10 ms·

> Battery powered cars are going to be the next disaster > I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. "Battery powered cars are

> Battery powered cars are going to be the next disaster > I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. "Battery powered cars are a small disaster, so I'll keep my big disaster instead".

daniellarusso 5y ago
It uses waste vegetable oil.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  Unless I drive to a specific gas station to get 100% recycled fuel, the normal diesel only has 10-20% such products, and likely less in summer. It's not nothing and certainly better than just a few years ago, but it's still not exactly like a significant fraction of diesels use a significant fraction of vegetable oil.
- cduzz 5y ago
  This is a laudable and reasonable small scale approach to personal transportation. There are certainly enough old diesels out there and enough people willing to go around collecting old oil to keep a small number of people occupied and mobile. It is also not really a viable large scale solution to "how do you move people around?" There are lots of really good answers (walking, public transit, electric bicycles) but one obvious answer is "cars" and electrifying those is probably a good solution. Electricity can be generated from fossil fuels more efficiently at large scales than small (a power plant produces less CO2 than a car for a given amount of work). Electricity can also be generated by extracting "free" energy from the environment (wind / solar / hydro / dogs on treadmills). The distribution system for electricity is already quite robust and is already everywhere, and people like cars. There's even lots of inexpensive electricity available at night, when most people aren't driving their cars. All we need is a way to get the power to the cars that park where people don't own the parking space. Disposing of the waste stream of parts of the cars has always been a problem. Hopefully people come up with a way to solve it; there's enough valuable metal in a car battery that it is likely they will. There are already all sorts of terrifying industrial processes which I can't imagine are possibly cost effective and yet they're the foundation of modern society. There are also all sorts of hideous "farm out the cost to someone else" processes relying on destroying somewhere else / poisoning someone else. People refine gasoline by boiling crude oil in a rusting metal tank; people refine gasoline in trillion dollar oil refineries. Why and where and for who answers how it gets done. Can one cost-effectively convert refined materials in a battery (cobalt / nickle / lithium) back into raw inputs for a new battery? Can it be done profitably by a child in a toxic fire pit or can it be done profitably by a chilled shredder in inert gas? Not a simple problem, but probably one that can partially be solved with market incentives and partially solved by laws and partially it won't get solved. But we should probably try, right?
  - dd_roger 5y ago
    > It is also not really a viable large scale solution to "how do you move people around?" Not every solution needs to be large scale to be usefull. I think biofuels should be promoted and used as much as possible (obviously within the limits where it makes sense ecologically speaking, e.g. not destroying ecosystems to plant more biofuel crops or burning coal to synthetize (m)ethanol). Both the idea that EVs are suited for every purpose and that they'll quickly take over the entire ICE car pool are ludicrous. Where EVs can not / not yet be used it makes perfect sense to use alternative fuel sources.
- namdnay 5y ago
  When you're mixing in chip-shop oil, you're waaaaay off the constructor Co2 emissions (which themselves are way off the real world Co2 emissions)
volta83 5y ago
Are they the small disaster ? What do you think is going to happen with all the lithium after being bounded by a 10 year old with a rock? Probably just going to land in the river, and then the sea.
- StavrosK 5y ago
  Whereas extra CO2 in the atmosphere is fine? Or do you mean that it's easier to sequester the CO2 than to get children to stop pounding things containing lithium?
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    Sounds reasonable. Plants absorb carbon. I'm not aware of anything organic that absorbs lithium.
    - StavrosK 5y ago
      If nothing organic absorbs lithium, what's the problem?
      - volta83 5y ago
        absorbs lithium naturally. Go ahead and try drinking a glass of lithium, or try growing vegetables with lithium instead of water.
        FridayoLeary 5y ago
        Don't. You'll thank me.
        volta83 5y ago
        Thank you, I just dodged drinking a glass of lithium.
  - volta83 5y ago

daniellarusso 5y ago

It uses waste vegetable oil.

alkonaut 5y ago
Unless I drive to a specific gas station to get 100% recycled fuel, the normal diesel only has 10-20% such products, and likely less in summer. It's not nothing and certainly better than just a few years ago, but it's still not exactly like a significant fraction of diesels use a significant fraction of vegetable oil.
cduzz 5y ago
This is a laudable and reasonable small scale approach to personal transportation. There are certainly enough old diesels out there and enough people willing to go around collecting old oil to keep a small number of people occupied and mobile. It is also not really a viable large scale solution to "how do you move people around?" There are lots of really good answers (walking, public transit, electric bicycles) but one obvious answer is "cars" and electrifying those is probably a good solution. Electricity can be generated from fossil fuels more efficiently at large scales than small (a power plant produces less CO2 than a car for a given amount of work). Electricity can also be generated by extracting "free" energy from the environment (wind / solar / hydro / dogs on treadmills). The distribution system for electricity is already quite robust and is already everywhere, and people like cars. There's even lots of inexpensive electricity available at night, when most people aren't driving their cars. All we need is a way to get the power to the cars that park where people don't own the parking space. Disposing of the waste stream of parts of the cars has always been a problem. Hopefully people come up with a way to solve it; there's enough valuable metal in a car battery that it is likely they will. There are already all sorts of terrifying industrial processes which I can't imagine are possibly cost effective and yet they're the foundation of modern society. There are also all sorts of hideous "farm out the cost to someone else" processes relying on destroying somewhere else / poisoning someone else. People refine gasoline by boiling crude oil in a rusting metal tank; people refine gasoline in trillion dollar oil refineries. Why and where and for who answers how it gets done. Can one cost-effectively convert refined materials in a battery (cobalt / nickle / lithium) back into raw inputs for a new battery? Can it be done profitably by a child in a toxic fire pit or can it be done profitably by a chilled shredder in inert gas? Not a simple problem, but probably one that can partially be solved with market incentives and partially solved by laws and partially it won't get solved. But we should probably try, right?
- dd_roger 5y ago
  > It is also not really a viable large scale solution to "how do you move people around?" Not every solution needs to be large scale to be usefull. I think biofuels should be promoted and used as much as possible (obviously within the limits where it makes sense ecologically speaking, e.g. not destroying ecosystems to plant more biofuel crops or burning coal to synthetize (m)ethanol). Both the idea that EVs are suited for every purpose and that they'll quickly take over the entire ICE car pool are ludicrous. Where EVs can not / not yet be used it makes perfect sense to use alternative fuel sources.
namdnay 5y ago
When you're mixing in chip-shop oil, you're waaaaay off the constructor Co2 emissions (which themselves are way off the real world Co2 emissions)

volta83 5y ago

Are they the small disaster ? What do you think is going to happen with all the lithium after being bounded by a 10 year old with a rock? Probably just going to land in the river, and then the sea.

StavrosK 5y ago
Whereas extra CO2 in the atmosphere is fine? Or do you mean that it's easier to sequester the CO2 than to get children to stop pounding things containing lithium?
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  Sounds reasonable. Plants absorb carbon. I'm not aware of anything organic that absorbs lithium.
  - StavrosK 5y ago
    If nothing organic absorbs lithium, what's the problem?
    - volta83 5y ago
      absorbs lithium naturally. Go ahead and try drinking a glass of lithium, or try growing vegetables with lithium instead of water.
      - FridayoLeary 5y ago
        Don't. You'll thank me.
        volta83 5y ago
        Thank you, I just dodged drinking a glass of lithium.
- volta83 5y ago