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Richard A. Muller, Nobel Prize in Physics, posted an short article on energy efficiency and pollution in gasoline, hybrid, and pure battery powered cars. Gasoli

Richard A. Muller, Nobel Prize in Physics, posted an short article on energy efficiency and pollution in gasoline, hybrid, and pure battery powered cars. Gasoline vs best battery powered car is a factor of 40.The only car has zero pollution is the hydrogen powered. http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/old%20physics%2010/physics%2010%20notes/Electric%20cars%20.html http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/old%20physics%2010/...

markdown 14y ago
> Gasoline FTFY
revelation 14y ago
He might be a nobel prize physicist, but that article is strongly on the fringe side. You can't dismiss electric cars because the power plants produce CO2 and then go on to claim hydrogen is a "clean" technology because burning it does not produce carbon-dioxide.
- rustynails77 14y ago
  I like the idea of electric cars, but their dirty secret is not the CO2 from power plants - it's the batteries. They're full of deadly toxins and they don't last very long. What happens to these batteries when they're no longer useful??? I'm still banking on battery technology improving to the point that this disadvantage is far less hazardous to the environment.
  - revelation 14y ago
    They last very long, the only thing you lose with time is capacity. When the battery reaches a capacity that is no longer useful for use in a car, the battery is sold to utilities. One use case would be to buffer the energy from renewable sources like solar or wind and release it when theres higher demand. Its a low-scale solution to the biggest problem of the energy spot market: charge is highly perishable. Use it or lose it.
  - jws 14y ago
    Lots of things are toxic. It doesn't mean they poison people. The starter battery in a gasoline car contains enough lead to kill about 1000 people, but it doesn't do it. Batteries don't transmute. Lead is still lead. Lithium is still lithium. Batteries are about the most perfect recycling case: mass produced, made to exact specifications from very few compounds, easily separated, and are just the right things to turn back into batteries and sell! Missouri's last lead mine is closing because lead from recycling batteries is so cheap it doesn't pay to mine new lead unless you are also getting some silver or copper and their remaining lead veins are unfortunately too pure. So electric car batteries get used in cars until their capacity is diminished to an uncomfortable level, then they go serve as stationary storage where the energy density requirement is less demanding for a few more years until they are too worn for even that, at which point they get sold to the recycler and turn into new batteries for cars.
- danielweber 14y ago
  If you are going to all the trouble of manufacturing hydrogen, why not just manufacture gasoline instead? You lose a little bit of energy efficiency, but only a little bit, and it's a lot easier to handle gasoline (or another liquid fossil fuel) than hydrogen. Also, that article is from the year 2000. Muller's changed his mind about a number of things. He has a lot of talks on YouTube ("Physics For Future Presidents" is a fun one to listen to in the background) and I don't remember him promoting hydrogen cars.
jws 14y ago
This article mystifies me. He is whizzing rough estimations off the top of his head, so that might explain, but… He omits the dramatic difference in internal combustion efficiency vs. electrical motors, identifies that electric doesn't mean zero emission because of generation sources, but then declares hydrogen to be the hope of zero emission. Your summary also misses that it is the density of the energy storage that is about a factor of 40, not the system as a whole.

markdown 14y ago

> Gasoline FTFY

revelation 14y ago

He might be a nobel prize physicist, but that article is strongly on the fringe side. You can't dismiss electric cars because the power plants produce CO2 and then go on to claim hydrogen is a "clean" technology because burning it does not produce carbon-dioxide.

rustynails77 14y ago
I like the idea of electric cars, but their dirty secret is not the CO2 from power plants - it's the batteries. They're full of deadly toxins and they don't last very long. What happens to these batteries when they're no longer useful??? I'm still banking on battery technology improving to the point that this disadvantage is far less hazardous to the environment.
- revelation 14y ago
  They last very long, the only thing you lose with time is capacity. When the battery reaches a capacity that is no longer useful for use in a car, the battery is sold to utilities. One use case would be to buffer the energy from renewable sources like solar or wind and release it when theres higher demand. Its a low-scale solution to the biggest problem of the energy spot market: charge is highly perishable. Use it or lose it.
- jws 14y ago
  Lots of things are toxic. It doesn't mean they poison people. The starter battery in a gasoline car contains enough lead to kill about 1000 people, but it doesn't do it. Batteries don't transmute. Lead is still lead. Lithium is still lithium. Batteries are about the most perfect recycling case: mass produced, made to exact specifications from very few compounds, easily separated, and are just the right things to turn back into batteries and sell! Missouri's last lead mine is closing because lead from recycling batteries is so cheap it doesn't pay to mine new lead unless you are also getting some silver or copper and their remaining lead veins are unfortunately too pure. So electric car batteries get used in cars until their capacity is diminished to an uncomfortable level, then they go serve as stationary storage where the energy density requirement is less demanding for a few more years until they are too worn for even that, at which point they get sold to the recycler and turn into new batteries for cars.
danielweber 14y ago
If you are going to all the trouble of manufacturing hydrogen, why not just manufacture gasoline instead? You lose a little bit of energy efficiency, but only a little bit, and it's a lot easier to handle gasoline (or another liquid fossil fuel) than hydrogen. Also, that article is from the year 2000. Muller's changed his mind about a number of things. He has a lot of talks on YouTube ("Physics For Future Presidents" is a fun one to listen to in the background) and I don't remember him promoting hydrogen cars.

jws 14y ago

This article mystifies me. He is whizzing rough estimations off the top of his head, so that might explain, but… He omits the dramatic difference in internal combustion efficiency vs. electrical motors, identifies that electric doesn't mean zero emission because of generation sources, but then declares hydrogen to be the hope of zero emission. Your summary also misses that it is the density of the energy storage that is about a factor of 40, not the system as a whole.