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Article title is wrong, which is made clear in first para. >> Germany's government is refusing to agree to European Union plans to effectively ban the sale of

Article title is wrong, which is made clear in first para. >> Germany's government is refusing to agree to European Union plans to effectively ban the sale of new cars with combustion engines from 2035, according to Finance Minister Christian Lindner. (Fossil fuels = bad) does not mean the same as (combustion engine = bad). There are lots of green combustion options, first on the list being hydrogen gas as fuel for a combustion engine. Then there are fuel-from-air approaches whereby a normal combustion engine would burn hydrocarbon fuel made without "fossil" carbon sources. German auto makers are rightfully upset at being told to abandon such lines.

frankreyes 4y ago
Interesting, another example could be "Green methane", when produced with solar power and recycled from CO2 from the atmosphere. Either a Sabatier process or a methane producing bacteria
- froh 4y ago
  methane or methanol? this guy makes a methanol fuel cell and battery hybrid car: https://www.rolandgumpert.com/en/ https://www.rolandgumpert.com/en/
VBprogrammer 4y ago
Green hydrogen as a road transport fuel probably doesn't make sense at all, nevermind burning it at ~25% efficiency. Fuel cells are a possibility at ~90% efficiency but there are so many industrial used of hydrogen that we'd be better displacing methane derived hydrogen in those places before considering it for transport.
- sandworm101 4y ago
  I'm not so sure. Some of the diesel-from-air tech looks promising. It is expensive, more expensive than reasonable battery tech at the moment, but I wouldn't abandon the concept. If BMW wants to research and potentially sell a zero-carbon combustion fuel cycle, more power to them.
  - avianlyric 4y ago
    I’m not sure how such technology can ever be cheaper than EVs. Creating the fuel requires energy, the best supply of high volume, high quality CO2 neutral energy is electricity derived from carbon neutral sources (solar, wind, tidal, etc). Why would you take perfectly good electricity, use it to create a synthetic liquid fuel using a lossy process (some energy will be lost as heat), then burn that fuel to extract, at most, 25% of the energy you used to create the fuel. Rather than just taking the electricity, putting it in a battery, and running an electric motor. A process that’s 70%-90% efficient. The cost difference between EVs and ICE cars would have to be astronomical to make synthetic fuel ICE cars appealing when compared to EVs. There still a use case for synthetic fuels, but that only in situations where you already have a large ICE fleet (could be cars, trucks, ships, planes) that are very expensive to replace, or where batteries don’t mix well with the form of transport (aircraft for example). But for _new_ passenger vehicles, where EVs are basically a solved problem, I can’t see how a new ICE + synthetics fuel could possibly hope to compete with a new EV + electricity.
    - sandworm101 4y ago
      Total lifecycle. An ic can be made out of 99% easily recyclable metals. Lithium battery tech currently remains very tricky to recycle.
      - bryanlarsen 4y ago
        An ICE uses ~50 tons of gasoline over its lifetime that have to be included in total lifecycle calculations. That gasoline isn't easy to recycle. OTOH, Lithium is easy to recycle, and a car only uses ~50kg of it.
    - 7952 4y ago
      Car manufacturers have made an artform out of selling questionable tradeoffs to customers. It doesn't need to be technically perfect (like an SUV). It just needs to sell.
      - 4y ago
LeifCarrotson 4y ago
Hydrogen fuel cells can be made to work, they're currently somewhat worse than lithium-ion batteries in terms of energy storage but it's not completely hopeless. On the other hand, hydrogen combustion is an inefficient process that uses an astonishingly bulky, expensive fuel that needs to be compressed to absurd pressures and has no realistic use case - except to give petrolheads hope that things don't have to change and to kick the can down the road while continuing to burn fossil fuels. Check out this analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJjKwSF9gT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJjKwSF9gT8 or the numerous sources cited. This is not about German car companies like BMW, Volkswagen, and Mercedes being cut off from productive lines of inquiry. Those lines were only undertaken for show to allow them to continue business as usual. This is about them successfully bribing the German government to allow them to keep destroying the planet.
GordonS 4y ago
You're not wrong, but I do feel you're being rather pedantic; it's quite clear what was meant, and hydrogen for general public cars is a pipe dream.
- Swizec 4y ago
  > it's quite clear what was meant, Laws are generally followed by the letter, not by intention. Whole cottage industries exist that look for ways around laws without breaking them. What is written down matters even if what was intended differs.
  - kwhitefoot 4y ago
    In most European jurisdictions the spirit of the law counts for quite a lot, especially when you get to higher courts.
- sandworm101 4y ago
  Most think that way, but I'm not going to tell Toyota how to build cars. If they think it feasible I say let them try, https://www.motor1.com/news/535002/next-toyota-prius-hydrogen-2025/ https://www.motor1.com/news/535002/next-toyota-prius-hydroge...
  - onethought 4y ago
    But no one has proved our green hydrogen at car scale yet. So right now hydrogen is fossil fuel (because it’s extracted from methane)
  - kwhitefoot 4y ago
    They've been trying for years. No sign of them being worthwhile yet.
    - cassianoleal 4y ago
      That's cool but there have been attempts to build EVs at least as far back as the late 60s [0]. [0] https://autoesporte.globo.com/um-so-planeta/noticia/2021/04/gurgel-itaipu-foi-o-primeiro-carro-eletrico-nacional-mas-morreu-por-problemas-que-existem-ate-hoje.ghtml https://autoesporte.globo.com/um-so-planeta/noticia/2021/04/...
hef19898 4y ago
Well, Lindner can say whatever he wants so. First, all new cars are to follow EU regulations. And second, most car makers self-committed to tgat. After all, Germany is not such a big market to justify a dedicated set of cars, especially for the German car makers. But hey, the FDP is such a populistic, neo-liberal, as opposed to truly liberal, party since they, how to put it nicely, under performed in the last elections.
- foepys 4y ago
  The FDP has been smacked down so hard in the last few state elections they are now radicalizing themselves in a futile attempt to appeal to more voters. Absolutely blind to the fact that, once again, people who voted for FDP simply didn't know what the FDP actually stands for: tax breaks for the upper class and business interests. Those voters are now waking up to the fact the the FDP is in fact not representing social liberal values and is instead a sure way to hollow out government programs for poor people and stopping anything green from happening when it might be hurting any industry in any way. The FDP is basically a party people vote for in protest when the voter's primary party isn't doing what the voter wants it to do. Nothing else. Each time after the FDP gets good results, it gets smacked down in the following election, and this is what we are seeing over and over again. It has been the same in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, the 2000s and it will be the same this decade.
coldtea 4y ago
>(Fossil fuels = bad) does not mean the same as (combustion engine = bad). There are lots of green combustion options, first on the list being hydrogen gas as fuel for a combustion engine. In practical reality this just means there's just going to be fossil fuels cars past 2035. Not "hydrogen" or other. Not a big surprise, the "plan" was unrealistic from the start, and it's just put forward because 2035 appears "too far away". It's going to be revised time and again anyway.
otikik 4y ago
Hydrogen, at the moment at least, is anything but green. In 2019 95% of the hydrogen produced globally was coming from fossil fuels (black, gray and brown hydrogen). https://youtu.be/Zklo4Z1SqkE https://youtu.be/Zklo4Z1SqkE
rasz 4y ago
> hydrogen gas as fuel made from cheap russian gas, that shit has sailed

frankreyes 4y ago

Interesting, another example could be "Green methane", when produced with solar power and recycled from CO2 from the atmosphere. Either a Sabatier process or a methane producing bacteria

froh 4y ago
methane or methanol? this guy makes a methanol fuel cell and battery hybrid car: https://www.rolandgumpert.com/en/ https://www.rolandgumpert.com/en/

VBprogrammer 4y ago

Green hydrogen as a road transport fuel probably doesn't make sense at all, nevermind burning it at ~25% efficiency. Fuel cells are a possibility at ~90% efficiency but there are so many industrial used of hydrogen that we'd be better displacing methane derived hydrogen in those places before considering it for transport.

sandworm101 4y ago
I'm not so sure. Some of the diesel-from-air tech looks promising. It is expensive, more expensive than reasonable battery tech at the moment, but I wouldn't abandon the concept. If BMW wants to research and potentially sell a zero-carbon combustion fuel cycle, more power to them.
- avianlyric 4y ago
  I’m not sure how such technology can ever be cheaper than EVs. Creating the fuel requires energy, the best supply of high volume, high quality CO2 neutral energy is electricity derived from carbon neutral sources (solar, wind, tidal, etc). Why would you take perfectly good electricity, use it to create a synthetic liquid fuel using a lossy process (some energy will be lost as heat), then burn that fuel to extract, at most, 25% of the energy you used to create the fuel. Rather than just taking the electricity, putting it in a battery, and running an electric motor. A process that’s 70%-90% efficient. The cost difference between EVs and ICE cars would have to be astronomical to make synthetic fuel ICE cars appealing when compared to EVs. There still a use case for synthetic fuels, but that only in situations where you already have a large ICE fleet (could be cars, trucks, ships, planes) that are very expensive to replace, or where batteries don’t mix well with the form of transport (aircraft for example). But for _new_ passenger vehicles, where EVs are basically a solved problem, I can’t see how a new ICE + synthetics fuel could possibly hope to compete with a new EV + electricity.
  - sandworm101 4y ago
    Total lifecycle. An ic can be made out of 99% easily recyclable metals. Lithium battery tech currently remains very tricky to recycle.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      An ICE uses ~50 tons of gasoline over its lifetime that have to be included in total lifecycle calculations. That gasoline isn't easy to recycle. OTOH, Lithium is easy to recycle, and a car only uses ~50kg of it.
  - 7952 4y ago
    Car manufacturers have made an artform out of selling questionable tradeoffs to customers. It doesn't need to be technically perfect (like an SUV). It just needs to sell.
    - 4y ago

LeifCarrotson 4y ago

Hydrogen fuel cells can be made to work, they're currently somewhat worse than lithium-ion batteries in terms of energy storage but it's not completely hopeless. On the other hand, hydrogen combustion is an inefficient process that uses an astonishingly bulky, expensive fuel that needs to be compressed to absurd pressures and has no realistic use case - except to give petrolheads hope that things don't have to change and to kick the can down the road while continuing to burn fossil fuels. Check out this analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJjKwSF9gT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJjKwSF9gT8 or the numerous sources cited. This is not about German car companies like BMW, Volkswagen, and Mercedes being cut off from productive lines of inquiry. Those lines were only undertaken for show to allow them to continue business as usual. This is about them successfully bribing the German government to allow them to keep destroying the planet.

GordonS 4y ago

You're not wrong, but I do feel you're being rather pedantic; it's quite clear what was meant, and hydrogen for general public cars is a pipe dream.

Swizec 4y ago
> it's quite clear what was meant, Laws are generally followed by the letter, not by intention. Whole cottage industries exist that look for ways around laws without breaking them. What is written down matters even if what was intended differs.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  In most European jurisdictions the spirit of the law counts for quite a lot, especially when you get to higher courts.
sandworm101 4y ago
Most think that way, but I'm not going to tell Toyota how to build cars. If they think it feasible I say let them try, https://www.motor1.com/news/535002/next-toyota-prius-hydrogen-2025/ https://www.motor1.com/news/535002/next-toyota-prius-hydroge...
- onethought 4y ago
  But no one has proved our green hydrogen at car scale yet. So right now hydrogen is fossil fuel (because it’s extracted from methane)
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  They've been trying for years. No sign of them being worthwhile yet.
  - cassianoleal 4y ago
    That's cool but there have been attempts to build EVs at least as far back as the late 60s [0]. [0] https://autoesporte.globo.com/um-so-planeta/noticia/2021/04/gurgel-itaipu-foi-o-primeiro-carro-eletrico-nacional-mas-morreu-por-problemas-que-existem-ate-hoje.ghtml https://autoesporte.globo.com/um-so-planeta/noticia/2021/04/...

hef19898 4y ago

Well, Lindner can say whatever he wants so. First, all new cars are to follow EU regulations. And second, most car makers self-committed to tgat. After all, Germany is not such a big market to justify a dedicated set of cars, especially for the German car makers. But hey, the FDP is such a populistic, neo-liberal, as opposed to truly liberal, party since they, how to put it nicely, under performed in the last elections.

foepys 4y ago
The FDP has been smacked down so hard in the last few state elections they are now radicalizing themselves in a futile attempt to appeal to more voters. Absolutely blind to the fact that, once again, people who voted for FDP simply didn't know what the FDP actually stands for: tax breaks for the upper class and business interests. Those voters are now waking up to the fact the the FDP is in fact not representing social liberal values and is instead a sure way to hollow out government programs for poor people and stopping anything green from happening when it might be hurting any industry in any way. The FDP is basically a party people vote for in protest when the voter's primary party isn't doing what the voter wants it to do. Nothing else. Each time after the FDP gets good results, it gets smacked down in the following election, and this is what we are seeing over and over again. It has been the same in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, the 2000s and it will be the same this decade.

coldtea 4y ago

>(Fossil fuels = bad) does not mean the same as (combustion engine = bad). There are lots of green combustion options, first on the list being hydrogen gas as fuel for a combustion engine. In practical reality this just means there's just going to be fossil fuels cars past 2035. Not "hydrogen" or other. Not a big surprise, the "plan" was unrealistic from the start, and it's just put forward because 2035 appears "too far away". It's going to be revised time and again anyway.

otikik 4y ago

Hydrogen, at the moment at least, is anything but green. In 2019 95% of the hydrogen produced globally was coming from fossil fuels (black, gray and brown hydrogen). https://youtu.be/Zklo4Z1SqkE https://youtu.be/Zklo4Z1SqkE

rasz 4y ago

> hydrogen gas as fuel made from cheap russian gas, that shit has sailed