Do We Really Need Electric Cars?
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- Опубликовано: 14 фев 2022
- The truth about biofuels. Go to brilliant.org/Undecided to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership. Electric cars are off to a strong start when it comes to getting renewable energy out on the road. Still, not everyone is sold yet, which is why electric vehicles are facing a familiar-looking contender: synthetic fuel and biofuel. Companies like Porsche and BMW are investing a lot of money into biofuels. With synthetic and biofuels, it might be possible to make your existing gasoline car carbon neutral… but will it actually work?
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Do you think synthetic fuels will catch on? Go to brilliant.org/Undecided to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership.
If you liked this video, check out: "The truth about graphene - what's the hold up?": ruclips.net/video/KhQrGtragXc/видео.html
i really dont see it being able to be that mass produced maybe the best possible outcome would be to only be able to cover the needs of aviation and that maybe isnt possible
Best Electic vehicle is are as follows:-
1300 kg
1300 watts
130 kms x2 in 1:1 ratio of rpm 😎
Meaning Tesla range have to be over 13,000 kms in single charge in 1:1 rpm and 24,000 kms and above in single charge with a transmission system with 1:13 rpm ratio mean 1 rpm of motor 13 rpm of wheels in middle level 1:1 in Torque mode 13:1 mean motor 13 rpm wheels 1 😇
Elon musk cars have over 500 to 600 miles range 😏
Change rpm to 1:1 can give us over 9x higher range which is over 4500 to 5400 miles per charge and I m not talking about using and transmission system which easily boosts the range of any Tesla cars over 13,000 to 24,000 miles in single charge 😏
But they r not going to do it cuz it’s very low profitable business and elon musk wants only money money money 😂
That’s y he is not supporting hydrogen cuz it’s even less money money money 🤣(ruclips.net/video/MjlB5VLZ5C0/видео.html) 😂
Elon musk (ironmonger) 😏
Kalki avatar (Ironman) after 2026 😎
How can they be carbon neutral if it takes energy to make the fuel?
Canada winters ? for EV car and bio fuel is bad for soil and lands.. destroy land for fuel,, just wait till tech catches up with ambition's,, hydroponic crop fields growing in dust go look at the soils in crop fields,, no organic material left ,, i love electric.. dont like to be forced to pay taxes for some ones pockets in the name of.. price on pollution
Porsches + Mercedes investment will cover 1% of current consumption in cars in Germany. The price per Km/h will be >10x the price of electric cars. Porsche acknowledges it's old cars won't leave the road so they try to make there existing historic cars still driveable in a zero emissions world at enormous cost for people in love with vintage Porsches.
There is no reason to keep a car running on synthetic fuels, it just takes so much green energy to make carbon neutral fuels that it would irresponsible to keep coal plants running longer to produce a very little driving distance for existing inefficient cars.
There is another point to consider. Here in Brazil we have ethanol biofuel since 1978 as an option to gasoline, but even that it comes from sugar cane (wich has a way better output than corn or soybean) is questionable to use large portions of fertile land to plant biofuels instead of food to eat.
Such a good video as always Matt
Yup, it might make sense if vertical agriculture of floating farms could be made to work but it's not a good use of land. (I don't know how it compares to livestock feed...?)
What if they built floating garden islands in a protected harbor to grow bio fuels on unused space where water is instead of using land space?
@@armadillito I literally just commented on this comment, then once it's posted I look and see you mention floating areas lol I'm dumb for not looking first. 🤡
You should know better about our country's size
We have enough arable land currently under used to multiply many folds both our ethanol and our food crops output
Even directing such extensions of land to sugarcane ethanol and Eucalyptus firewood - why everybody forget our use of Eucalyptus firewood, even another Brazilian? 🤔 - we still providing food for 1,2 billion people worldwide
The matter is the world just don't have enough demand to everything our arable land can produce
@Ragnar OdinssonDear Ragnar, I've been a soy farmer with very little knowledge on sugarcane
What I can tell you is there is a radius of viability around the distillery
The hauling of sugarcane harvested outside this radius become to expensive to be viable
And yes, unfortunately, the trucks and machines uses diesel instead of fuel alcohol, but as long as I know it's due to market distortions caused by taxation
Many decades ago there was a time when all the fleet of a distillery could be fueled by it's own ethanol, as I learned, but nowadays this option is gone
There is also a secondary byproduct which is electricity generated from burning the bagasse
The juices resulting from the distillation process are also used to fertilize the cropfields surrounding the plant with great recovery of mineral nutrients
What we know as a rule of thumb is the equivalence between common gasoline and ethanol
You may expect one liter of ethanol to release around 70 to 75% o the energy available from the same amount of gasoline
By the way, that's what made me choose fuel alcohol instead of gasoline to fill my tank, just a couple hours ago
Whenever people talk about alternative energy there seems to be this assumption that only one can prevail & provide %100 of our energy needs for our future, this is idea that needs to stop. Having a diverse energy supply has many benefits: resistance to economic shock, resistance to monopolization, more stability in matters of national security, and most importantly diverse energy supplies to meet diverse energy needs.
For instance electric cars may be great but they have many limitations: poor performance in adverse weather, short range, bulky & heavy, etc., ect.. What this means is that we will remain dependent on fossil fuels for industries like trucking & construction. And seeing that we need to end our dependence on fossil fuels bio-fuels will be an absolutely necessity.
While there are many obstacles in the path of bio-fuels they are well understood & none of them are impossible to overcome. One would be switching more vehicles to diesel & another would be the further development of flex fuel gas engines (variable compression ratios).
In conclusion if we maintain this idea that one energy source will be best for all needs we risk falling back into the same problems we're currently experiencing with fossil fuels. Imagine if our only food source was a toxic bland rice grown in Saudi Arabia. It's easy to understand how disastrous this policy would be for our food industry so why are we so blind to see these problems when it comes to the lifeblood of our modern civilization?
Agreed that we need to end our use of fossil fuel, but not because of "climate crisis" hobgoblins. Whether we have ten years or a thousand years of oil in the ground, eventually we're going to run out. Better to make the transition while we've options, rather than when we have to do it because there are no options. (Actually, as the price of harvesting energy from the ground goes up, the price of the energy goes up. It won't be a hard wall; rather, a "well, this makes more sense now" sort of thing. But practicing the engineering now, when we can make mistakes that aren't fatal to civilization, makes sense.)
"Energy density" makes sense when talking about trucks moving heavy loads. Efficiency means fewer stops, and less weight hauled to move the goods being hauled. Batteries to move trucks are damn heavy! Passenger miles? Local, electric makes sense. Long distance, it's not so clear. Electric trains?
Perhaps it would be better if the peasants just stayed put while the elite fly in private jets to climate conferences. Zoom meetings? Those are for plebes.
💯Agreed. I agree that we need to at least reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, while also doing more research to find an abundant gasoline alternative source. Because let’s face it: not everyone has $40-50k lying around to buy an EV or is even eligible to lease one. Not everyone wants or needs an EV. As someone said on here, we need to diversify our energy sources. We need to get away from this idea that EVs will be the “end-all be-all” new standard for cars like gasoline was when it replaced steam engines. Who knows? maybe we need to revisit steam engines with 21st century technology as we can get more energy from water today than technology allowed back then?
Strong case man!
I honestly think there is a strong case for using oxen. They convert corn to energy at least as well as we can.
@SKYLARKING Interesting take, haven't heard that one before. Probably because that's exactly what biofuels are, man made fuel from renewable resources. This process is very energy intensive but nuclear is so cheap & abundant that it wouldn't be a problem. Which brings me to my original point, diversify the energy market.
Matt,
I was in the biodiesel industry for a decade. I learned that we have a very limited choice when choosing a plant manufacturing company. Even if we would have chosen a different company it was still the same technology. It was obsolete. I even made a logical change in the equipment used in the process. I used seperatiors instead of chemicals. A high speed centrifugal seperatior could remove particles even miroparticles from the finished product. I did away with a lot of toxic chemicals that were dangerous to my people and disposal was not good for the environment.
I also learned that the equiptment suppliers were not creative. They did not promote. New ways to do the same process better. Yet they are all in business to this day.
I also spent lots of money on a different oilseed. It was 44% oil and half the cost to produce compared ti soybeans. I worked with a small university which had two. People who were thrilled about their discovery. But like all universities to make a sizeable donation to this creation the school took 60%
For admin charges. I did not make a donation. I walked away. My 85 million gallon plant was closed by the banking laws in 2008.
That's brutal.. thanks for the info
Well, that sucks. What venture capital plan are you up to now?
Thank You for your contribution.
How can I get in touch with you??
What oilseed were you using? Palm oil?
When I bought a new car last year, my choice was between the Leaf and the Mirai. The cost of hydrogen fuel currently is one of the main reasons I went with the Leaf (also the lack of hydrogen stations outside California).
The Leaf gets no respect! I keep coming back to the humble Leaf. The 1st gen Leafs seem to hold up well - other than the battery. Nissan is an auto company with considerable experience, not so sure about the longevity of the EV new comers to the transportation world.
@@timothykeith1367 Degradation of leaf's battery is not more than myth (except of the broken software for 30kwh one). I own my Leaf 2013 S from 2020. It has 75k miles. Battery health - 81%. Approx capacity accodring to leafspy is 17.7kwh (it had 22kwh from factory). Degradation of my battery is 1.5% ~ per year which is super good stat espacially when you calculate actual capacity and percentage.
The reasons why battery degrades fast - is owner's lack of understanding how to use it correctly.
Rules are simple:
1)Do not keep it 100% charged, do not keep it less than 20% charged, one day - ok, one week - bad.
2) Do not overheat battery since leaf does not have battery cooling, multiple chademos gonna overheat battery which speedups degradation drammatically.
3) From time to time charge it up to 100%, do not listen people who says that 'it is bad to charge up to 100%' No it is not since leaf's battery is small and if you use it just few hours after charge - totally acceptable + at 100% of charge it does balance of battery cells to make it's voltage be close as possible.
P.s. The main problem with alternative fuels or car like Mirai - you can't 'fill it' at home. With EV it is pretty simple if you have a place to charge. Stations are needed only when you travel. But for daily usage - you can easily charge it at home and get electricity from very different sources. When we say about hydrogen or biofuel - you'll have to find it somewhere and buy only it. You literally can't do it at home, at shop.
@@MultiCarter007 I hope the aftermarket batteries drop in price for the Leaf. I think a Leaf would serve me well for the short trips that I take.
@@timothykeith1367 I'd rather buy a Tesla.
@@rscott2247 Leaf is cheaper and if doing just short trips better choice than model 3 financially. Perhaps with the extra money saved buying a leaf one can buy shares of Tesla stock.
We really need to start making water requirements more of a primary consideration. The water required to grow corn is prohibitively expensive to the system.
All coastal communities should be mandated to have desalinasation for agricultural purposes.
There wouldn't be a need for extensive purification, as mineral content would be a plus...just extract the saline.
@@staroceans8677 desalination creates polluting waste products
@@staroceans8677 The extraction of salt is what takes the energy. The osmotic pressure that you have to work against is 27 atmospheres, equivalent to lifting the water 280 metres, and that's before you factor in inefficiencies. In fact, the use of forward osmosis at river mouths has been proposed as a renewable energy source.
or how about stop subdizing it and let businesses innovate with the corn that is used for ethanol and why can't we invest more into HEMP????
@@jesusmora9379 the waste is salt
I feel that the book “There is no Planet B” puts it best. The same amount of food used to feed 3 people for a day can be used to make biofuel to drive a car 4 miles.
The space needed to make that food could instead be dedicated to solar for a year and will drive an EV 1k miles. Or that electricity can be given to an ebike which will enable it to drive 10k miles.
I’m really not a fan of synthetic fuels for anything other than a way to use up excess food scraps.
I am personally opposed to using corn. There are ample crops that grow where corn and other food crops cannot that can be used.
Since most of the planet is un-airable for crop growth, this is actually a good short gap for energy production in nearly uninhabited areas that have low to no food farming potential. And a stop gap only if we are assuming we get an power line technology that has dramatically better performance then copper wire, or assuming we start building space based solar collectors and beam the energy down with something like a mazer.
Solar panels are hideous and ruin the countryside, aren't efficient and degrade severely within a matter of a few years. Nuclear is the future.
The Food vs Fuel argument is so damn outdated. Ethanol is not the only biofuel, and cars are not the only use case.
Refineries will exist for many other products, what feedstocks will they use?
Bio-methane from Waste Water Treatment and Landfills (although i prefer recycling + waste to energy/chemicals workflows like Europe does, potentially, even integrating the “Refuse Derived Fuel” into the biofuel plants and Wastewater Treatment Plants (if treated in a “Wet Materials Recovery” Plant) ) can be upgraded to CNG/LNG standards (rather than contributing to climate change as methane which has a greater CO2e)
Native Grasses / Woody Biomass can be Gasified and/or Pyrolysed producing syngas (can be used in refineries or made into methane/methanol/dme), or “Pyrolysis Oil” a sort of crude oil substitute. This way farmland can be partially “Rewilded” short of an occasional lawn mowing / controlled bun type thing.
Also algae based Hydrothermal Liquefaction (HTL) biocrude **Is a drop in replacement for crude oil**. This can be made using an “algae turf scrubber” or similar concept wherein fertilizer rich runoff is cleaned up, feeding the algae. This would thus help reduce dead zones. The usage of this biocrude could be implemented very quickly leading to carbon reductions. Also since it tends to have much lower sulfur and heavy metal content, those forms of pollution disappear too.
Harm Reduction / Working with what Already Exists is more important than the most optimal option, at least in my Opinion. Infrastructure is expensive, and also has a large carbon + mined material footprint.
@@ericlotze7724 all great points. I guess the main place where I tend to exit the conversation is when we start suggesting that Biofuels are used in cars.
I’m fully supportive of those options that you highlighted as long as they’re simply capturing excess and refining it into something for a dedicated process (which won’t see an increase in demand) or use it to generate electricity.
When we talk about using biofuels to power cars I really worry that we’ll constantly be running into issues of not having enough biofuel on hand due to increased demand so we have to drill for oil or perform more of an action JUST for the excess which we’ll use to make fuel.
So I’m not saying that the tech as a whole should be tossed out; just that I don’t like the idea of applying it to cars.
@@Stevie-J Is that due to government policy, or technological requirement?
A really good comparison I'd like to see covered would be grid-scale battery storage versus production and storage of liquified synthetic methane or other e-fuel, specifically for storing up renewable energy for occasional long and unpredictable (but fairly regular - e.g. a few times every winter) lulls in renewable energy production.
keep it up man. These videos always help me with a starting point on general ideas and research.
I’m going to try to predict the future and say that synthetic fuels will be almost exclusively used in legacy equipment. The fundamental problem is thermodynamics. Processing electricity into a liquid fuel will always be less efficient then just using that electricity directly. When that’s not possible, hydrogen is a better option. Why take carbon from the atmosphere just to put it right back when you can use a fuel with no carbon emissions?
"Why take carbon from the atmosphere just to put it right back when you can use a fuel with no carbon emissions?" Because Hydrogen is a pain in the butt to use. It has extremely low volumetric energy density so getting a lot of it into a vehicle means dealing with either very high pressure or very low temperature equipment, both of which are costly, reduce roundtrip efficiency, and are dangerous. It's atomic size means it's pure form leaks like crazy making long term storage or pipeline transit challenging. The question becomes, which energy loss is higher, those I just laid out, or the energy costs of binding the hydrogen into some other, still usable. form; like using the Sabatier reaction to make it into Methane, which is much easier to store and transport. I agree that we should use electricity wherever we can, as its so inexpensive to move and convert, but for the niche applications that absolutely require high energy density and long term storage, I think conversion will make sense for some time to come. Maybe Methane, Maybe Ammonia. But I think Biodiesel and Ethanol are doomed.
you can't store hydrogen. not for long at least.
Most biofuels are derived from waste, which requires no additional water to produce since the product is recycled. A fact totally ignored by this video.
As I cannot share links, I will simple give you the keywords "Neste Oakland 750000 pounds" for an example of how Oakland has a net zero fleet of diesels without any additional water, fertilizer, arable land burden.
@@coreyfro most biofuels are not made from waste bull shit
@@coreyfro the Waste Streams that create certain present biofuels are not large enough to supply a significant percentage of transport fuels we wish to replace. If they remain as just a waste re-use case, they're resigned to a small niche which no one should bother to plan major infrastructure around. If we want to scale them up, it means accounting for the impact of the steps we would likely take when we exhaust those particular waste streams and replace with direct feedstocks.
I know this is a little bit of topic, but when it comes to emissions the only real talking point seems to be around carbon and its green house effects. But that is not the only emission that is problematic. I would love to see more videos regarding the other harmful substances, to us animals and to the environment, that gets released from combustion engines.
A quick google search:
"Through the burning of fuel, motor vehicles, cars and trucks emit a range of health damaging pollutants, such as particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxides and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)"
"Various airborne toxins such as benzene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde can also cause health problems."
"Particulate matter (PM) is what makes cities hazy and foggy. It contributes to ground-level ozone (a gas which is good for the planet when it is up above the clouds, but bad for us when it is at ground-level) These particles also contribute to asthma and other lung problems."
Perhaps a comparison with different methods of generating electricity and exhausts when it comes to the local environment etc.
I actually got asthma after I moved to live in the center of a big city with population around 2 million next to a heavy traffic crossroad. Before that I used to live around 4 years in different part of the same city, but where there isn't a lot of traffic (something like a student neighbourhood). I didn't have any health problems while I was living there.
@@niki123489 who said pollution was the cause!? Is it verified!?
Also most PM2.5 and PM10 particles come from brakes and tires. There is no way to make cars in cities compatible with human health, and we should be eliminating cars where they aren’t needed
@@birdrocket yeah and on that subject, electric cars are heavier than ICE and actually goes through tires meat more frequently than ICE.
@@carholic-sz3qv Well I don't think it can be confirmed by anyone since we live in a very complex enviroment and we breath all kinds of poisons every day in the city, but I am sure that when I live in an enviroment that has predominant pollution in the air from cars or burning any kind of fuel for heating or transportation it's not healthy at all. And I am sure that if it's caused by any factor of the enviroment, it will be the once that are dominating in the air that I am breathing, since this is the one that is causing me to cough, I can guess it is the one that also cause my asthma. Is this enough to answere your question?
I really appreciate how fair you are in these presentations. It's easy to read about some technology and imagine problems are solved, hydrogen from gas is a perfect example of this. Keep up the amazing high quality work
Love your channel. Thx for all the data you share. keep it up! :)
In Brazil, the law requires gasoline to contain 25-27 percent alcohol. You can also buy just alcohol at gas stations and many cars here can run with any percentage of both fuels. It is very questionable how good this really is for the population despite the fact that sugarcane alcohol is better than corn alcohol.
I've been exploring and synthesizing various fuels out of personal interest for the last few years. I started with biodiesel for my camp stoves (along with viscosity reducers), and eventually came up with a dozen other semi-synthetic blends I use mainly in a diesel parking heater to heat my boat during the shoulder seasons.
When I started all this, I thought it'd be a way to save money; I invested thousands of dollars in lab glassware, figuring it would all pay off one day. In reality, the cost of energy and methanol (with/without recovery, and no doubt from fossil fuels to begin with) offsets more than half of the savings over straight petroleum, assuming I get the waste oil for free (also a challenge). It's still a fun and interesting optimization project, but in the end, I discovered that at least for bulk heating fuel, the cheapest and easiest way to go is straight filtered waste cooking oil dissolved into gasoline (close enough to diesel's stoichiometric ratio and viscosity). It's hard to get away from them.
We desperately need more investment and subsidies in this area. There is a substantial niche market that will always exist.
3,000,000,000 gallons of waste biodiesel is produced a year and this is growing exponentially!
Thank you for fighting the good fight, we are winning!
As I cannot share links, I will simple give you the keywords "Neste Oakland 750000 pounds" for an example of how Oakland has a net zero fleet of diesels without any additional water, fertilizer, arable land burden.
You are unbelievably cool! Hat off! Synthesizing biofuel for a hobby... What a man!
@@michaelcrockis7679 Hehe. Thanks, but it's actually pretty easy and quite fun! :)
I'd like to try synthesizing dimethylether to use as a propane substitute (which opens up the possibility of powering light, non-diesel engines), but without a cryocooler I'll have a hard time getting it into tanks.
Economic or not, sounds like a wicked cool hobby.
Yep, this genetically modified corn is a lot more expensive than chicken grease from Wendy's.
Heating my home with a boiler converted to Biofuel, for 8 years, builded a separate boiler shed for safety. Been using Canola oil from restaurants, well filtered. A burner modified to heat the oil, and to mix with air at the nozzle. Being Canola the oil is gummy and does plug up the boiler, maintenance is high. Cost for oil is free. Spillage is enviro friendly, it has happened. Storage 3 x 1000 liter containers. Does burn more oil than fossil due to it being an older used boiler. It has been a learning process over the years. The used oil by product unable to burn is blended with crushed used road asphalt to make pavement. The unit paid for itself in the first year.
Thanks for passing on the knowledge 😊
I've been heavily against ethanol as a substitute fuel for a while. I think it's a ploy for money from corporations buying up politicians to keep it running with heavy government subsidies. Especially after I learned it's a net energy loss to produce, and is worse than fossil fuels for pollution. I like the sugar cane alternative because, like you said, it produces much more energy for much less effort. While I admit deforestation is a concern, why couldn't we just move towards replacing the corn with other crops, and "barter"/trade for the sugar cane fuels? Since South America is much more efficient at producing it, perhaps there are ways to form a joint venture between our nations to regulate it better to prevent deforestation on a fatal scale? I'm sure there's plenty of hurdles to overcome with that, but none so insurmountable as the simple fact ethanol will never be a good long term solution to replace fossil fuels.
Indeed, but there is always a risk for national security when the majority of your fuel is imported. Of course not talking about hypothetical extraneous threats, but a logistical nightmare for everyday citizens if supply lines are disrupted.
@@alaljarensi6990 True, however I don't think we can ever get away from oil or other fossil fuels, even if we happened to have fusion reactors up and running tomorrow. We will always have to diversify our energy, and this would be a great start towards a more sustainable future.
Some people will dispute that corn ethanol is energy negative (I don't dispute it, not meaningfully anyway) and claim it has an energy gain of 1.24. the problem is that this is far below even other renewables which are in turn far below the energy gain necessary to power industrial civilization. Conventional petroleum has an energy gain ranging from 18 to 43.
Ethanol is one of the worse forms of biofuel around. You do not need sugar cane to get it, you can also get it from sugar beats and that is something we can grow in America. The thing is, it is even more efficient to use bio waste to produce biofuels such as bio diesel and algae bodies, which can replace coal in coal plants. Local cities can grow the algae from their waste and thus do not need to transport it or the fuel anywhere. Local sourced, local grown, local process and local use (in many cases).
It has been noted below that sugar beet can be used for bio ethanol, and sugar beet is commonly grown in Europe. My prediction is that in the UK, which has around 44million cars presently, that EV sales will stall at 10million. There would have to be a monumental shift in EV pricing to get that last 65% of cars moved to EV. Gasoline in the UK is already close to $15 a gallon, so a shift to ethanol (E85) at $10 a gallon is a no brained. You can get an electronic box, that allows you to run E85 in your E5 vehicle for the equivalent of $180 and takes about 3 hours to fit. In France where I live E85 is available at 3000 filling stations and cost is €0.85 a litre, about half the cost of gasoline. So do I buy an EV for €90k or fit an E85 box for €300, again for me no brainer. I won't even go into Hydrogen vehicles, as the first major explosion will turn governments and people away in one difficult lesson.
What bugs me about eFuels is that if we can capture the CO2, should we not keep it captured and not re-release it? Maybe once we have returned to normal, maintainable levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.. but we're far from it.
there are way more efficient ways to “capture” CO2, like growing trees
Making e-fuels is the only way of making carbon capture economic.
@@sailingintosunshine Growing trees is one of the least efficient ways of capturing CO2, both in terms of quantity capture and land usage. A mature tree captures about 20 kilograms of CO2 per year. And that's not even counting the emissions when the tree is young (young trees have positive CO2 emissions) and that when they are old they stop absorbing CO2. Any CO2 absorption system is millions of times more efficient than planting trees, and they occupy less space. For instance, the largest DAC plant is designed to absorb one million metric tons of CO2 per year. That's about 10.000.000 more CO2 per square meter than the tree alternatives. The reason why they are not being used is because they are expensive and there's no reason for anyone to invest money on something that won't have any monetary benefit.
Because capturing it and then sucking oil out of the ground somewhere else because society is still dependent on hydrocarbon is worse. If that hydrocarbon dependency subsequently shrinks below our efuel production capacity, we can then repurpose the existing capture infrastructure for CCS
It’s a cycle, the carbon is already emitted it’s just captured used and released again….
Your analysis is always quite thorough! The “Undecided” principle means you keep quite impartial too. Congrats!!
A big part of the EV craze is that eventually you can pair it with your own solar power generation system at your home and break away from dependency on utilities and having to purchase fuel at all from some corporation trying to take advantage of you.
@Darrell Braden unless you plan on building your own cars and solar panels from scratch you still have the same problems as before.
Sure you can, buddy
Sure you can
@@cdb5961 Well having knowledge of how these systems work may very well be a key to maintaining them in the future. The storage and solar panels for instance are being constantly improved for output and longevity. But, I'm just saying the initial savings is that you are no longer held hostage by utility companies who charge you outlandish rates at there own whim just to deliver you the energy. They can not yet monopolize access to the raw power of the sun or wind. These devices remove the middle man. However maintaining and open improvement of these systems becomes the challenges we face beyond this. but completely doable.
Matt, you still have some gaps in knowledge to fill. Biodiesel doesn't contain ethanol, you meant gasoline there. BD blend is biodiesel (from biomass oils chemically combined with hydroxymethanol) and the rest is ordinary diesel fuel. It is petrol/gasoline which is mixed with bio ethanol.
@Ro Herms You can run a diesel truck on straight grease using heat from the engine... so... ethanol is not required.
What he did forget is most biofuels are derived from waste, which requires no additional water to produce since the product is recycled. A fact totally ignored by this video.
As I cannot share links, I will simple give you the keywords "Neste Oakland 750000 pounds" for an example of how Oakland has a net zero fleet of diesels without any additional water, fertilizer, arable land burden.
Great video, would have been interesting if you also added hydrogen fuel in the comparison.
Hydrogen is very expensive to produce (in money and energy terms), store and use (if you want decent but sub electric efficiency).
In a sense, is worse than synthetic fuels.
There really isn't much of a comparison. Hydrogen is extremely expensive, and there is a huge problem with storage and transport.
@@dozaarchives2225 Of course there is a comparison. Every option mentioned bar none (including oil) ultimately comes from hydrogen - that alone shows there is merit. It's a matter of scale and ingenuity of engineers. In terms of hydrogen, everything you need falls on the roof of your house (water and sunlight) so its not even like you need to dig up rainforests to do it.
If hydrogen had received the decades of investment and scale that oil has we would be fine by now. But changing all the engineering from oil rigs, giant refineries, tankers, distribution doesnt happen spontaneously, and politicians are still holding their hands out for easy short term cash from big oil.
@@aitorbleda8267 true, but It can't be much worse e-fuels right? Or maybe it is, that is why I thought it be interesting to see in the comparison how it stacks up. And yeah storage is a problem but everything has a solution the only question is how bad the losses of energy are and how expensive it is. Things like liquid organic hydrogen carriers or the video matt did before about solid hydrogen. If there is a possibility we should explore it and not right it off because it's not immediately ready for use.
@@grizzlythegrey9464 It is better and worse.
energy wise, hydrogen is worse than synth, and emissions are worse, but on the point of use, no noise or emissions.
Even on ideal scenarios, batteries are better, for cars.
It's funny that at 8:26 you included a scene from Bucharest and I was just looking at the gas prices nearby :))
I work in the distribution of gasoline, diesel and ethanol in Canada. Many of the distribution terminals for Suncor, Shell and Exxon have moved completely away from conventional gasoline to E10. (10% ethanol). And similarly are currently upgrading for B5 (5% bio diesel). The downsides are 1) ethanol in gasoline dissolves rubber gaskets... on the tanker trucks that transport it, in the retail station's pumps, and in vehicle fuel systems. 2) B5 cannot be used in winter because it turns to wax and causes engine problems. Therefore the oil companies here only distribute B5 from May to October, and then revert back to conventional ULSD from November to April. And some transit fleets here have outright refused B5 for their bus fleets. Our largest government-owned regional transit fleet in Ontario insist on conventional diesel only. That same transit agency is currently piloting a fleet of all-electric double-decker busses. And so it seems, electric is the future of transit, not bio-diesel.
I was going to say I got really consumed seeing the truck load of grain for 1l of biofuel before I'd realised. 7000kCal isn't that much in terms of raw grain, and could help farmers salvage waste grain that normally just gets sold as animal feed.
But more though you said electric vehicles are 69% efficient at moving energy from storage to wheels but also negated the factor of how the energy is produced and the losses faced along the way with transmission in power lines and transformers etc
Plus a last thing to be a bit nit-picky, a lot of companies here in the UK such as McDonald's recycle their fryer oil into biodiesel essentially helping with waste products from their restaurants and technically the oils are produced from plants as well.
69% should get you from electricity production to the wheels although it should be better than that for the most efficient such as Teslas.
Also, when making ethanol or biodiesel only parts of the grain is used. Soybeans are pressed, the oils removed, and the protein and fiber still go on to make animal feed called soy meal. Same is true for ethanol, starch is used to make ethanol, and then oil, protein, and fiber go on for animal feeds. They're sold as DDGS. So in both cases the fuel is slapped with the carbon penalty, but there is a good amount of energy at those facilities being used to optimize the feed value of the byproduct.
@@colingenge9999 only issue is he said from storage to wheels not from production to wheels :l
So technically not taking into account a lot of different steps
@@SJR275 Agreed, storage to wheels. It should have been production to wheels where in each case electricity is used to create a liquid fuel and in the EV case it comes over the wires to the battery then to the wheels. The EV route is somewhere between 5 and 15 times more effective use of energy from electricity to wheels.
never included in the liquid fuel is the Nitrous Oxides and particulates that damage health and green house gases.
EV are 69% energy efficient. That includes from storage to the wheels. You clearly are not getting this. What is involved in the storage into the battery bank? The energy that is generated ... duh!!!! There is very lil energy loss from the battery to the electric motor, as they have very lil heat loss being generated. If the energy came from truly all green sources, the energy efficiency would be more, but there would still be energy loss simply from the mining / harvesting of the raw materials. Which btw is also included in that energy efficient quotient.
The energy loss from the transmission of that energy from the power plants to the load (in this case the batteries in your EV) is on average around 5%. The energy loss from the battery to the motors is less than that. So to be generous lets say 10% energy loss just from moving that energy from the power plant to the motor. Electric wires and electric motors do put of some heat, but not that much. You can touch both just fine without burning yourself. Where do you think the rest of that 21% energy loss is coming from?
The main difference for me is that I can put solar panels on my house and charge and drive my car on sunlight. I could never grow and process enough corn to make my own biofuel.
You're overestimating either how much power solar panels can produce, or how big your roof is. And underestimating how much solar panels cost relative to their lifespan and how much power they actually produce, for that matter.
@@Sebastian_Hahn I have a 6.9kw system on my roof, consisting of 19 panels. With the average of 5 hours of direct sun a day, I would generate over 34kwh of power daily. That's over a 100 miles of range in my Tesla model Y, more than enough for my daily drives. So, I think I'm looking at it pretty clearly.
@@kevincourcey813 I'd like to see you actually try to live that way, powering your car and home with only solar panels, and see if it pans out as smoothly as you're claiming it will. Do it for a year and post your results.
@@Sebastian_Hahn I never claimed to be completely self-sufficient on solar alone. I only said I could drive my car on the energy produced by the panels, i.e. "on sunlight."
@@kevincourcey813 "could possibly do" and "is actually practical to do" are entirely different things.
For certain applications (legacy, heavy aviation ect)this is an option. But for simple ground transportation battery electric has too many advantages. Price is going to fall in line, range is going up and reliability is better than anything internal combustion has to offer. And remember most of all It is far easier to make Electrons then it is to make hydrocarbons.
The big issue that most folks forget about with electric vehicles, is the cost and environmental impact of the rare metals used to make the batteries.
@@notajp the impact, while being a serious problem, is still smaller than that if fossil fuels. Additionally we can greatly decrease that impact by recycling most of those resources. There will never be an energy source that is 100% environmentally friendly.
PARTICULATES: Before efuels can even start to be considered as a street level fuel there is the issue of poisonous particulate and gas emissions that are literally killing people in the cities. Other than CO2 I didn't notice any mention of exhaust related deaths that might be caused by efuels when used as an alternative to electric road transport.
Literally killing people in the cities?
@@alexandermelbaus2351 Yes, litterally. Just search for "Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah" who's death certificate lists "air pollution" as a cause of her death in 2013. Also the many, many, studies showing a correlation between street level air pollution and deaths. Some of these show a nearly hour by hour match.
It is not just some theory, but widely accepted scientific knowledge. Also why, outside of the USA, so many cities have been restricting traffic and creating no car zones well before electric cars were available as an alternative.
@@johnpublicprofile6261 This might be a problem in select areas, cities in China that have very high populations, industrial areas in and around the city.
This is not something that is an issue in most European founded countries.
@@alexandermelbaus2351
How about Melbourne? Or the UK?
"The results of this study have shown that ambient air
pollution in Melbourne is associated with increases in
daily mortality. Although all the air pollutants under
consideration, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, fine particles and
carbon monoxide, were found to be associated with daily
mortality, the strongest associations were observed for
ozone and nitrogen dioxide. The main sources of these
pollutants in Melbourne are motor vehicles and industry,
and the results suggest that strategies to reduce these
pollutants are important to reduce the risk of adverse
health effects arising from exposure. The results of this
study are consistent with other studies conducted within
Australia and overseas" Victoria Environmental Protection Agency study of 1991-1996 data
"Air pollution is the biggest environmental threat to health in the UK, with between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths a year attributed to long-term exposure. There is strong evidence that air pollution causes the development of coronary heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and lung cancer, and exacerbates asthma." www.gov.uk/government/news/public-health-england-publishes-air-pollution-evidence-review
The hydrogen needed for synthetic fuels is also a big hurdle. It only makes sense if it is produced with green electrolysis. Producing hydrogen from natural gas as is mostly done today, adds CO2 emissions.
But there is already insufficient green electricity. And it makes more sense to put that directly into EV’s, with the efficiencies taken into account.
and that is exactly why we are going to have to turn to nuclear. No matter the solution it always comes back to not having enough c02 free energy to use to start the process to make something else c02 free. We will never be able to build enough wind and solar to make green hydrogen, c02 free fertilizer, concrete and steel cheap enough. Not to mention all the water we are going to need to desalinate and c02 we will need to extract from the air, both require massive amounts of energy 100% of the time.
...until there us a superabundance of renewable energy. Coming soon!
Plus bevore you put the hydrogen into a processing plant to get fuel out of it...you could just use the hydrogine itself with an electric engine.
@@instanoodles I'm a huge supporter of expanding nuclear fission, but fuel synthesis is the *perfect* application for intermittents like wind and solar, and they can be turned up far more quickly and easily than nuclear plants. I'd say we should save nuclear for grid baseload where we need reliable energy, and dedicated wind/solar to fuel synthesis.
@@instanoodles Focusing on CO2 is a grave mistake. Frankly, we don't have enough fossil fuels either, but we should use everything we have left. We are looking at a full blown global energy crisis in the near future. People should stop wringing their hands over CO2, which has never been demonstrated to a high order of probability to warm the world, and if it did, that would be a positive outcome, not a negative outcome. Right now, the world is about 1 degree Celsius above another Little Ice Age. No way is that the optimum temperature.
Very interesting. My take on this is that someone should be looking into hybrid synth/electric. In the US a lot of travel is longer distance where hybrid extends electric range nicely. The thing we really need though is a leap in energy storage, might be interesting to see if synth can be used to somehow create a new storage medium.
I posted this earlier but there's an article about a modified Tesla with an onboard gas powered generator. It has insane range.
I feel like replacing half the battery pack with a replaceable and recyclable aluminum-air battery or a hydrogen fuel cell with solid-state storage for longer trips while using the regular rechargeable batteries for short to medium trips would be a lot simpler and more effective than making a plug-in hybrid with a bigger battery.
Just no. There are no benefits to this path.
Battery capacity is good as it is today, and is getting better quickly. Full electric vehicles are superior in every way, no reason to add in a bunch of moving parts that reduce efficiency
It's all about efficiency guys, as Matt says in the video you're commenting on. Synth fuels just don't stack up.
Actually I'm on par with this, simply cause I live in Australia, enough said
Surprisingly unbiased. This is what informational videos should be. Good work.
Love all your vids. Keep up the great work.
As long as renewable energy generation is less than our energy consumption the most efficient consumption wins in my mind. The knocks against the CO2 emissions during the manufacture or operation of an EV only exists as long as those industries remain fossil-fuel based. I don't know the energy intensity per unit of mass of an EV vs. an ICE vehicle but if one assumes similar energy intensities this is only a 10-20% penalty for EV, the difference in mass vs. the equivalent ICE. Since the energy intensity of manufacture seems to come up frequently on this channel it would be nice to see a head-to-head comparison.
If land is viewed for its capacity to generate energy the extremely low efficiency of a photosynthesis-based process drives the utilization factor per unit area over an order of magnitude below photovoltaics, for instance, at today's efficiencies. Even if photovoltaics can only increase by 50-100% in the future I have heard no path to photosynthesis-based processes, growth and processing, to even grow to today's photovoltaic efficiency.
Finally, there are competitive means of producing electricity in an environmentally safe manner in practically any region of the globe. Biofuels relying on land crops require the land to be arable. Regions that can economically grow the crops are not next door to where the bulk of the fuel derived from those crops would be consumed.
In summary, exactly like H2, if one can map a path to no-cost renewable energy, then either provides a more compact form of transporting energy. Until then they seem more a research project to reduce their other environmental impacts and/or niche market that shrinks as battery specific energy density expands.
>The knocks against the CO2 emissions during the manufacture or operation of an EV only exists as long as those industries remain fossil-fuel based.
They will be.
@@connorcampbell5274 Electrical mining equipment is already starting to be deployed. The electricity used during refining progressively increases in the percentage produced without fossil fuels.
I don't expect the decarbonization to be very rapid initially, but I expect steady progress. To expect current practices to remain at status quo seems unrealistic in the face of climate change and the efforts to influence change throughout the world.
@@mrhickman53 I should clarify. Heavy industry, aviation, and distance hauling will always be hydrocarbon dependent. Really any specialy vehicle will be. It might not always be fossil fuel dependent, but it will run on hydrocarbons at the end of the day.
Batteries will never be dense enough. They will never be light enough. They will never have the capacity.
@@connorcampbell5274 I don't think you recognize the erosion of fossil fuels already starting in all three of the industries you've cited.
Motive power in heavy industry is straightforward to electrify in many situations as many industries are already heavy consumers of electricity. The relatively short mission permits several opportunities for charging either by catenary or inductive charging, placing only a high power demand on the batteries, not necessarily energy density.
Much effort is being placed in electrifying regional aviation. Since fuel cost is a major component of aviation, the more cost efficient operation will drive innovation that eventually erodes demand for longer routes.
Similarly, for the surface transportation industry economics will drive the change. In the US, which is somewhat unique for its long travel distances, over 50% of the ton-miles of cargo moved moves less than 500 miles, the distance promised by the long-range version of the Tesla Semi which is starting to ship the end of this year. The significantly lower cost of energy for such a vehicle will drive all routes that are easily covered to BEV and drive innovation in scheduling, platooning and whatever to start eroding the fossil-fuel dominance of longer routes.
"Never" is a very strong word and, when faced simultaneously with crisis and economic opportunity, should be used very carefully.
An issue you skip over is that combustion engines don’t only emit co2. They also emit a host of other substances, like particular matter causing health issues and nitrogen compounds causing biodiversity problems. EVs have their own share of problems ofc, including greater particular matter caused by their higher tire wear due to their high mass.
Don't forget about groundwater annihilation near lithium fields...
Also where it comes the electricity, as long as the electricity comes from thermoelectric plants it remains fossil energy.
A significant motivation for the motor vehicle industry to switch over to electric, is that it gets the emissions regulators off their backs. Current emission standards for diesel engines require the use of expensive aftertreatment which ends up being a problem for end users, because there have been many reliability and durability problems. Euro 7 emission standards for cars and light trucks are in the foreseeable future and are at the moment considered unachievable without switching a considerable part of the production to EV and making use of fleet averaging. Switching to EV makes all this go away. Of course, there is an argument that it makes it "somebody else's problem", but if you are in the business of building motor vehicles, "somebody else's problem" is not a problem.
In the past I was assigned to a project that worked on the development of native prairie grass cultivars as an alternative source of biomass for biofuel production. It's far from a perfect solution, but what we were finding is that we were able to convert marginal (less than productive) crop land into restored native grassland that could source cost competative biofuel. What's more is that we were finding that as we altered the management of these grasses (i.e. delayed harvesting compared to forage grass), we could encourage nesting of certain native bird species (bobolink in particular) among other things. Again, I don't believe that biofuel is the best solution moving forward, but there can be amazing benefits to them if implemented properly!
Hey Matt! Do you think these synthetic fuels could help smooth out renewable sources? Like maybe a huge solar panel farm in the desert could produce e fuel that i shipped elsewhere?
I used to make my own bio-diesel from spent frying oil, from restaurants. If I didn’t count my time, it would cost me about $2.50/gal. That said, trying to make this a business was cost prohibitive, and not enough availability of feedstock. However, it satisfied my family’s needs for lower cost transportation, and I love to putter with this sort of stuff.
Unfortunately, I think, the ROI still is favorable for fossil fuels. Imho, we will have to see very expensive fuel prices to make bio-fuels an attractive choice. I wish it weren’t so.
If you're using any of that biodiesel for bulk heating, I've discovered that you can dissolve straight (filtered) WVO into gasoline (60:40'ish) and get a low enough flashpoint and high enough stoichiometric combustion ratio to make it run great in forced-air diesel/kerosene heaters. :)
My biodiesel process costs me about the same; are you recovering methanol from the glycerol after separation? Pump diesel is around $6/gallon here, so in my case it's still economically favorable.
@@GordLamb
Yes I did. That is what helped with the cost.
Hey, this sound really interesting. Do you have any good resources that I could use to study this process?
@@HakuTemaki unfortunately not. It’s been over a decade since I made any bio-diesel, or studied what is going on in the field. That said, I would imagine there is still information out there.
It doesn't make the combustion engine more efficient, doesn't make it less complicated, doesn't make it less dirty etc....
Maybe it is a short term solution for some specific applications. But aside from the stupid co2, it seems more complicated and more destructive than regular fuel.
I'm on the electric side. The only "problem" right now with electric vehicles is the energy storage. Everything else is simple and reliable.
It does make ICE's less dirty, 100%. In the case of waste food oils for biodiesel, if we put that oil in the environment, it becomes methane which is worse than CO2. NOT ONLY THAT. if we put that waste food oil into landfills, it leaches in to aquifers, rivers, lakes, spill ways, and oceans, killing surface plankton and algea we need for turning CO2 in to O2 and feeding the rest of the eco system.
Meanwhile,.the CO2 to produce lithium ion batteries is an unmitigated disaster. If you use TELSA's own numbers, it's over 70 kg of CO2 per KWH over the total lifecycle of the battery.
A Tesla battery is 100kwh. That's 7000kg of CO2 before the TESLA leaves the factory. That's the equivalent of 650 gallons of gasoline.
Then you produce CO2 from dirty grids like america which is 76% non-renewable.
A Biodiesel car is more carbon neutral than an EV.
And before you reply "ice cars require CO2 to make, too":
1. Every other component is one fifth the CO2 to produce than the battery
2. Tesla's, without the battery, are still heavier than the equivalent ICE car, meaning the electric vehicle is equal or worse with the battery removed.
This is using TESLAs numbers.
But Tesla doesn't produce 100% of their batteries. Infact. They use Chinese batteries for all the vehicles not in America
Chinese manufacturing produced batteries at up to 135kg CO2 per kWh, or 13500kg CO2 per Tesla. That's the equivalent to 13000 gallons of gasoline.
EV'snare green washing.
@@coreyfro Yes the recycling of waste food oils is really a good point.
With dirty I mean it is still burning stuff and blowing the dirt (much more than just clean gases like co2) out in the air.
I don't care that much about co2, it doesn't mean we shouldn't reduce the production of it. I just think our climate is MUCH more complicated than our governments say.
I think our planet can still handle the amount of co2. Take a look at big smog filled city's and tell me again that combustion engines are clean, no matter what you burn in it😉.
Like I said, the only technical problem with EV's is the energy storage.
@@-Tris- my 30 year old truck running on biodiesel doesn't produce soot. Sorry diesel is a bygone era before turbo diesel engines.
Modern diesels don't even produce NOX emissions.
They are very clean. Practically only CO2.
@@coreyfro do you know anything about how they produce diesel? Because if you did truly know anything at all about diesel production.
You'd know that just refining it consumes cobalt, water and massive amounts of electricity.
How about that little injectable blue fluid for all those supposedly clean diesels? Hmm something about urea used to make it requiring mining and more energy. 🤔
Synfuel is also made from landfill waste. The carbon rich waste is broken down into CO and oxygen in a gasifier, which is refined into synfuel. Great videos BTW. Look for me on the pateon side as soon as I learn how to do that.
What I would like to see in this debate is the relative emissions between building a new electric car and keeping older petrol cars on the road. I always assumed the most emissions came from creating the car not it’s running costs. Also how much co2 actually comes from vehicles compared to other sources?
I feel as if synthetic fuels are less about saying the planet and more about saving the ICE, which is frankly admirable but on a smaller scale
As long as there are ICE because there are not enough EV’s build yet the E-Fuels can help moving countries that do not have EV’s yet away from oil.
I agree. It very much feels like companies just trying to figure out a way to keep us buying fuel from them on a daily basis.
@@Lewis94444 internal combustion engine. So your normal gas powered car that you see on the road today.
@@Lewis94444 thanks! I hope you find my stuff helpful :-)
saving ICE cars is not admirable.
Something else to consider is that battery tech is evolving quickly. EVs and their batteries will likely become much more efficient over the next 20 years, whereas ICE is pretty stuck at this point and there's probably less room for efficiency gains with biofuels and the like. For instance, if sodium batteries become viable for mobile applications, that itself would drastically improve the case for EVs. Or consider how much cleaner they'll be once our grid becomes renewable.
At the same time, EVs have potential in areas ICE can't touch: grid connection, home battery backup, built in solar to power the car, charging-while-driving, and more.
EV is the future.
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket Ford F150 ev
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket : Also EV battery recycling is already a thing and it's a growing market, esp as new methods emerge to more effectively do so.
No, electricity isn't the future, the ecology yes is it, if we talk about ecology, we would talk about all of kind of biofuel, between them, renewable diesel HVO and bioelectricity.
Missed a few points.. fuel can be produced as a battery. Excess solar can produce fuel for gas heating and can be used to stockpile energy .. the energy in fuel already has all of the infrastructure required to move and distribute..there are many industries that will take a long time to electrify. I.e. farming. Flight. Shipping, heating. , industrial process.
The real solution to the issues of both EV and combustion engines is to design cities so that public transit, walking, and cycling are better than driving. And to make cities appealing to people instead of whatever most US cities are at this point. The issues of vehicles will be a lot more manageable once the majority of people no longer want or need to drive.
So who is going to pay for 100 trillion deal? In case you are not aware of something called humanity, all its existence people have wanted to own things. We do not want to live in cookie cutter apartments. If your masters really think that humans will be happy not owning anything at all, not even the clothes on their backs, they do not know humanity.
@@roberthicks1612 wtf are you on about? $100 trillion to who or what? I never said anything about soulless apartments. I'm not sure if you're unable to read, are a bot, or are just so mentally incoherent that you are unable to comprehend what I wrote.
This is like creating a more environment-friendly film when digital cameras started taking over. It's pointless now. EVs are taking over the market. No need to transport the fuel to gas stations, then for you to go to a gas station (you have the choice of charging at home), no waiting in lines or inhaling fuels.
Yeah, I agree. Mr. Ferrell seems to have set up something of a straw man, here. Although I appreciate the thoroughness of his analysis, it's really the cost that is making synthetic fuels a non-starter. Personally, I don't think that the simplicity of the electric motor is talked up enough. I believe that it is the much lower maintenance costs of electric vehicles that will ultimately win over the public. Replacing mufflers, oil, fuel pumps, timing belts, transmissions and the frequency of brake pad replacement--things that add greatly to the cost and inconvenience of ICE vehicles--will be things of the past. As people are hit with a $3000 bill to replace a transmission or $300 for a fuel pump and witness their EV neighbors never having to deal with these headaches, they're going to change their minds. No matter how much they like the VROOOM VROOOM right now. Save that for a hobby vehicle.
The problem with EVs is the lack of enough lithium in the world for everyone to drive one. Mining for lithium it’s horrible for the environment not to mention you’re going to more electricity for the cars. Either you’re going to burn more coal or go nuclear. Nuclear is the cleaner more affective option but people are afraid of it. Wind and solar just doesn’t create enough power
If you lived near a lithium leaching field you would probably think differently. The problem isn't the efficiency of the car, it's the emissions generated to produce the car itself ("embodied energy", Google it), and an EV doesn't really have any advantage over ICE in that respect. ICE actually has a manufacturing advantage because there's steel everywhere, unlike lithium.
@@Addy262 nuclear is the best source, but is too delicate and dangerous in the hands of idiots, and humans are idiots by nature, some more than others, but idiots nonetheless
One of downsides of biofuel, is location of co2 emission. Even if the fuel is co2 neutral or negative, the emission still happens in urban areas, making it unhealthier to live there. And most of the miles are still driven in urban areas. EV for me!
Good point. Yea I’ve also hoped on the EV train and love it. Hoping the bicycle and public transit infrastructure in my area gets built up soon though so I can start using an e bike more.
I’m not sure I understand; wouldn’t an SUV running on biofuel be better than one running on gasoline from a standpoint of emissions/ air quality?
@@christians131 Biofuel or not, the same amount of CO2 is produced when burning it. Even if there was CO2 reduction when producing it, releasing CO2 in a city is still an issue we do not want.
EVs are more polluting then a synthetic fuel because of how CO2 emission happens when building batteries.
@@wraldpyk6698 You do know CO2 is not toxic or polluting ? The smog is not caused by CO2 but by byproducts of combustion. You really think breathing car exhaust is the same as breathing the air of a human exhaling ?
I’m on my 2nd Tesla EV and never returning to ice. I love charging at home, never stopping at a gas station, no service, great acceleration, ability to run AC or heat while not in car, and so much more.
Too bad its a 2 year wait to buy one.
@@rscott2247 Of course, this is a gross exaggeration. I was in a Kia showroom a few weeks and there was a red EV6 on the floor ready for immediate delivery. While it had an ugly $5000 surcharge, sales person said they will negotiate. You can get Hyundai Ionic 5’s and VW iD4 in under 3 months. You’ll find reasonable lead time on Polestar, Chevy Bolt, and Nissan Leaf. All Tesla’s and Ford F150s are long lead time.
This video was released on 15 of February 2022, and a lot has happened since (at least here in Europe). Price comparison right now doesn't seem to be that much bad, especially when we can have shortly fuel demands that cannot be secured in any way.
I have some problems with some of the things you are saying. But I’m glad you are showing the world another option. Brazil has over 40,000 servos and all of them sell a blend of ethanol from e10 to e100 but no one talks about it. Here in Australia e85 is around $1.60 a litre, cheaper than premium
We need more servos with E85 here, though im not sure there is enough demand for it especially considering most cars cant run it ):. Would love to run my car on E85 and crank the boost and timing a bit for that extra power but it would eat through my fuel system and Id prolly run lean on startup considering how much extra injector capacity is needed for E85.
e-fuels will probably only be used for new high performance vehicles (i mean, it is getting dev'd by BMW and Porsche) or modified cars, and the rest of us get EV's. Which is fine by me. Keep the cool cars, everyone that drives a camry gets an EV, all is well.
@@Byefriendo Around here I can get E30, its cheaper and my car runs great on it. I grad it whenever I can.
also does not mention that building new cars of any kind even electric is alot worse than using old cars
I used to own an E85 fuel car and fueled it E85 routinely until I learned the facts, sold it and bought an EV, which is a much better car that I fuel at home, with my own solar panels and small wind turbine. The future for transportation is definitely electric.
The fact that you bought a vehicle that was "E85" compatible yells me how dumb you really are!
ALL vehicles are biofuel compatible!
@@charlieodom9107 You don't know much about engines, do you. E85 has a much higher moisture content, meaning if you use it on a car with a steel block, it will cause corrosion over time. Not all cars are e85 compatible.
@@richardmillhousenixon you are a moron if you think that!!!
@@richardmillhousenixon I guess the engineers at GM don't know shit about engines then huh? They have made E85 compatible iron block engines for decades.
@@charlieodom9107 The fuel system must be designed to deliver more fuel. Every part of the system needs to be alcohol compatible. Some parts to consider are the following:
Fuel lines and hoses, especially inside the tank.
O-rings and seals in the injectors, filters, couplings, and sending unit.
Fuel Pressure Regulator.
Fuel Filters, Stainless mesh filters are best.
The Fuel Injectors and The Fuel Pump need to be compatible with E85 and sized to deliver more fuel.
You may need a cooler spark plug to reduce the risk of pre-ignition.
I worked for a company that recycled tyres, an often forgotten waste product of all vehicles.
When I left they were looking at making diesel from the rubber crumb, although I'm sure this would have a very similar environmental impact it takes care of a waste product that is often dumped.
I'd also be interested in learning more about bio fuel made from hemp as it is a fast growing plant
Sometimes that type of upcycling is the best we can do with those waste products.
Matt. Interesting video. Keep up the good work. Please dig deeper into the inefficiencies and negative externalities of biofuels. My back of the envelope calculations show that solar farms produce more than 100 times more miles per acre than biofuels. Photosynthesis is not efficient at turning sunlight into usable energy. The figures I've seen shows that corn plants are about 0.25 percent efficient at turning sunlight into the corn kernels that are used to produce ethanol, while the current generation of solar cells convert about 21% of sunlight into electricity. In addition, electric motors are more efficient at turning electricity into motion than internal combustion engines that have relatively low thermal efficiency.
Slight problem though. In reality we need to go carbon negative. At least in the short term.
Net zero solutions don't deal with all the emissions we have already dumped into our atmosphere.
Some sectors are going to be extremely difficult to decarbonize quickly (ie. planes, shipping, etc.). Getting those to carbon neutral seems like a big win to me ... but to your point, we still have to go further in other areas.
@@UndecidedMF let’s not forget construction, mining, transportation with trains….. all the millions of oil byproducts, all the fuels used for heating/cocking……. Electricity and batteries alone will not solve the problem.
The production of electric vehicles and the installation of solar/windfarms/renewable energies aren’t also energy negative or whatever. Batteries still haven’t proven to be used in the heavy industry.
@@UndecidedMF aviation will need at least until around 2035 to see the first short-haul hydrogen fuel cell powered planes. There's a lot of research going on in the sector to reduce its footprint but as you pointed out it's a long process. Synthetic Fuels or SAFs (in airline jargon) are already being mixed into standard Jet A-1 Fuels which result in a reduction if emissions as well. SAF will be needed in the airline industry during the transition and it will be not before even longer (2050 or beyond) until we see hydrogen fuel cell based airplanes fly long-haul routes like the A350 or B787 are capable of. But a lot is going on in the airline industry to improve its carbon footprint.
@@UndecidedMF absolutely any step forward is a victory and less damage we have to worry about fixing down the road.
Hey Matt. Your channel is one of my favorites. I find the way to consider alternatives is well researched and well communicated. Great job and thank you for what you give us all.
Except it wasn't. He neglected the successful and existing industry based on waste sources of feedstock. This segment exists, is substantial, and growing exponentially. Already hundreds of millions of tons are produced annually including billions of gallons of biodiesel, all from waste.
Keywords: Oakland, Neste, 750,000xpounds.
I used to drive an old Mercedes diesel which I ran on BioDiesel… This was the old BioDiesel that was just used vegetable oil and lye… not the new engineered stuff. The appeal was that it was renewable, and while not quite carbon neutral it had a smaller carbon footprint than Dino diesel or gasoline. In terms of cost it was pretty much the same (I live in California were gas prices are high)… But with any older car (mine was 40 years old) maintenance made daily driving difficult. I really want an electric car, but living in a city and only having street parking as an option makes this a daunting prospect, as I have no place to charge it.
You can use wood pulp from processes like saw mills and the paper industry to make fuels like Jet-A which ultimately could be refined into diesel or home heating fuel.
One critical thing you missed in terms of the impact of both eFuel and biofuel production is the carbon cost of the electrolysis step. In order to provide the hydrogen necessary for electrolysis, natural gas is the leading industry source, where it’s combusted to produce hydrogen and CO2. Without a carbon neutral and scalable way to preform electrolysis, it is extremely dishonest to paint these alternative fuels as carbon neutral, as their inputs are not.
I may be off but I think this falls under common knowledge of the people watching this channel. Most of us know that currently almost all industrial hydrogen production is from fossil feedstocks (NG), and our speculations about technologies that will use hydrogen as part of a future carbon neutral strategy are all presuming a shift over to non-fossil sources for that hydrogen. The same assumptions are made in discussion about Fuel Cells or direct hydrogen combustion.
Through out the entire video, he didn't really talk about processes which used this.
Kinda moot, anyway. Most biofuels are derived from waste, which requires no additional water to produce since the product is recycled. A fact totally ignored by this video.
As I cannot share links, I will simple give you the keywords "Neste Oakland 750000 pounds" for an example of how Oakland has a net zero fleet of diesels without any additional water, fertilizer, arable land burden.
Hi Matt, Thank you for the informative video. I however missed you mentioning HVO as a synthetic fuel. HVO is currently being made by lots of traditional Oil companies as a renewable fuel source. With current technology it is also possible to create Sustainable Aviation Fuel SAF. With some lubricity additives HVO can be used 100% in Diesel engines and is a good short to midterm solution to reduce emissions for example transportation companies. Certain companies are creating HVO out of waste and residues of other production streams, for example the fatty acid distillate from vegetable oils that cannot be used in food and soap products. If you are interest you should lookup HVO and the companies that are currently making it and or investing in this technology.
Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) is a bio-based liquid fuel who’s source is vegetable oils, such as rapeseed, sunflower, soybean, and palm oil, as well as animal fats
Complete disaster in every way.
@@williamlloyd3769 Except they use waste oil as feedstock
Most biofuels are derived from waste, which requires no additional water to produce since the product is recycled. A fact totally ignored by this video.
As I cannot share links, I will simple give you the keywords "Neste Oakland 750000 pounds" for an example of how Oakland has a net zero fleet of diesels without any additional water, fertilizer, arable land burden.
@@whowhy9023 You're right, Pepsico's 7 million acres of corn for artificial sweetener must be protected. Or is it the use of soap that you object to?
Another thing to look at is hemp. Aside from its other general uses for textiles, ropes, and a variety of other products including car bodies, it can be used to produce a lot of bio-fuel. If I'm not mistaken the hemp plant has way more usable mass than pretty much any other crop grown in the USA.
I actually subscribed to an annual membership to Brilliant. I started out doing loads of their lessons every day but before I got to the end of the first free month I already got bored. And I didn't cancel my subscription so now I'm paying for a service I never use like probably most people who subscribe to Brilliant.
A power strategy not mentioned was time of use production, There are times when wind and solar provide more power than can be easily be used. Taking this power and making green fuel instead of using battery's might lower the cost of the fuel overall.
Thanks for sharing that point of view. We do have a lot of excess potential we aren't tapping into yet.
Yes, using „excess“ / dirt cheap renewable energy during peak times to produce hydrogen / e-fuels is a way to significantly reduce costs.
We‘ll need that hydrogen for A LOT of things:
- energy storage for the night and periods when there‘s no wind
- industrial applications (e.g. to produce steel carbon-free)
- transportation: ships, airplanes, heavy machinery, busses etc.
For cars, batteries are WAY more efficient (and cheaper) than going the e-fuel / hydrogen route. We need all that hydrogen for everything else.
Plus: People will learn quickly that they can charge their electric cars during peak solar times basically for free.
If you load the battery with this excess power you have the low cost of energy plus the high efficiency of electric power.
Plus charging the battery just in those minutes there is excess power in the grid is much easier than starting and stopping a chemical process.
@@UndecidedMF please have your social media team monitor you site, I am getting spammed from your connection
@@paperburn you mean you're getting ads?
It's good to have alternatives. Personally I prefer the performance and quietness with my electric car. To have zero tailpipe emissions aint too shabby either.
You might want to check out the Haru Oni project in Chile. One thing e-fuels can do it transport energy generated where the resource is very high but with no local market to places that need fuel. Also one of the leading countries in bio-fuel use is Brazil. All new cars sold there must be dual fuel, capable of running on gasoline or ethanol.
So there are two things about batteries that are magnitude order worse than fuel. The energy density, and the miles of range per minute of refueling/recharging. Due to low energy density, batteries will not work for commercial passenger aviation. They probably will not work for cargo ships and trains also. This means biofuels will be essential for portions of our transportation sector. That means they will get produced, and economy of scale will probably bring the cost down. When biofuels are more commonplace, passenger car consumers will want a biofuel car due to the second limitation of batteries (e.g. miles of range per minute of refueling/recharging. The difference here with fuel is huge. This is important when it comes to the throughput of recharging facilities. To match the throughput of a conventional gas station, a recharging facility would have to be the size of an airport (exaggerating a bit). This will make holiday road trips impossible, and people will hate there EV after waiting hours to charge their vehicle when trying to get to Grandma's for Thanksgiving. They will be standing in line for a biofuel car, or convert there existing car.
E-Fuels can follow the ICE cars that are exported to other countries. EV’s will replace ICE in the EU, US, Canada, Australia/NZ and Asia ( China, Japan, South korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong) first so the newer ICE that are no longer wanted are exported to Africa, the rest of Asia and South america. Incorporating E-Fuel’s in those countries can make those cars cleaner for the atmosphere untill there countries will get more EV’s eventually.
Unfortunately the countries you have mentioned also have lots of sunshine and potential for solar power, therefore they could electrify faster and get rid of the shackles of the oil industry even if they do it via electric scooters and motorcycles rather than cars.
@@eclecticcyclist You can make Efuel with the fischer tropsch process based on solar energy, in this way each country can have his own source of fuel, even remote locations because you dont have to rely on transport so much. The countries should offcource focus on electric mobililty, specially in the urban cities but lack of production capacity for EV's, batteries and battery materials will be a bottleneck for the speed of transition. So when the countries i mentioned are rapidly switching to EV's and the second hands are exported to other countries, they could focus on switching from oil to E-Fuels untill the EV's can catch up with demand. Replacing the older and dirtier cars they use now with newer cleaner versions but can use E-Fuels from local production.
@@PM_82 When very few of Africa's population even has motorised transport, why would they opt for an expensive system like E-fuelled ICE vehicles and not go with super efficient EVs after all they'd save on electicity production expenditure?
@@eclecticcyclist You are not seeing the big picture, with the ICE vehicles lossing use in the countries i mentioned the second hand cars are beeing exported to for instance africa making motorised transport more availible for cheap because traders will take all they can get for those cars. Super efficient EV's will not be availible in enough supply to fill the need of all the world, they can not build them fast enough and battery materials are not availible like lithium hydroxide, graphite anode materials etc. With the downturn of gasoline use in the EV countries they will try to move the oil towards but those countries but also the E fuel that is now mixed with gasoline to E90-E85 will seen less demand and Africa countries can make these E fuels themself with better technology without having to rely on the oil companies. Use EV where possible with new vehicles but the used ICE fleet could move towards E-Fuel
@@PM_82 It is you who is not seeing the big picture. In Asia the big growth area is in cheap to fuel e-scooters and micro EVs, there's no reson to imagine that not being the case in most of Africa.
You don't have to "be cynic to see biofuels as a way to create jobs," that's literally what the legislation (in the US) says. Algae looks slightly more promising, but it has a host of issues that need to be dealt with before it can be scaled up.
The problem here is that companies can make money researching suboptimal strategies. Here's another way to think about alternative fuel research: storage is the only real hurdle facing green electricity, but not everyone can access the "storage research funding pie." The optimal (and impossible) strategy would be to pool all of the funding and skills spread out among alternative fuel solutions (bio, synth, hydrogen, etc.) and put that into storage. But that's not possible because there are thousands of companies that can't compete effectively in the field of storage research. So they're trying to access investment in their specialization.
Over a decade ago, fuel companies said they could produce algae oil if the price of gas went to $4 a gallon and stayed their for 2 years. Prices of diesel has been above that for over a year now.
One thing I didn't see in your analysis. The cost of the cars themselves over say 10 years.
1. EV at $60K and low energy cost to recharge + battery replacement(s)
2. Internal combustion engine at $30K + cost of fuel.
Hello Matt, always enjoy your presentations. One part of this formula that didn't get a lot of representation is the cost and efficiency / inefficiency of fuel delivery from the point of production to the point of use. So for electric we have point of production nuclear coal and hydro as the main sources. We also have an infrastructure that is already in place that already needs a lot of maintenance and improvement. But the basic framework exists. So there is a cost to this infrastructure. On the fuels side no matter what fuel you are discussing there may or may not be an infrastructure hydrogen for example has much less of an infrastructure for delivery then oil-based fuels. But the main difference between electric and synthetic would be the efficiency of the fuel delivery system. With synthetic fuels you have the inefficiency of the end user built into the delivery system. The electric grid will be in place regardless of type of fuel used in vehicles. But the energy and resources use to move synthetic and petroleum fuels to their end destination would be eliminated or at least greatly reduced.
It takes two gallons of water to make a gallon of ethanol. And that's on top of the topsoil depletion and/or destruction of the ecosystem that was there before. This is why we need to THINK through major decisions instead of mindlessly believing anyone who claims to represent the interests of the environment.
Lol….. not all that corn is used for methanol and also a lot of crops/plants grows on very poor soils…. There is also recycling that produces biofuels.
@@carholic-sz3qv you know, beginning an idiotic response with LOL does not make you sound smart. Actually has the opposite effect.
And tearing out a mangrove swamp to plant biofuel stock has a gargantuan carbon footprint that takes the green car decades to make up. And it won't be on the road for decades, so...
@@jbtechcon7434 that’s what she said……
@@jbtechcon7434 are you serious!? There is no need to destroy mangroves or whatever, there are very resistant plants that are very suited for culture on bad soils, even by using very rapid growing algae it’s easy. The byproducts of that biomass can also be used for many other purposes.
Biofuel, much like other forms of energy, only makes sense in some parts of the world.
Australia🇦🇺 is a high consumer of fuels, but a low producer of bio-waste.
We cleared enormous land area for wheat crop, so further clearing for 🌽 would be a carbon positive activity. Having abundant battery metals which largely come from desert environments where ecological impact is low, many mine sites are already transitioning, or have already switched to renewables for their energy supply so that directly reduces the EV's baseline carbon footprint. And it is safe to say we have the solar energy capacity to go surplus #suncable
Thank you for addressing the process to get the rare earths ,
Seems to be forgotten quite frequently.
Funny, at the moment our gasoline (95 RON) costs about 2.4 € / L, it was 0.1-0.2€ more last month before government temporarily lowered the bio blending obligation. So $10 / gallon is already happening in Finland with fossil gasoline. We also have RE85 (R as in recycled 85% Ethanol) made out of bio waste instead of sugar cane or corn. NordFuel is planning a refinery that would make ethanol from wood (mainly from logging residue, such as crowns and branches, and also from sawdust) and as a bonus the refinery would generate biogas as a by-product.
When introducing the concept of taking CO2 from the atmosphere then combining it with hydrogen in the creation of synfuel, I wish you had addressed even a little the problem with creating the hydrogen. Hydrogen is not found by itself on Earth but must be created (usually through electrolysis), stored, and transported in order to be used. Each step has its own energy cost and losses even before the energy costs in the synfuel creation.
you don't have to use hydrogen. there is a process that Texas university that uses co2, water, high temps, and pressure to make the fuel. the big problem with it is that it takes more energy in then you get out. this isn't really problem if we combine it with say nuclear reactors, or possibly solar plants where the goal is to produce the fuel rather than grid energy. Most alternative fuels suffer from this inherent issue. the reason fossil fuels are easier is nature already did the work of converting that biomass over a long period of time into a fuel we can use.
It seems like a pretty glaring omission not to mention the impact of bio fuels on human health in cities. It's all well and good producing 'carbon neutral' diesel, but if you are extracting those toxins from rural areas (where carbon capture exists) and then dumping it all into population centres you are still moving backwards. Electric vehicles - even when they use dirty fuel for the electricity production - do the very opposite. They burn the dirty fuels away from population centres, then allow you to power your car with zero damage to the health of those around you.
Internal combustion has had its day. There is no reasonable debate for it to continue beyond the necessary transition period for general vehicle use.
Are you kidding me, really are you kidding me. So you are saying to power your prohibitively expensive battery powered car, it’s OK for a power plant that’s not near you to burn fossil fuels to create electricity to charge your battery so that you don’t have to have the carbon around your house or your town. Well aren’t you precious and delicate, did it ever occur to you that there are people that live around those power plants that are going to have to deal with the carbon that makes the electricity that charges your very expensive electric car. It’s almost arrogant of you to write what you just wrote about how great battery powered vehicles are because the carbon is somewhere else. You canceled your own argument with that statement.
Has it ever occurred to how damaging producing batteries are for the environment. How heavy they are and how they damage the asphalt roads made from oil that you love to drive on. Or the rare earth metals that are not abundant in the United States, but come from other countries, countries that use slave labor to take the cobalt out of the mountains in the ground so that you can have your precious battery operated run car so that you can be virtuous and signal to all around you how wonderful you are how you’re saving the environment around you. Well no one knows that the power that’s charging your battery is produced by fossil fuels 10 miles away pollutes the houses that are near that plant. There’s a whole bunch of other bad things about battery operated vehicles they definitely aren’t for everyone. But you wouldn’t know that because you sound like one of those limousine liberals who has it all and probably lives in a cushy environment where it’s warm all year. Did you know that 60% is the maximum you’ll get in a battery operated vehicle in cold climates in the winter when you’re running the heater. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Just pathetic do a little reading and research on batteries in all the negatives they are not carbon neutral.
@@space4099
Wow. It's difficult to know where to even start replying to this much dumb.
There's this thing, called wind... ever heard of it? Besides, extremely dense urban centers really shouldn't be using cars at all. All you get is stop-and-go traffic and it defeats the entire purpose of having personal transportation.
@@Sebastian_Hahn Wind, really? You know those big wind turbines they put up all over the place now many stories high, they’re made of carbon fiber. Did you know carbon fiber is not recyclable and those big turbines only have a life of about 20 years. Also the wind doesn’t blow all the time. Where I live sometimes we don’t get a win for days on end just still. It’ll be cloudy and still so very little solar and no wind. See you just sit there and wait with no power to run everything until the sun peaks out again and the wind picks up? It’s all very nice and it’s all neat and tidy but it doesn’t work for 100% of the time. People need power all the time here and there whenever mother nature decide you can have it. Quit demonizing fossil fuel and realize we need them to manage all the power needs of everybody along with solar and nuclear etc. As pretty as they are from a distance, these big dense cities are not healthy for anyone too crowded. Nice to visit have a dinner and look at a show, then get out of there as quickly as you can go home somewhere else where it’s peaceful.
@@space4099 Did you miss the context? I'm specifically referring to this guy's claims that synthetic fuels are going to move "toxins" (pollutants) from rural to urban areas and concentrate it there (because green rural areas are totally more polluted than the gray, concrete abominations known as cities). As if cities are encased in bubbles which prevent any air from escaping. Hence: wind. Atmospheric turbulence. Moves gases and particulate matter in the air around? Yeah? So maybe don't type out a mini-novel when you've completely misunderstood the comment you're replying to?
It feels like the answer to this question might not be one or the other, but a combination of both.
Hybrid vehicles are a compromise we've used in the past to make cars use less gasoline, bringing their fuel efficiency up to 100+ MPG. No reason one couldn't use the same technology, but optimized for biofuels. Make hybrid electric/biofuel engines to reduce the demand for Biofuel in the first place, so you just need less of it to run your car. Sure the price for Biofuel will be higher, but when you only need to buy gas a couple of times a year, thats a lot less of a big deal.
You could potentially mitigate the weaknesses of both platforms with this solution. If your EV runs out of power, it takes hours to recharge, and charging stations aren't super common. With a hybrid, you just start up the biofuel engine, and run on that for a bit, and recharge the car off of that. Meanwhile you can use the electric engine most of the time to save that expensive biofuel for when you really need it, mitigating the issue of the price of biofuel.
You can use the best parts of both of these technologies to cover the weaknesses of the other. And as the technologies independently improve (batteries get better, biofuel generation becomes more efficient/cheaper) these cars will only get better.
I'm missing the consideration for the upfront cost of EVs. Gas cars can be bought used and parts can be replaced by a reasonable handy person. Also, people living in apartments in cities with little parking space. In times when both parents have to be working to sustain a moderate family in Europe with a moderate to good income around €2800 both are working and €1900 one is working full time.
I suspect synthetic fuel will be limited to long haul planes, fighter jets and heritage vehicles rather than mass market. Could vertical farms be used for growing biofuels? They use far less land, water and chemicals.
That's just an unbelievably inefficient detour in terms of energy flow. We don't need plants to make hydrocarbons from sun and air, they're just cheaper because ground is cheap and gets sun for free.
@@majorfallacy5926 The easiest crops are starting to become cheaper in a vertical farm and I suspect that trend will continue. They can grow 24/7, 365 days of the year and not affected by bad weather or soil attrition. Therefore the big increase in productivity offsets other costs.
Those fuels can also be made 24/7 by using excess renewable energy too, since there isn’t enough batteries to store all the electricity produced
@@amb8274 when we produce an amount of surplus energy that needs storage, do you think it would be better to synthesize e-fuels via fischer tropsch with a 40-50% efficiency, or to use photosynthesis with a 3-5% efficiency plus overhead energy costs for running a vertical farm and processing biomass?
FYI at the polytechnic university of Zurich in Switzerland, they are working on producing Synthetic Fuels from, Sunlight, CO2 and Air. The airline industry will be relying on bio/synthetic fuels during its transition to newer propultion methods using hydrogen fuel cells for example. According to the industry, the first short-haul hydrogen planes could be expected by around 2035, whilst long haul flights would probably need until 2050 or later until they can be covered by fuel cell powered airplanes. But lots is happening in the airline industry and airbus to just name one, is investing a lot into developing the future of hydrogen in aviation.
"the process from storage to the wheels" -- I don't think that is how the energy electricity of EV's should be measured. For all types of fuel, we should start with the initial acquisition of the fuel or feedstock for the fuel. (And for biofuels, this should include the "fossil fuels" that go into modern agriculture.) I don't know whether synfuels, biofuels, or electricity come out as more efficient, but I'm pretty sure both will come out lower than the numbers in this vid when all energy inputs are factored into the equation. Also, cost should not be counted as "cost per ton of CO2." The economy does not run on CO2 except to the extent that it feeds our plants.
Add to the EV/ICE comparison the cost and environmental considerations of oil changes. Sure, you can recycle the oil but it’s expensive and what do you do with all the combustion byproducts sludge recovered from the oil? You also have to do all the transportation and refining energy computations.
Very interesting video! As you said, one of the big issues with e-fuels is their poor eficiency. And this is a big con since in the future it will be hard to achieve enough electricity coming from green sources. That meens that as a standard source, e-fuel just waist too much energy
When comparing the energy destiny of liquid fuels and electricity it's an error to equate batteries (a storage medium) with the energy they contain. After all, the considerable weight of fuel tanks isn't factored in to energy density of liquid fuel.
Comparing the energy density of liquid to electrons is much more complex than simply weighing it, and stored energy alone is useless without all the added technology needed to extract and transfer that energy into power and, specifically in transportation terms, motion.
Comparing the energy density of a liquid to that of electrons isn't like comparing apples to oranges, it's like comparing apples to atoms: pointless.
The weight of the fuel tank isn't considerable enough to matter. A car fuel tank typically weighs between 10 and 20kg. Let's take the higher value and say a 20kg tank, holding 70 litres of fuel (~50 kg). Total mass 70 kg. If you want you can also add the mass from all of the plumbing, the cyliders, etc. But then you would also have to add the weight of the electric motors to the EV.
At the end of the day the analysis is never going to get close to overcoming the gigantic density advantage of liquid fuels over batteries, no matter how we try to massage the numbers. We can fiddle the masses however we like, it's not going to get near the 2000% needed.
Very well put!
The higher potential energy of liquid hydrocarbon fuels is balanced by the MUCH lower efficiency of conversion to mechanical energy. Add to this the particulate and NOx emissions and EV's are really giving ICE a run for its money, biofuels notwithstanding.
@@gregbailey45 It's not. Fossil fuels are 20 times more energy dense than batteries. To be "balanced by their lower efficiency", EV's would have to be 20 times more efficient.
Why are EVs heavier?
Excellent video, focusing on the subject, informative, very much unbiased. A lot of EV programs could learn a lot from this presentation.
They put the last nail in the coffin of biofuel, back in the 19th Century, when the stopped cutting down trees in favor of digging coal. Unless somebody comes up with a stupidly simple an cheap way of growing bio-engineered algae that puts makes valuable chemicals, this is a dead end.
The real problem with electric vehicles is the longevity of the battery pack. So far, nobody can assure me that the battery pack on a ten year old vehicle will hold enough of a charge to get around town. Then, there is the matter that the less a car is driven, the greater the upfront cost is to any consideration of it's environmental impact. A VW Beetle, made in 1970 is a real gas guzzler, with half it's fuel going out the tail pipe unburned, but if you only drive it 10 miles a week, replacing it with anything that just about anything anybody could want would be a waste. The worst thing about EV's is that they will destroy the low end of the used car market.
As much as people talk about solar power and Hydrogen fuel cells, nobody ever talks about using solar power fuel cells to make Methanol. Once you have Methanol, you can run that through a catalytic process and build up Carbon chains to make gasoline and lubricating oils. It solves the problem of storing solar energy at the source.
It's very excellent knowledge sharing video with all aspects. Learned lot of hidden truth behind biofuel.
Finally it's Great Effort. Keep it up
The real question is: should we use as many cars as we do?
Converting to an electric ecosystem is a minimal optimization. Mass transit, urban design, telecommuting, and efficient distribution networks are where the real savings are at.
Yeah that's great for farmers, miners, mechanics, carpenters, construction men, police, EMCs, and any other professional that doesn't follow the transportation arteries.
@@mrwelshi7201 And? The majority of people moving away from reliance on automobiles makes the experience better for those who still need them. We need to move away from automobile dependence and allow people the freedom to walk, cycle, and utilize efficient and fast public mass transit to fill their transportation needs. And those vehicles that remain need to be electrified.
Side note: The corn used for ethanol production can still be used for food. They leftover grains are sold as distillers grains to cattle farms. Not the most efficient, but not completely lost.
Actually I'd say its more efficient. Whole corn has a lot of starch which is not needed in most rations as farmers want to feed protein and fats, not starch to their animals. And if the animals do need energy, there are cheapers ways to do it. But once converted to DDGS shipping the remaining protein is more efficient and the cost per pound of protein is usually lower than whole corn. And finally, it makes it much more flexible as a ration not only for hogs and cattle, but also in aquaculture.
As a battery. Fuel.production would be more convenient for long term storage and use. It would be more practical for places that have cooling or poor sunlight in winter. And also for remote areas not close to a grid
I’m a physician so I think about air quality and its affects on our health frequently. Even if you eliminate the problems of CO2 emissions (though this problem is much more complex than CO2 emissions, no matter how much climate change activists want to oversimplified his problem), the terrible energy conversion inefficiencies, and the accelerated depletion of our top growth soil, the major problem if e-fuels have boils down to reactive oxygen species and nitrogen oxide species emitted from the exhaust pipes of cars combusting hydrocarbons in their engines. This pollution takes untold millions of lives every year because all humans who reside in urban settings breathe in these toxic emission particles every second of every day for their entire lives. Just because it’s difficult to quantify doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It’s just good clinical common sense. Climate change on the other hand, has not verifiably taken a single life to date. So, coming from somebody who is a physician, not a climate change cultist, and they can bus train engine vehicle enthusiast, even I can say that electric battery vehicles are the way forward.
I think those climate activists totally have these issues on their radar. Can't say the same of politicians though...
Climate change has taken lives, it's made "natural" disasters much more frequent and some of those have been deadly. Just 10 years ago there were never many severe weather warnings where I live but now the past few years they happen multiple times a year. There have been tornados very close to me. Even if they don't always kill people, they cause a lot of damage and can ruin houses and businesses. I am a climate change activist and I am concerned with those things too. I think there are better alternatives to cars for most transportation (Like more pubic transportation like trains, and more bike friendly local travel), since battery production currently uses lots of emissions and I have yet to see anything about making roads (Either making new ones or maintaining old ones) more environmentally friendly. Oh yeah I'm a car enthusiast too, and I still think this way.
"Just because it’s difficult to quantify doesn’t mean it’s not happening." -- Sure, it's happening, but on what scale? Numbers matter. Every energy source has trade offs. There is no energy alternative that will not both cost and save lives, often in ways that are hard to quantify. What are the consequences to another 10 generations of mutational load accumulation that results from sustained low childhood mortality? Based on experiments with animals, it will be horrific. See what I mean by you can't avoid tradeoffs?
@@michaels4255 I'm not sure what point you're making. The point I'm making is that exploding chemicals in car engines should be avoided, even if it's carbon neutral, because the chemical byproducts are harmful to humans over time. Batteries are the way forward - assuming we don't find any unforeseen environment consequences that are worse.
Barrety operated car compared against a e-fuel car from agricultural field to the car, with out considering a efficiency of the electricity generation and transmission needed forthe electric vehicles, its not fair comparison
The only biofuel worth considering is biogas (renewable methane). It's the same gas as natural gas, but carbon neutral since it's not from a fossil source.
Methane is made anyway naturally by bacteria so why not capture it? The best part is that by capturing and storing methane you're actually removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
In summary, capturing methane reduces global warming, can be used as a backup fuel for generators. Bio methane will also replace natural gas since it's not needed anymore.
If the methane is made from pyrolysis it could actually be net carbon sequestering so long as the solid carbon product of the pyrolysis is turned into a stable product (soil fertilizer or concrete aggregate for example)
Another thing to think about is not just the environmental impact of EV. Cobalt is one of many minerals used in the production of EV batteries and its Waste generated from mining cobalt and other metals can pollute water, air and soil, leading to decreased crop yields, contaminated food and water, and respiratory and reproductive health issues. I just watched a youtube video on this subject (Toxic cost of going Green) and it is eye opening documentary at the Human costs and the health issues and genetic birth defects of the villagers who mine this mineral or live within proximity of the mine. What about Direct Air Capture Scrubbers to capture the CO2 out of the atmosphere and convert it to fuel I saw something on this not long ago. I found it quite interesting
For any interested, the song from the intro is Ganja by Ooyy.
When you burn synthetics fuels, you still get a load of horrible exhaust fumes. No way around this.
Nonsense, it’s a much more refined and controlled fuel compared the fossil fuels.
Batteries will never offer the flexibility of fuel when it comes to all kinds of applications, you cannot easily increase the range of an EV.
Honestly i think syn/e fuels have a significant advantage in terms of range due to that sweet energy density, in more rural areas it's viable where EV's just aren't so it's going to be a necessary tool in the toolbox if nothing else.
Also for long haul trucking, shipping, and airliners, and let's not forget the needs of the armed forces. But where do you get the energy for electrolysis? Wind and solar? Then you need huge and probably unavailable quantities of minerals, plus the EROI is low and probably overstated for both energy sources even before it falls further as you convert it to synfuel the distribution process for synfuel. To me, our energy future looks like a chess game where every variation leads to a losing position. People are following their hunches when they should be thinking the process through from beginning to end, step by step, with all the inputs and outputs accounted for. I think the end results of those calculations are going to be quite unwelcome.
@@michaels4255 I completly agree, all the more reason to diversify as far as possible so each method can support the failings of the others and only use the absolute best fit for each use case rather than assuming EV's, biofuel or fuel cell tech is the only right answer across the board.
i think EVs have an edge because of fewer moving parts and better torque.
@@michaels4255 the armed forces argument is interesting. if that's a genuine reason, then why are we using the tools for war to fuel our daily economy? seems like it's making america weaker and more vulnerable to attack. if the army ever genuinely needed fuel for war, then how would we fuel our economy? the way i see it, the "army needs gas" argument is more a reason to switch to electric so the economy is insulated from what the war machine needs.
@@sandrafrancisco Torque is an advantage especially at slower speeds for sure but at range it'd be fair to assume motorway type usasge which i don't think would benefit from the torque so much.
Fewer moving parts are always a plus, less wear, lower upkeep costs ect. but it's probably only an edge case benefit, it's not mile modern engines wear out that fast.
what is your opinion about Indonesia"s bio diesel mixed from palm oil?
My bike mechanics 30 yearsa ago and now have tood me where I was getting ny gas and what blend I wad using based on the residue. They told me to switch to certain brands of high octane to increase power and longevity, recently Shell 93 because they do NOT use ethenol which attracts water/condensation.
Great video Mat 👍
Well put together and you covered all angles.
Definitely think synthetic fuels will have a place, but they aren't going to overtake EVs
I ain't ever buying a POS electric car.
You do know it costs $20,000 to replace a Tesla battery, don't you?!!
@@scottslotterbeck3796
Like it or not, in years to come we won't get a choice.
The European market is charging full tilt into an all electric car future, other markets will follow them...
Your point about the battery is not really a point. It costs 20,000 to replace a 4cyl diesel engine in a pick up too...
Both will last about 8-10 years 🤷♂️
Part of the running cost of the vehicles.
I'm not pro or anti electric, as a mechanic I like new tech of all sorts
@@scottslotterbeck3796 The price has more to do with the ressource price and type of batterie, it will fall until you need an replacement.
Btw. I never heard of an 20.000$ pricetag for an battery swap, here it is between 5.000€ - 10.000€.
@@deathgun3110 I read the USA price was $20,000. But 10,000€ is a lot of money!
@@Danger_mouse Germany isn’t!!! They said that they are talking about allowing ICE cars sold beyond 2035 but using synthetic fuels.
One of the biggest limitations of electric will be in large machines in the agriculture and mining where the vehicles can not sit and charge. For example, farm equipment are usually a hurry up and wait use pattern. Combines are only used for a short stint in the year and are then run for 14-16 hours a day on average (this is the same for tractors used for planting and management). This limits when charging can take place and along with refueling time can be a real burden. In addition, the weight of the batteries needed to run these machine will be massive and reduce the amount of total weight the vehicle can hold or tow. It may not be perfect, but biofuel is one of the only ways to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. We just need to put more money into technology like cellulosic ethanol to be able to utilize all aspects of the plant efficiently for fuel production.
Great to see a balanced perspective.
So rare these days.
Awesome video Matt ! This is a tough subject to tackle because many of the fuel alternatives have not been finalized or mature enough like petrol has. IMO , the use of any crop, food crop or not is NOT the answer. Food security, habitat destruction etc is not the price people in one part of the world should pay for someone to get groceries in another part of the world. Having been an automotive mechanic for over 30 years, I can tell you than ethanol in our fuel is a bit of a joke. E10 or E15 fuels produce less power per liter, less mpg, they are corrosive to internal components. So E fuels actually costs more money because you have to drive with the accelerator down a bit more to get the same power, we just simply are burning more fuel with less power, lol. IMO, we are going to need to change how we look at our lifestyles and our use for fuel. We don't need a massive v8 pickup to get groceries. I think we can be part of the solution by simply using less fuel by using and demanding vehicles that use less. There needs to be changes on all fronts, new fuels, consumer choices, lifestyle, etc.