3 ms·
Electricity is fungible in the sense that it can come from many sources. Oil is not-- it really only comes out of the ground. (Biofuels also have the same probl
by grinich 9y ago
Electricity is fungible in the sense that it can come from many sources. Oil is not-- it really only comes out of the ground. (Biofuels also have the same problem.)
You can think about making cars electric as removing a tight coupling between transportation and fuel. It creates a more generic interface, which will create more flexible implementations. For example: wind, solar, and using charged car battery fleets to balance the electric grid at peak times.
It's hard to see how combustion can ever be better than electric. Even in situations where you completely offset the carbon by synthesizing fuels with clean energy, you still have huge issues around air quality in dense urban cities.
Electric motors are also massively easier to maintain, have fewer moving parts, are quieter, etc etc.
- avar 9y agoOil is also fungible, see e.g. biofuels made from sunlight using algae, or whale oil harvested from sperm whales. We just don't bother with alternate sources because it's cheaper to pump it out of the ground, we wouldn't bother with alternate electricity generation either if we could just dig fully charged batteries out of the ground.
- xbmcuser 9y agoForget air pollution the difference of noise pollution would make electric cars worth it.
- shuntress 9y agoThe seemingly constant point of contention is the 'battery technology'. I'm sure you have heard some form of: "Electric cars will become dominant once battery technology catches up" I feel like we don't often consider the thought that hydrocarbons may be the best 'battery' technology. Edit: I don't really think they can be, outside of back-up generators. Power stations supported by The Grid should be far better than gas stations supported by pipelines/trucks.
- crush-n-spread 9y agoBurning hydrocarbons is damaging to the ecosystem of Earth, and for that reason it should be used as little as possible.
- greglindahl 9y agoThere have been billions of $ spent on synthetic hydrocarbons research, so I think "we" have considered it.
- shuntress 9y ago'We' in this context intended to mean 'people discussing alternative energy' not 'humanity overall' I don't often see it brought up, even in discussions of energy storage support for inconsistent energy sources.
- greglindahl 9y ago3 technologies I've seen discussed extensively in the alternative energy context: * Methanol from food sources * Methanol from non-food sources (switchgrass) * Biofuels for aircraft (military and civilian) I can totally believe you didn't see these talked about. But you can find articles in the New York Times on all 3 technologies in the past couple of years.
- shuntress 9y agoI guess we are pretty much at the peak of synthetic oil and it is a dead end in terms of energy storage.
- kurthr 9y agoThen maybe 'you' should look into it since you are very interested in it. Other people already have, and they are not interested in looking into it any more. You can look at NAZI coal gassification efforts, methanol from switchgrass, all the way to efficient Hydrogen generation and storage, but it usually turns out that producing a complex molecule up a large potential gradient is not power efficient (even with the best chemistry and catalysts).