the locale. California gets a much higher fraction of electricity from natural gas and renewables than the rest of the country, so the CO2 emissions are only 0.524 lbs/kW-h. A Tesla here is CO2-equivalent to a 125 MPG car.
Interesting. Thanks.
Also worth noting is the electricity purchase cost associated with the low CO2:
http://www.neo.ne.gov/statshtml/204.htm
Seems Californians pay about double for electricity compared to what I pay in Wyoming.
As long as the “new” alternative doesn’t offset those savings, directly or indirectly.
The studies I’ve seen show that EV’s themselves are “greener” than petroleum based vehicles, that’s pretty obvious. But what of the increased pollution from manufacturing and recycling the batteries? There will be a disposal issue, as nothing can be recycled forever. Plus, people suck at recyclling unless there are huge incentives, which will add to the cost.
Again, I haven’t seen enough long term data (or predictions) around of the processes required upstream and downstrem of the vehicle itself to say electricity id right for the long haul. If we are going to switch from petroleum, and we will have to do that eventually, why not take the opportunity to get it right?
Wyoming has cheaper electricity in the sense that it’s cheaper to throw your garbage over the fence into your neighbors yard than it is to hire a company to dispose of it properly. The price may be lower but the cost is much higher.
Not that California is perfect, mind you–but we’re farther along than most of the rest of the country.
That’s not true. The valuable parts of electric cars are the metals–aluminum, lithium, copper, etc. These can indeed be recycled forever. The value is in the atoms themselves, and atoms don’t degrade.
The plastics and other bits do degrade over time, since their value is primarily in their molecular structure, and molecules do degrade over time. But electric cars are no different from conventional ones in this respect.
It’s the only option for the long haul. The others are just obvious non-starters. We will reach a point where petroleum is too expensive to burn.
So far, I haven’t seen any kind of full life-cycle analysis on electric cars that I wasn’t disappointed with. In many cases they’re written by obvious shills with some kind of interest. It’s tough to get away from this. However, the fact remains that we have to stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, and electrics allow for this possibility. Hydrogen is the only other possibility but it looks to be worse than pure electrics in every way. Gas cars are a literal dead end.
That degraded plastic will be contaminated. Not all the metal"atoms" can be recovered and some % will be released into the environment. All of this will be excaberated by the immense increase in batteries. Geez, improper disposal of batteries is an issue now. It will become an even bigger issue issue.
Over 2/3 of the US’s electricty is generated via fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas). Large amounts CO2 will continue to be dumped into the atmosphere even if every vehicle goes electric overnight. If you are only looking at CO2 reduction, EV’s would certainly help, but in no way solve the issue. If one looks at overall environmental impact, there are no studies (that I’m aware of) that look at the whole picture.
Recycling the battery from a Tesla isn’t the same as throwing away a few AAs.
Lead-acid automotive batteries are already one of the most recycled things on the planet: 99.2% were recycled in 2008.
And that’s for a box filled with low-value lead! Large electric car batteries are far more valuable and we can reasonably expect near universal recycling rates.
However, what will happen first is reuse. A pack that has degraded to 70% capacity is pretty much end-of-life for an automobile, but still in good condition for stationary storage where weight and volume isn’t quite as much of an issue.
The whole picture is this: a future where almost all power comes from solar, and transport and industry are almost completely electrified, is one where we have halted the climate change problem.
There are no showstoppers here. This is a working future. It doesn’t depend on any technologies which haven’t been invented. In fact, it already exists to some extent; in limited form, yes, and with greater cost than we’d like, but it does exist.
To my mind, this is the only future in which civilization as we know it survives. In which mankind continues to have the resources to explore the universe. So we have to get there; the only question is how fast, and the exact path we take.
Well, for now this is just my speculation. We’ll know a lot more when the Tesla gigafactory comes online. If Tesla can ship their $35k, 200+ mile car, and can enable closed-loop cell recycling, I think we can shut the door on fuel cells/hydrogen/natural gas/whatever. They’re done, except for specialized applications.
I’m hoping the Chevy Bolt will also be a success, but I’m less excited about that since GM doesn’t really seem to be investing in batteries.
Now, now. Nuclear breeder reactors (the kind that turn U-238 or thorium into more fissionable fuel) do exist and can provide huge amounts of power in a small reactor core. So much power that it turns out the fuel can melt right through the containment…
In any case, it’s not an unsolvable problem. An annoying one - maybe we’d have to create vast farms of fission reactors in unpopulated areas. Workers would take daily trams the 30 miles or so to the plant. When reactors cores melt down, they’d already be partially underground over an area where the groundwater is really far down, and you’d just cover up the core with dirt. Maybe use liquid lead or something that’s a lot harder to boil off as coolant.
The cores would be spaced far enough apart that you could continue operating the reactors that haven’t melted down yet. Essentially, you’d be planning for this failure to happen instead of relying on it never happening and creating vast amounts of misleading PR speak that says it could never happen.
I agree with you in that I think solar + batteries + windmills for the nights is the way forward. I’m just saying it isn’t the only way forward.
I suppose my main point is that it’s an electric future. Doesn’t have to be solar necessarily, and I really like nuclear power–it’s just that it carries a lot of baggage. Regardless, we won’t be using that power to synthesize gasoline or methanol or whatever. We’ll use some of it to make CH4 for rockets, and maybe aircraft (though bio-kerosene is possibly a better option). But for ground transportation it’ll be electric.
I agree, there. Well, somewhat. In some cases you could potentially use nuclear heated steam directly to perform some tasks, and thus avoid paying the 60% lost energy when you convert heat to electricity via steam turbines.
Examples : desalination, the steam to electrolyze hydrogen from, the high temperatures for synthetic productions of nitrates (Haber process), Sabatier production of methane, etc.
But I don’t think it’s going to happen at all. I honestly think that fully automated production of solar panels is going to get them so cheap that nothing else will make any sense.
Fair enough. 'Course, you can do that with solar as well. I actually wonder a little at why CA isn’t building solar thermal desalination plants. Water acts as a fantastic “virtual battery”, since it’s so storable–you produce as much as you can on sunny days and shut things down at night. Water is so easy to store that you can load balance over the course of a full year if you need to.
We’re almost there already. Utility-scale solar costs are already under 9c / kWh. Actually, I think the real innovation will be automation in plant construction, not necessarily panel production. The panels themselves are unbelievably cheap.
All of that is, as you say, workable with present technology - given gains in EV range, significant shifts in power generation and huge infrastructure changes (contingencies that are slightly larger than a bread box in scale :p). Getting will take time, though, and time is something of which we have a limited supply.
This has been a fun discussion, and I learned some things. I want to sincerely thank you and Habeed for keeping it absolutely civil, even when there was disagreement. Believe it or not, that doesn’t always happen around here!