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I don’t understand that comparison. You can’t use electricity to make petrol, right?

• theshrike79 4y ago
  Synthetic fuels can be created with electricity. But, again, the efficiency is laughable. The amount of energy lost in the conversion is so huge that it's not viable unless you've got crazy levels of overproduction. But my comparison was about the fact that petrol engines convert only 20-30% of the energy in the fuel to actual motion - everything else is lost in friction and output as heat. Toyota had a prototype engine that went up all the way to 35-37% efficiency, but it didn't make it to production. Modern electric engines are 90-95% efficient.
  • _hypx 4y ago
    Fuel cell vehicles also use electric motors. They will not lose to combustion engines on efficiency. You seem to contradict yourself on how you think hydrogen vehicles work.
    • theshrike79 4y ago
      Fuel cell vehicles sill need hydrogen to generate the electricity. Hyrdogen has about 80% losses from electricity to wheels. When 55kWh of electricity is used to generate hydrogen and that is used in a Toyota Mirai to move the car, only 11kWh ends up at the wheels. If you do that same with a Hyundai Ioniq 5, all 55kWh (minus some transfer losses) get to the wheels.
      • _hypx 4y ago
        Those are purely made up numbers. A fuel cell will easily be more efficient than an internal combustion powered car. Also, a battery is not 100% efficient, nor is charging an EV 100% efficient.