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Though that makes me think that hybrids have a real future. Or hydrogen fuel cells. Anything that doesn't require charging directly from the grid all the time,

by sgt 4y ago

Though that makes me think that hybrids have a real future. Or hydrogen fuel cells. Anything that doesn't require charging directly from the grid all the time, because although parts of the USA and Norway are ready for that, it's very tricky to get right globally. Maybe hybrids like the Prius get to be so efficient that such cars will have a truly negligible impact on global warming.

pjc50 4y ago
Hybrids that emit carbon will still have a huge effect on global warming, simply because there are so many cars. There isn't a huge amount of headroom for efficiency increases, so you're only going to get anywhere near "net zero" by charging from a renewable grid nearly all the time.
- R0flcopt3r 4y ago
  Hybrids almost never emit carbon though. Because they're almost always running from the battery that you charged up from the wall before leaving home for your daily commute. And the daily commute is less, or maybe a little over the battery range. If it isn't then you have bought the wrong car, if you goal is carbon neutrality. You can use a smaller battery, which means using less rare materials that are very expensive. There are a lot of indirect emissions with electric vehicles, and it's important to look at the big picture.
  - leoedin 4y ago
    That's only true of plug-in hybrids. "Hybrid" just means a car with an electric and ICE drive train. Most hybrids aren't plug-in hybrids. They have no ability to charge their battery except from the engine.
    - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
      right but that's easy to change.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    I could not be more bored by people who go off on the indirect emissions tangent. Because it always mysteriously winds up at "so anyway, buy a vehicle/house/plane/whatever which directly burns fuel and will thus never be green". It's an argument pushed by fossil fuel company's because it pretends the world is static and unchanging, as though the energy mix of the electrical grid can't vary, or that changes in fuel source and process for mining operations to be cleaner wouldn't drastically effect downstream users overall emissions profile.
    - richiebful1 4y ago
      It's always been my hope that my state (Kentucky) would get on board with EV's. A really smart marketer could court the powerful coal interests in the state and start selling EV's on the premise that they are powered by coal here. Eventually the power mix would change to be more sustainable
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  As to whether those hybrids have a 'huge effect' on 'global warming' depends on many factors but assuming the narrative around climate change - the term 'global warming' has been swapped for the latter since the average global temperature has gone down for a number of years after an earlier steady rise - in relation to the CO₂ hypothesis holds truth the main factor of importance is the source of the carbon used in the fuel. Fossil fuels add carbon to the atmosphere while synthetic fuels made from 'renewable' sources - biomass and direct carbon capture being the most likely ones - do not. Especially the latter - captured atmospheric carbon in combination with hydrogen from ocean-based wind and solar sources - would be a clearly carbon-neutral synthetic fuel source. If such a process could be made economically viable it could also solve the problem with storing hydrogen produced by those ocean-based sources: CO₂ -> C + O₂ 2 H₂O -> 2 H₂ + O₂ C + 2 H₂ -> CH₄ (methane) Theoretically it is simple. Building an economically viable installation, not so. With the amount of attention the 'climate crisis' gets this should not be a barrier given that untold billions of euros are being spent. Take some of that money which currently goes to nonsensical political vanity projects and redirect it into a Manhattan-project style research and development project with the aim of not just finding some theoretical process but actually creating working systems which can be installed and used. The advantage of creating methane is clear since it enables existing infrastructure to be used for transport and power production - including ICE-equipped vehicles. Either create heavier liquid hydrocarbons using the Fisher-Tropsch [1] process or convert diesel engines to use methane. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...
  - XorNot 4y ago
    > the term 'global warming' has been swapped for the latter since the average global temperature has gone down for a number of years after an earlier steady rise You're just going to throw that out there? You'll cite the Fischer-Tropsch process, but not "actually global temperatures are declining"? Here[1]. The temperature hasn't gone down. The narrative hasn't changed from global warming because of this (the term was in fact dropped because people are idiots and trying to explain what global temperature is measuring in terms of energy dynamics in the climate system doesn't work...). 2022 was the 6th warmest year on record, and based on all data the overall trend is up. [1] https://www.noaa.gov/news/2022-was-worlds-6th-warmest-year-on-record https://www.noaa.gov/news/2022-was-worlds-6th-warmest-year-o...
- Technotroll 4y ago
  According to this chart, road transport sector is responsible for 11.9 % of greenhouse emissions wordlwide.^1 Could you please expand upon how you define the huge effect it will have on global warming? Don't you think it's better to focus on other parts of that pie, where it's easier to implement widespread savings and change? ^1: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Which parts of the pie are that?
  - vardump 4y ago
    11.9% is a pretty huge percentage. If it were like 0.1%, I might agree with you. Imagine you were tight on money and then think about your grocery store bill. Wouldn't you try to save in all categories, even though, say meat, was "only" 11.9% of your total bill? Carbon reductions need to be made in every sector.
  - KronisLV 4y ago
    > Don't you think it's better to focus on other parts of that pie, where it's easier to implement widespread savings and change? I looked at the link and to me transportation does indeed seem one of the larger sources of emissions. Everything else seems either very fragmented (lots of entries with around 2%) or similarly if not more complex - like energy use in buildings for all of the appliances. What am I missing here, what would be easier to address than the abundance and types of cars and possibly the lack of proper public transportation? I don't think that one can even make the argument that we should look for easy wins when change is necessary everywhere, unless we want climate catastrophe - because of people working against improvements due to their personal interests, inefficiencies in regulation and enforcement, as well as any number of other factors.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    We are already moving our electric grid to renewables. Wind and solar are both cheap sources of power, and have a lot of potential to account for more of the electric load. Putting electric on renewables, plus switching cars to EVs (charged by renewables) should eliminate 50% of that chart - and this is something we can pull off in less than 20 years. Some of the other 50% is also easy to switch to battery powered, but they are all small niches that each need to be worked on separately. (If you are in one of those niches please think about this!)
cogman10 4y ago
We are on a path where EVs can be used as backup generators. It's fairly easy to imagine that in the near future you'll be able to use plugged in EVs to avoid brown outs or general outages. https://enphase.com/ev-chargers/bidirectional https://enphase.com/ev-chargers/bidirectional
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
I’ve stayed in places of the grid before in Asia. No gas stations for miles around, but they would have solar panels or a water wheel out back for electricity, if not very reliable. I imagine EVs would be even better for such places, just charge them via some local renewable, the battery deals with the unreliability of the source.
kaliszad 4y ago
Hydrogen fuel cells in mass produced vehicles do not have a future since hydrogen does not actually like to react - you need a catalyst. And the best ones we have are based on platinum, which is very rare a expensive. If we produced any decent quantities of "hydrogen" cars, we would have such a shortage of platinum we would not be able to complete them. Of course there are claim this has been solved but to the best of my knowledge no such catalyst actually ships in commercial quantities. [0] The second reason is that hydrogen is 1/10th the density of diesel even when liquid (which is as dense as it gets). Maintaining hydrogen in its liquid form is energy intensive. Hydrogen tends to leak through the smallest cracks and also because the atoms are so small tends to leak even through solid metal. To sustain the high pressures and degradation by hydrogen you need a very expensive tanks. You also need to handle the case, when the car crashes/ catches fire releasing all of the hydrogen somewhat safely. This tends to be a 6 MW flame upward of the car. Too bad if it crashed under a bridge or garage. This is much worse than a burning ICE/ BEV car. Hydrogen gas stations have all of the problems with the tanks as well. That makes them very expensive. Battery charging stations are somewhat easier - everywhere you have higher voltage you can build a decent charging station. Big parking lots can have solar roofs fulfilling a part of the charging demand and keeping the cars colder in the summer. At the same time you don't have any of the advantages of batteries - such as that you can charge them almost everywhere or when breaking. Hydrogen cars would need to be hybrids basically to improve on these, in this regard they are more similar to classical ICE cars. Finally, making hydrogen ecologically and economically is not that easy in big quantities. In the end, you realize it is means to a longer operation of the infrastructure of classical fossil fuel companies. Unrelated to cars, you can put some hydrogen (up to about 8% it seems) into natural gas without noticeable change in properties when used for heating. But you can probably slap a green or at least "blue" stamp on the solution. In the end, all of this is just as damaging as the production/ burning of bio diesel/ gasoline spiked with ethanol. Putting hydrogen into cars would just make support this fossil fuel agenda without actually helping the environment much and quite possibly enable decades of even more damage to the environment and public health with profits mostly for just a few already filthy rich people. [0] https://www.quora.com/Can-I-create-a-Hydrogen-fuel-cell-without-Platinum-catalyst https://www.quora.com/Can-I-create-a-Hydrogen-fuel-cell-with...

by sgt 4y ago

pjc50 4y ago

Hybrids that emit carbon will still have a huge effect on global warming, simply because there are so many cars. There isn't a huge amount of headroom for efficiency increases, so you're only going to get anywhere near "net zero" by charging from a renewable grid nearly all the time.

R0flcopt3r 4y ago
Hybrids almost never emit carbon though. Because they're almost always running from the battery that you charged up from the wall before leaving home for your daily commute. And the daily commute is less, or maybe a little over the battery range. If it isn't then you have bought the wrong car, if you goal is carbon neutrality. You can use a smaller battery, which means using less rare materials that are very expensive. There are a lot of indirect emissions with electric vehicles, and it's important to look at the big picture.
- leoedin 4y ago
  That's only true of plug-in hybrids. "Hybrid" just means a car with an electric and ICE drive train. Most hybrids aren't plug-in hybrids. They have no ability to charge their battery except from the engine.
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    right but that's easy to change.
- XorNot 4y ago
  I could not be more bored by people who go off on the indirect emissions tangent. Because it always mysteriously winds up at "so anyway, buy a vehicle/house/plane/whatever which directly burns fuel and will thus never be green". It's an argument pushed by fossil fuel company's because it pretends the world is static and unchanging, as though the energy mix of the electrical grid can't vary, or that changes in fuel source and process for mining operations to be cleaner wouldn't drastically effect downstream users overall emissions profile.
  - richiebful1 4y ago
    It's always been my hope that my state (Kentucky) would get on board with EV's. A really smart marketer could court the powerful coal interests in the state and start selling EV's on the premise that they are powered by coal here. Eventually the power mix would change to be more sustainable
the_third_wave 4y ago
As to whether those hybrids have a 'huge effect' on 'global warming' depends on many factors but assuming the narrative around climate change - the term 'global warming' has been swapped for the latter since the average global temperature has gone down for a number of years after an earlier steady rise - in relation to the CO₂ hypothesis holds truth the main factor of importance is the source of the carbon used in the fuel. Fossil fuels add carbon to the atmosphere while synthetic fuels made from 'renewable' sources - biomass and direct carbon capture being the most likely ones - do not. Especially the latter - captured atmospheric carbon in combination with hydrogen from ocean-based wind and solar sources - would be a clearly carbon-neutral synthetic fuel source. If such a process could be made economically viable it could also solve the problem with storing hydrogen produced by those ocean-based sources: CO₂ -> C + O₂ 2 H₂O -> 2 H₂ + O₂ C + 2 H₂ -> CH₄ (methane) Theoretically it is simple. Building an economically viable installation, not so. With the amount of attention the 'climate crisis' gets this should not be a barrier given that untold billions of euros are being spent. Take some of that money which currently goes to nonsensical political vanity projects and redirect it into a Manhattan-project style research and development project with the aim of not just finding some theoretical process but actually creating working systems which can be installed and used. The advantage of creating methane is clear since it enables existing infrastructure to be used for transport and power production - including ICE-equipped vehicles. Either create heavier liquid hydrocarbons using the Fisher-Tropsch [1] process or convert diesel engines to use methane. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...
- XorNot 4y ago
  > the term 'global warming' has been swapped for the latter since the average global temperature has gone down for a number of years after an earlier steady rise You're just going to throw that out there? You'll cite the Fischer-Tropsch process, but not "actually global temperatures are declining"? Here[1]. The temperature hasn't gone down. The narrative hasn't changed from global warming because of this (the term was in fact dropped because people are idiots and trying to explain what global temperature is measuring in terms of energy dynamics in the climate system doesn't work...). 2022 was the 6th warmest year on record, and based on all data the overall trend is up. [1] https://www.noaa.gov/news/2022-was-worlds-6th-warmest-year-on-record https://www.noaa.gov/news/2022-was-worlds-6th-warmest-year-o...
Technotroll 4y ago
According to this chart, road transport sector is responsible for 11.9 % of greenhouse emissions wordlwide.^1 Could you please expand upon how you define the huge effect it will have on global warming? Don't you think it's better to focus on other parts of that pie, where it's easier to implement widespread savings and change? ^1: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Which parts of the pie are that?
- vardump 4y ago
  11.9% is a pretty huge percentage. If it were like 0.1%, I might agree with you. Imagine you were tight on money and then think about your grocery store bill. Wouldn't you try to save in all categories, even though, say meat, was "only" 11.9% of your total bill? Carbon reductions need to be made in every sector.
- KronisLV 4y ago
  > Don't you think it's better to focus on other parts of that pie, where it's easier to implement widespread savings and change? I looked at the link and to me transportation does indeed seem one of the larger sources of emissions. Everything else seems either very fragmented (lots of entries with around 2%) or similarly if not more complex - like energy use in buildings for all of the appliances. What am I missing here, what would be easier to address than the abundance and types of cars and possibly the lack of proper public transportation? I don't think that one can even make the argument that we should look for easy wins when change is necessary everywhere, unless we want climate catastrophe - because of people working against improvements due to their personal interests, inefficiencies in regulation and enforcement, as well as any number of other factors.
- bluGill 4y ago
  We are already moving our electric grid to renewables. Wind and solar are both cheap sources of power, and have a lot of potential to account for more of the electric load. Putting electric on renewables, plus switching cars to EVs (charged by renewables) should eliminate 50% of that chart - and this is something we can pull off in less than 20 years. Some of the other 50% is also easy to switch to battery powered, but they are all small niches that each need to be worked on separately. (If you are in one of those niches please think about this!)

cogman10 4y ago

We are on a path where EVs can be used as backup generators. It's fairly easy to imagine that in the near future you'll be able to use plugged in EVs to avoid brown outs or general outages. https://enphase.com/ev-chargers/bidirectional https://enphase.com/ev-chargers/bidirectional

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

I’ve stayed in places of the grid before in Asia. No gas stations for miles around, but they would have solar panels or a water wheel out back for electricity, if not very reliable. I imagine EVs would be even better for such places, just charge them via some local renewable, the battery deals with the unreliability of the source.

kaliszad 4y ago

Hydrogen fuel cells in mass produced vehicles do not have a future since hydrogen does not actually like to react - you need a catalyst. And the best ones we have are based on platinum, which is very rare a expensive. If we produced any decent quantities of "hydrogen" cars, we would have such a shortage of platinum we would not be able to complete them. Of course there are claim this has been solved but to the best of my knowledge no such catalyst actually ships in commercial quantities. [0] The second reason is that hydrogen is 1/10th the density of diesel even when liquid (which is as dense as it gets). Maintaining hydrogen in its liquid form is energy intensive. Hydrogen tends to leak through the smallest cracks and also because the atoms are so small tends to leak even through solid metal. To sustain the high pressures and degradation by hydrogen you need a very expensive tanks. You also need to handle the case, when the car crashes/ catches fire releasing all of the hydrogen somewhat safely. This tends to be a 6 MW flame upward of the car. Too bad if it crashed under a bridge or garage. This is much worse than a burning ICE/ BEV car. Hydrogen gas stations have all of the problems with the tanks as well. That makes them very expensive. Battery charging stations are somewhat easier - everywhere you have higher voltage you can build a decent charging station. Big parking lots can have solar roofs fulfilling a part of the charging demand and keeping the cars colder in the summer. At the same time you don't have any of the advantages of batteries - such as that you can charge them almost everywhere or when breaking. Hydrogen cars would need to be hybrids basically to improve on these, in this regard they are more similar to classical ICE cars. Finally, making hydrogen ecologically and economically is not that easy in big quantities. In the end, you realize it is means to a longer operation of the infrastructure of classical fossil fuel companies. Unrelated to cars, you can put some hydrogen (up to about 8% it seems) into natural gas without noticeable change in properties when used for heating. But you can probably slap a green or at least "blue" stamp on the solution. In the end, all of this is just as damaging as the production/ burning of bio diesel/ gasoline spiked with ethanol. Putting hydrogen into cars would just make support this fossil fuel agenda without actually helping the environment much and quite possibly enable decades of even more damage to the environment and public health with profits mostly for just a few already filthy rich people. [0] https://www.quora.com/Can-I-create-a-Hydrogen-fuel-cell-without-Platinum-catalyst https://www.quora.com/Can-I-create-a-Hydrogen-fuel-cell-with...