4 ms·
Are battery electric cars still viable in a world where renewable electricity can be converted into hydrocarbon feedstock to produce gasoline?
by ETH_start 4y ago
Are battery electric cars still viable in a world where renewable electricity can be converted into hydrocarbon feedstock to produce gasoline?
- MrStonedOne 4y ago[dead]
- Tade0 4y agoCombustion vehicles have other externalities, like contributing to the city heat island effect. All in all even a compact car going through the city is equivalent to a 5-10kW heater. Also gasoline combustion doesn't just produce CO2. Emissions include NOx, CO, unburnt hydrocarbons - even in this day and age it's a significant amount.
- jabl 4y agoThe electricity-to-wheel efficiency is vastly better for EV's than by creating synthetic hydrocarbons and burning those in an ICE.
- jillesvangurp 4y agoOnly once that can be done cheaply. Which so far is not the case. Basically electric cars are cheaper to drive than cars burning fossil fuels which in turn are cheaper to drive than cars burning synthetic fuels. As prices of things like batteries and renewables come down. Synthetic fuels might become cheaper than fossil fuels since you typically need lots of energy for producing synthetic fuels. If the amount of energy gets low enough it might get close enough to simply charging a battery with the energy and using it. But we're a very long way from that.