Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip
wkk.usa.mybluehost.meThere is no surprise that synthetic fuels work. They worked for the nazis in the 1940s and they still produce them in South Africa, Qatar and other places. In fact in a lot of ways they are better than today’s gasolines because they have a low aromatic and olefin content.
The question revolve around affordability and sustainability. Most of the interest was driven by fears we would be running out of oil, now it is driven by fears that we won’t run out of oil.
Yes, and: the question revolves around total financial and material capital needed to transition away from fossil fuels.
Synthetic fuels are potentially valuable because they allow existing capital assets (internal combustion engines and the industry that produces them, fuel distribution infrastructure) to continue to be used.
I am glad to see research into them continue- it's difficult to predict what will scale well economically in five or ten or thirty years.
The Fischer-Trospch process has a stupendously high capital cost because, even though cheap catalysts work, chemical reactions that build up larger molecules (that can proceed explosively under some conditions) compete with chemical reactions that break molecules down and have to be balanced on a knife edge to get hydrocarbons of the right length.
For any normal industrial process people would be really delighted that they could use iron as a catalyst but the economics of FT are so bad they've scoured the periodic table for something better and not had much improvement.
Why cant you just distill them after producing them, instead of worrying about getting exactly the right length?
Main issue is they want to be length 1 methane or length 1000+ polyethylene
Synthetic fuels are potentially valuable because they allow existing capital assets (internal combustion engines and the industry that produces them, fuel distribution infrastructure) to continue to be used.
Won't engines have to be modified and reprogrammed?
According to this article: maybe not, since they used an unmodified engine.
For alcohol, DME and other single entity fuels you may need to change the engine, but synthetic hydrocarbons really are a drop in replacement.
Most engines that run on gasoline will run unmodified on LNG and many other combustibles besides, alcohol would work but the way in which it and ethanol attack various materials found in the fuel systems of vehicles means that your problem is likely not going to be the engine but further upstream towards the tank (seals, membranes).
The cost to transition away from fossil fuels isn’t really talked about much.
For example, our electric grid can’t handle everyone using electric cars. Everything from electricity production to distribution needs to be upgraded. There is a massive cost to that.
All the crypto mining dying off should free up a lot of grid resources for EVs.
I've heard the "grid can't handle all EVs" statement, but have not seen anything backing up the claim.
I believe the grid can in fact handle EVs becoming prevalent. We might need more power generation, which could be new plants, and/or residential solar.
Baring some kind of crazy legislation requiring ICE vehicles to be crushed or permanently parked, we are decades away from a scenario where pure EVs are the dominant vehicle type on the road. There are just too many serviceable ICE vehicles in play to expect them to really go away in the next quarter century or so. That allows plenty of time for anything the current power generation and distribution infrastructure lacks to be adequately addressed.
The global energy usage from crypto was in the ballpark of 120-240 TWh/year, but a couple figures repeated the specific 150 TWh/year figure, so I'll use that.
The US's annual gasoline consumption is 135 bn gallons (2021 figure). At around 20 mpg (random estimate because I have to pick something), that works out to 2.7 trillion miles. At 30 kWh/100mi (figure from google), that works out 800 TWh if every gas vehicle in the US was suddenly switched for an electric one, or about 20% of the US's annual electricty generation of 4222.5 TWh (2018 figure). Also, that's about 5x the global crypto energy usage, vs just America's cars. [Obvious disclaimers: some of those estimates are arbitrary and not perfect, but they're in the right ballpark, and we obviously wouldn't switch to electric cars overnight]
Crypto was bad because it didn't actually accomplish anything with that power usage, but it was a pretty small footnote on the grand scheme of things.
If it is only 20% more generation, that seems pretty feasible. The widespread usage of air conditioners caused a greater increase in electricity usage than that.
As more and more people switch to Electric Heat (heat pumps i.e AC run backwards) off of NatGas more and more energy companies are pleading with people to turn down their heat in the winter and up in the summer as the grid can not handle it
For the first time I can remember, my power company was sending out Texts here in the midwest during that last Arctic blast telling people to use less electricity because the grid was over taxed.
Our National Energy grid is very very fragile.
That is such a misrepresentation. It has nearly nothing to do with heat pumps, it because there is a large amount of electrical resistive heating used in Texas.
Converting natural gas furnaces to heat pumps and replacing resistive heating with heat pumps, would not increase the total electricity usage at all. Last I looked 40% of heating in Texas was done through resistive heating, heat pumps would be 3-4x more efficient. There is current power devoted to resistance heating to run heat pumps for every home.
I was not aware that Texas is in the midwest... I am not sure what Texas has to do with anything here.
That said, no one isreplacing NatGas with Electric Resistive Heating, that would be crazy, NatGas is still cheaper in most cases for people north of say KY but there are alot of HeatPumps going in
I am unclear why you think replacing a NatGas heater with a HeatPump "would not increase the total electricity usage at all" that is just false, and I am not even sure why you would claim other wise, NatGas is not an Electric Fuel Source so when you change from a non-electric fuel source to an electric fuel source you will use more electricity. Now changing from Resistive Electric to heatPump would actually drop your electrical usage in some cases (above 0degrees anyway)
Around here it is not uncommon to have a HeatPump with a Gas "emergency" heater for when it gets too cold for the heatpump, as Electric Resistive is TERRIBLE and expensive. The problem is when that combo is sold normally it is wiht 80% furnances or they just leave the old furnace in place and just upgrade the AC/Heatpumpt
Not OP, but changing from natural gas heat sources to heat pump does increase your house electricity demand, but then that natural gas is no longer consumed. Natural gas is commonly used as the 'peaker' energy source today... so it's likely that you're just going to be burning natural gas at a plant somewhere else to power your heat pump in the peaky cold snap situation. Natural gas power plants are going to be more efficient than your furnace, unless you have one of the very modern furnaces, and the amount of gas needed to be burned and turned into electricity is going to be a ratio (3:1, 4:1...) lower than the natural gas needed to be burned to heat your house.
Overall that seems like a reduction in total emissions, since you're using less natural gas overall to heat the same amount. Yes, it increases power demand, but is also lessens demand on natural gas by a greater amount.
This could be a overall net negative if the power mix is heavily polluting (coal... etc), but largely we're moving away from that over time and it will only get better.
>Overall that seems like a reduction in total emissions, since you're using less natural gas overall to heat the same amount.
This just isn't the problem at all; it's obviously a problem, but not the constraint here. Fossil fuels let you store energy in a distributed fashion (e.g. cutting and stacking firewood for the winter), which is way better for handling peaks.
If too many people get burnt by oversubscribed grids in the winter, I would expect that the middle- and upper-class response will be propane auxiliary heating systems.
Natural gas doesn't really allow a consumer to store energy. Nobody has a tank to store natural gas next to their house. Yes, you can do that with propane... but it also now requires you to have a heating system compatible with propane (it's just a nozzle change for most NG units... but still, that's way beyond the capability of most homeowners to do).
The only thing that using natural gas to burn for a furnace (vs. using it for a heat pump) gets you, is that you need more natural gas generation plants and the infrastructure to handle the additional power on the system. On the other side of the coin, you have all the natural gas infrastructure to each house premise to maintain... which can leak, have issues, etc etc etc.
I read Texts as Texas.
Anyways in areas where it regularly goes below 0F, the transition will not be smooth (but probably still necessary). Heat pumps that operate efficiently down -20F are just coming out and will be even more expensive than normal heat pumps. Also most residential energy usage in really cold areas are from burning natural gas, so electricity generation is quite low compared to warmer parts of the country.
Texas has its own electrical grid separate from the rest of the US.
Why is every commenting about texas? No where in my comment did I mention texas, the closest was "texts" i.e SMS messages, not texas.
I do not live in texas.
it makes for a funny read. people are very passionate about your Texas errr Texts
Interesting to note that there is ~30kWh of energy in a gallon of gasoline, so the reason EV would only take 20% of US electricity consumption is that they are 5x more efficient (than the 20mpg gas figure used).
Indeed seems manageable.
I did not verify his figures, but his methodology was BEV efficiency, not the amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline. Electric drivetrains and cars are designed ground-up for efficiency to a degree that ICE cars are not, as well as the fact that something like 80-90% of energy in a gallon of gasoline is wasted (60-70% due to Carnot efficiency alone).
Crypto was 1/5th of the ENTIRE US CONSUMER TRANSPORTATION (BEV efficiency converted)????
That is an astonishing amount of electricity for something of so little value.
But anyway, to the larger point, I agree the grid impact is overblown, especially since we should be coupling consumer BEVs with home / business / warehouse / commercial solar.
The main thing your comment highlights for me is how much of a push we need for more sustainable methods of transportation in general.
There's always going to be people who will need to drive, but there's a hell of a lot of people who could be perfectly adequately served by strong public transportation.
>>but there's a hell of a lot of people who could be perfectly adequately served by strong public transportation.
Never going to happen for 80-90% of the US. It is neither economically feasible, culturally feasible, or practically feasible for most people in the US.
Work places are too spread out, homes are not located near workplaces, and there is no desire from anyone (my self included) to increase density.
I want less density not more, "walkable" cities only work if people actually want to live in a walkable city. Many many many dont
The grid seems fine from my non-expert view, its sized for peak loads on the highest capacity days. EV charging can be done at night once AC use drops off. In my 5 years in California there was maybe 1-2 days midsummer when there wasn't enough power and still was entirely due to inadequate generation and high usage in neighboring states as well which limited imports.
Two important things to note…
1) where power is generated and used for crypto isn’t the same as needed for electric cars. Locations matter when you’re dealing with the creation of and distribution of electricity
2) moving electricity to all of the locations where it will be used is another problem. That deals with transmission lines, transformers, the last mile, and all of that stuff. That we don’t hear about it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. It is Andy the lack of awareness and planning concerns me.
In Germany the government asked people not to use electric heaters this winter because the grid could break down.
An ev drains way more power then a 2kw space heater.
An average EV averages far less power than an average 2kW space heater over time.
A 2kW space heater used just 12 hours a day uses the same power per day as 4 mile per kWh EV driven 35,000 miles per year. Many space heaters see more than 12h/day of use but 35k miles per year is extremely rare.
EV’s are like microwaves, they use a lot of power when on but the grid cares about average load across millions of them not what’s happening in any one home.
> “as a 4kWh/mile EV”
“The battery size for a Tesla Model 3 ranges from 50 kWh to 82 kWh” that would give the largest a range of 20 miles.
Ev-database.org says they use 151Wh/km which is about 240Wh/mile.
Just a typo. A reasonably efficient EV is 240Wh/mile or ~4 miles per kWh.
This is a ridiculous comparison. Google tells me an electric vehicle uses around 14kWh per day if you drive ~14k miles per year, and is much more efficient than an internal combustion engine.
Your hypothetical 2kw space heater uses 24kWh a day and is drastically less efficient than a heat pump.
Peak loads let the grid collapse. Not constant loads over N hours. If everyone starts charging their EVs at roughly the same time (like when getting home from work) it won't matter that the EV uses less power over 24hours than a space heater.
EV zealots are just blind to the issues their silver bullet creates. Just like the "walk-able cities" folks.
This is why we have different pricing for different hours. Only those that actually need the capacity will use the expensive power from 16-20.
Others will use dirt-cheap night time electricity.
And with Vehicle to Grid smart people can sell the extra energy in their car battery during peak hours and use the credits from that to charge their car overnight.
None of this is some kind of magical tech that's hard to use. Gridio (https://www.gridio.io) already exists and works directly with multiple EV brands.
It looks like Germans drive an average of 19 miles per day. Charging an EV to cover that would only need 7kwh at 100% efficiency. So a space heater could use more or less overnight depending on its duty cycle.
Well, yes. If tomorrow everyone replaces their ICE cars with EVs, then the grid won’t be able to handle that. Completely different situation, though.
We should not replace ICE cars with EVs, but something smaller. Steam engines were large because that was how they got efficiency up. ICE cars could afford to be smaller and more efficient. If they had just replaced steam locmotives with diesel ones that would have been stupid...instead they built a whole new infrastructure around smaller cars that was much better than the rail network and redesigned our entire cities. Existing cars are the optimal configuration for a given engine cost and gas price.
Electric motors are even more efficient, but using them in the form factor of a car is also stupid. With robotics we can now make tiny self-driving vehicles that can do chores for us. Why should I drive a 2-ton car to the store to pick up a gallon of milk, when the store can send a small robot to deliver it to me? Similarly a large empty bus can be replaced with smaller ATV sized EVs that drive me from my house to the main artery and merge to form one train. That reduces the size of the EV engine and battery pack by 10x. Some of the problems to be solved are not merely technological but organizational and cultural.
Why should the store send a small robot to deliver it you?
You can ride a bicycle to the store to pick it up. Just think of the cardiovascular benefits.
And you know what? Think of the energy cost of the robot's manufacture, and the energy the delivery takes.
Because rain, snow, heat, lack of fitness, security, amongst other reasons.
Cycling is my most common mode of transportation these days. I love it. But I also know it's not going to be practical primary means of transport for a huge slice of the population. And the "danger from cars" ranks pretty low in my list of reasons.
A bike cannot compete in terms of energy efficiency with a slow robot that delivers multiple packages to people along a route.
Human food is the most expensive fuel on the planet when you factor in agriculture.
My EV is currently charging at 2.4kW power. Or was, I'm pretty sure the battery was already at limit a few hours ago.
The next time I need to plug it in is maybe on Saturday.
You need to use your electric heater 24/7 to not freeze.
A Tesla Model 3 charges at the rate of 3~ per hour using about 1.2 kw. Over 12 hours that's about 36 miles each night.
What the grid can't handle is if everybody all at once needed a full 300 mile charge in 8 hours, while they are showering, running ac, and factories are producing. This is partly resolved by sun heating, cold sleep patterns, factory shifts, smart charging, and that 95% of consumers do not make 300 mile daily commutes.
Substation and individual point of charge capacity may not be there for areas without ac, or high density apartments - but that's where distributed charging stations come into play (aka charging stations) (very low volume of gasoline is distributed to home parking, currently). In the worst cases this is readily reduced with storage (liquid or power wall) at distribution centers.
"For example, our electric grid can’t handle everyone using electric cars"
I bet you the electrical grid couldn't handle everyone having an air conditioner in Texas in the 1920s but slowly people installed window and later central ACs and the grid grew.
The situation where everyone suddenly had an electric car is implausible
> For example, our electric grid can’t handle everyone using electric cars. Everything from electricity production to distribution needs to be upgraded. There is a massive cost to that.
Cite for that? That's simply not true. In fact of all major infrastructure media in modern society, electrical transmission is by far the cheapest to upgrade. Even discounting industrial electricity and adding on DC charging of the EV, my household usage has gone up 35%.
You really don't think society can absorb a 35% growth in one infrastructure sector? That's just silly. Obviously there are "costs", but there's no justification for "can't handle" or "massive". At all.
And the majority of people will charge when power is cheapest, meaning peak power won’t increase nearly as much.
plus there are other significant changes that can change in that time. HVDC power transmission lines lose something like 3% of their power over 600 miles, where AC ones lose closer to 7%. And use much less precious metals, since they require 2 lines instead of 3.
Is that 3% for the cable only or the entire system including conversion to AC at both ends?
The grid can handle everyone using electric cars. Yes some upgrades are needed, but they are needed anyway. See for example https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-electric-vehi...
Electric car batteries are even seen as part of the solution to move to renewables.
Same when we went from horse carriages to gasoline powered cars. There was no infrastructure in place to buy hydrocarbons for otto-engines, other than in pharmacies.
Industries are built when demand is rising, infrastructure always has to change to cover the needs of the population.
EVs will be important sinks for electrical energy in the future, to balance out demand.
The EV transition is really slow and easy for the grid to adapt to.
Assuming 100% of new cars where EV’s you’re talking 25 years before adoption approaches 98%. Plus on average each EV is only using ~50,000kWh / year or 400 watts average load.
Oh, you mean some non-zero investment is required? What change doesn't require investment?
In all likelihood, gasoline transportation costs an order of magnitude more than electricity. And that's not just infrastructure that is already paid for. There is a much larger maintenance cost, an ongoing labor cost, and a much shorter useful life for anything related to fossil fuels.
>In all likelihood, gasoline transportation costs an order of magnitude more than electricity.
This statement just doesn't pass even the most lax economic sanity check.
Why don't all the use cases where people don't care about anything other than the bottom dollar and don't run up against the weaknesses of modern batteries already run electric vehicles. I'm thinking like low daily mileage fleet of small vehicles in a warm climate somewhere with high fuel costs. Like why doesn't an EV Fiat Promaster exist and why doesn't every tradesman in Sicily run one? If the numbers penciled out then surely we'd have it, at least in some niche somewhere. We are starting to see mass EV adoption but it's right on the margin and the details on any specific use case make it cheaper or maybe not.
Because vehicles are expensive and people don't replace them all that often? Affordable, capable EVs are relatively new and being competitive with gasoline vehicles doesn't necessarily mean they're so competitive that it makes sense to prematurely replace a working gas powered vehicle.
Longer term though, EVs replacing gasoline vehicles for those kind of use-cases is exactly what we're going to see. In the US, the postal service intends to start deploying tens of thousands of EVs over the next few years as they replace older gasoline powered delivery vehicles. The economics do apparently work out and pass the sanity check, just not overnight.
Well, you seem to not have read my answer...
But anyway, your answer is because transportation costs are irrelevant for both gasoline and electricity. So, even tough they are much cheaper for electricity, none makes any difference, and nobody picks a power source based on them.
But some people makes a huge effort to focus on this non-issue and turn it into a showstopper on their discourse. People resorting to this is good evidence that there aren't any large showstoppers for cars electrification.
The grid today can't handle all the industrial power use and residential power use increases that will happen over the next 20 years either. So what? Everybody switching overnight is not and was never on the table. This is a silly non-issue pushed by the fossil fuel industry.
Sounds like an opportunity to me. Think of the jobs.
I think it's more about finding an offramp for motorsports and classic cars (and some rural machinery) that are against electrification for a variety of reasons (both legitimate and illegitimate).
I don't think there is anyone at all that thinks turning agricultural waste into carbon neutral synthetic fuel for ICE has anything to do with "oil not running out" (which it absolutely is, demand is at all time highs, while production is at 30 year lows and no new major oilfield has opened in the lifespan of most people reading this, just saying).
Just to add to this: You seem to be referring to the global picture. If we look at the US in isolation it is a different story. 30 yr low was ~4M barrels of crude oil from fields. We were at ~12M Barrels in 2022.
It is true that no major field has been opened recently which I blame on the (legitimate) push against fossil fuels and the rising cost of capital for projects that won’t pay off until at least year 5-8 of an investment. Furthermore, the shale revolution made smaller fields competitive and distributed production. Major oil fields opening are not a good indicator anymore for the industry’s state of business. For example, the Bakken formation was already open but only saw its peak extraction relatively recently.
Speaking about the US: Crude oil will be around for a long time together with LNG. Whether that is good or not is an interesting question. Either way, the conversation IMHO starts to become very different for the US compared to other significant economies, and global metrics are becoming less useful.
(Just one example: German chemical plants are moving to the US where LNG is cheap and abundant. They are rebuilding entire, enormous industrial processing plants. The US attracts fossil fuel based industries without even opening new major oil fields. Just by what is already there. )
>Just to add to this: You seem to be referring to the global picture. If we look at the US in isolation it is a different story. 30 yr low was ~4M barrels of crude oil from fields. We were at ~12M Barrels in 2022.
The oil market is a fully globalized commodity and there is no "American picture", there is just the global oil market. This is why OPEC can manipulate elections by changing the rate at which they produce oil, and it is why Biden was able to "leverage" global prices to make the taxpayer billions by selling high and buying low.
The American reserves of oil are insignificant with regards to the next generation of transportation, and wringing out the last drops of oil from shale rock at prices approaching $70/breakeven (and rising fast) is not the savior of ICE.
Plus OPEC will happily drop prices and destroy American oil industry every so often because their breakeven is still dramatically lower.
>Speaking about the US: Crude oil will be around for a long time together with LNG. Whether that is good or not is an interesting question. Either way, the conversation IMHO starts to become very different for the US compared to other significant economies, and global metrics are becoming less useful.
"Being around" and "being affordable enough for your F150 and XL SUV" are very different things.
Oil absolutely will not remain affordable for Americans in 15mpg vehicles, and the next decade will see the death of cheap American oil. We cannot print enough debt to subsidize it forever.
When you consider the BILLIONS of humans who want way way more oil in China, India, and Africa (et al), you start to see how declining global production + quadrupling global demand = the end of cheap oil.
> The oil market is a fully globalized commodity and there is no "American picture"
I agree that this is the current state. However, this can quickly change at the whim of the US president and doesn't even need congressional approval. In fact, we have seen increasing request from within the US to decouple from the global market and hence have a "domestic" and a global oil price. I don't know how this would play out if it ever happens. But all the legal groundwork is there and the US president can impose an oil export ban at any time if he wishes to do so.
Examples of requests to do so (without success so far):
* https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/141...
* https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycomme...
The saddest part is, that the US has great solar and wind potential but the least incentive for a mass transition given the opportunity to decouple from the global commodity market at any time (elections anyone?)
Even better if there was an economical solution for farms to turn their own ag wastes into fuel on site or even in local coops. Farmers would jump on that in a minute if they could solve their waste and fuel problems with one solution.
Well, it's kind of obvious that the supplies of oil aren't infinite, isn't it? Is there even a theory that the oil is infinite? The peak oil is about timing and and cost, maybe it didn't happen according to the predictions but it will definitely happen. Besides the environmental concerns it also seems wasteful to burn away the stuff that is used for so many more things.
The synthetic stuff is interesting because it may actually be practically infinite thanks to the fusion reactor in the skies. That is because storing the energy from wind and solar in form of chemical energy solves the storage problem of the renewables. If extracting energy from that storage without polluting the environment becomes viable it can be huge.
The proven oil reserves have steadily increased for the last decade, even as consumption has increased. This means that we are discovering oil faster than we are burning it. The Earth obviously can't have infinite oil, but we don't know how long until we run out, and it's likely well over fifty years from now.
Yes, we have known, untapped, oil reserves.
The problem with those is that Someone needs to front the billions to get them pumping - and with the current state of the world it's not guaranteed that they'll get their money back.
It's better for business to raise the price of existing oil production. C-staff gets their bonuses and stocks go up.
> This means that we are discovering oil faster than we are burning it.
Nope. All this means is that oil is getting more expensive.
I don't understand. Can you explain?
Reserves are defined by economic viability. When the thing gets more expensive, they grow.
newly discovered reserves are more expensive to recover, otherwise oil price would fall.
> Is there even a theory that the oil is infinite?
Not quite infinite, but renewable: https://edu.rsc.org/news/treasure-from-the-earths-mantle/202...
oil supplies are so vast that they are practically infinite : we must stop using it because of the emissions. peak oil has always been junk science and clickbait news.
synthetic hydrocarbons as energy storage is interesting, but all about the economics.
There is such a theory, Thomas Gold thought that hydrocarbons came from underneath and then was processed by the metabolism of bacteria living far beneath the surface. He later wrote a book about the theory called "The Deep Hot Biosphere". He turned out to have been right about deep life at least.
Here is a retrospective: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5502609/
There's probably as much combustible matetial as there's oxygen to burn it. If we burn too much, it will be difficult to breathe.
Current synthetic fuels cost around 10€/litre, which comes to around $37/gallon.
Not really viable for day to day use yet.
I live in the Netherlands and we're almost there! ;)
No not really but, when it peaked I saw 2.40 eur/litre (9.71$/gallon, now down to 1.80 eur/litre) in places... Of course, much of that is taxes, but hey, this stuff would receive a lot of subsidies.
Fwiw, I once (4 years ago or so?) spoke to someone from an ICE conference (a parallel conference to my breast cancer conference) who explained that ICE's can be made 100% clean (just output CO2 and H2O) and 100% circular (take all that emitted CO2 out of the air again), it's just an economic consideration, technologically we are there (I guess that is true for many if not most environment related technologies, we just never take environmental damage along in the price of products, in a way we make them artificially cheap).
Imagine if the fuel could be sold as carbon negative. i.e They will (somehow) plant more trees or take the same amount of CO2 from air for every CO2 fuel you burn on top of the CO2 they collect back to make the synthetic fuel.
If some % of the fuel burned turns into some chemically stable carbon waste and 100% of the carbon in the fuel came from stuff that was grown recently then it would be carbon negative.
Yes, but that price is not determined by cost. It's determined by taxes.
Qatar claims their Methanol-to-Gasoline based factory is profitable at a world price of $40 a barrel based on natural gas as a feed stock.
What people are hoping for today is to get CO₂ from the atmosphere and hydrogen from H₂O with electricity from solar, wind or nuclear. (Though w/ nuclear you might use thermochemical hydrogen if you can get the temperature up)
The best use case for that I've seen is that the US Navy would like to synthesize jet fuel on aircraft carriers so they don't have to slow down to take on fuel from a tanker -- delivering fuel to an aircraft carrier has to cost more than it costs at your local gas station.
Also I think there is more interest in synthetic fuel for airplanes than cars. That Mazda could almost as easily have been run on ethanol, methanol or maybe even butanol. Even methane isn't that hard. Diesel engines can be run on Dimethyl Ether. Single-entity fuels are more efficient to make than synthetic fuels based on long-chain hydrocarbons.
Aviation, on the other hand, is a place where innovation goes to die, where airlines struggle to replace obsolete electronics, where the #1 and #2 aircraft in the world were designed in 1967 and 1982, etc. (... it wouldn't even be legal to sell a car based on a 1982 design!)
That's crazy cheap. I think oil sands here in canada can have a minimum break even point of up to 80$/barrel, and it still seems to be profitable most of the time. So you are right that there is quite a bit of room for more costly alternatives.
Using methanol to make synthetic gasoline is just bonkers.
You can just use the methanol to run cars. CNG/CBG cars have existed for well over a decade.
Not to mention leaded fuel still being a thing in aviation
Not anymore. You need to update your talking points.
The FAA got off their butts and approved the unloaded substitute in 2022 and it's starting to roll out.
Airports want it ASAP because the (IIRC) ~20% higher cost is a cheap price to pay to not have to listen to people complain.
You haven’t refuted anything. It’s still a thing.
“On February 23, 2022, the FAA joined aviation and petroleum industry stakeholders to announce a comprehensive public-private partnership to transition to lead-free aviation fuels for piston-engine aircraft by the end of 2030.”
Avgas 100LL is going to be around for a good long period of time. Not a single local airport around me locally has rolled out the new fuel yet so I’m not sure I believe your point about airports wanting it ASAP
Not on aircraft carriers. They only handle jet fuel.
Yeah leaded fuel is only for piston engines. I can't actually imagine leaded fuel working in jet engines, even if they can usually take a wide range of fuels.
Not viable yet.
But with greater adoption and more focus the prices are bound to fall.
And the prices of alternatives will be rising, both electricity and hydrocarbon fuels.
Also EVs seem to not be the answer to everything. If you live in a colder climate, out of grid or you need to drive long distances, it is not clear when on whether EVs will become practical for you.
That depends.
What is the cost of the environmental damage from traditionals?
What is the real cost of the military used to guarantee the delivery of traditionals?
That is the opportunity cost of that same military expense?
Oil refineries, they have a cost.
What happens to the cost of synthetics as production volume increases?
Etc.
We need to consider the full cost landscape, not simply gallon v gallon.
Yeah, because current fuel prices - especially in countries like the USA are fake.
My chainsaw runs on Aspen, which is a synthetic replacement for gasoline. It doesn't cause a headache when I'm exposed to the exhaust fumes for long times. It's quite expensive though, about 4€/l (15€/gallon).
Aspen2 is not green. its Aspen 4, which is part of the gasoline distilation process, but the oil they mix in for the 2 stroke engines is a syntetic bio oil.
https://www.aspenfuels.us/knowledge/what-is-alkylate-fuel/wh...
Good to know, thanks!
> it’s safe to assume that it’ll likely charge a hefty premium over traditional gasoline.
> Also worth noting is that while, yes, this synthetic fuel appears to make vehicles slightly more efficient, it still greatly trails the efficiency of EVs. Consequently, vehicles using this fuel will likely always be more expensive to drive per mile than their electric equivalents.
So why are we doing this again?
Because we could move the entire current stock of cars over to less carbon intensive fuel without having to build an entirely new fleet.
Keeping in mind that manufacturing new cars (and the associated resource extraction) is extremely carbon intensive, then a carbon neutral-ish fuel might actually be the best option overall on a meaningful timescale.
if 87 octane gasoline is $2.99/gallon and this is even 30% more, I’m not sure how you can expect to force the majority of the population (who is supposedly scraping by) to switch
maybe the government could subsidize it as national debt?
In europe, we've been beyond 10$/gallon this year. And yet still far too many people drive unnecessarily.
Sure
Governments could today choose to subsidise high percentage bio diesel and ethanol oil mixes and fund that by taxing all other fuels.
The end result could be exactly the same price for the many who do indeed struggle.
My comments were limited to the question as to why we might want to do this in preference to EVs. In the case of EVs, the energy source is cheaper, but there is a much higher capital expense as those poor folks who are just scraping by will have to go out and buy new cars.
Alternative for cases where electrification is hard (long haul trucks) or impossible (cargo hauling via planes)
I don't think long haul trucking is that hard to electrify. If we take the current (Pepsi) Tesla semi that can (allegedly) do 500 miles, and you also tow a trailer that is a "range extender" trailer (as in UPS already does multiple trailer towing), then you could recharge by just unhitching the depleted trailer and hitching up a precharged trailer.
Lithium-Sulfer and/or solid state will also likely come into play.
Aviation though... yeah I think that'll be synth fuel. That'll come down to how cheap solar and wind drop in LCOE in the next decade.
Not so fast here. From what I've been able to find out (telling that Tesla itself did not release any figures on weights for their semi) the Tesla Semi will weigh about 10 tons (without trailer), which is slightly more than even the most powerful, longest-range long-haul trucks that have ranges of 2000+ miles.
So you have (conservatively) 5 tons less cargo which is a 25% reduction from the typical 20 tons. Then you have (very conservatively) 20% less distance traveled due to needing more frequent recharge stops.
In practice then, you need double the trucks. So yea it is theoretically possible to electrify long-haul trucking, but it's also ruinously expensive. And that's ignoring any considerations for different maintenance.
But the tesla truck is basically 1.0.
Lithium-sulfur, Sodium-sulfur, and solid state variants plus a host of other tricks are coming down the pipeline in the next 5-10 years. A conservative estimate is that batteries will be 2x better than the current (the papers indicate 4x but let's see what happens).
The other aspects here:
- BEV semis are cheaper to operate long-term since electricity is cheaper than diesel (even without the carbon tax diesel operation should be paying), most calculations 5 years ago before the current 5-6$/gallon diesel crisis showed that.
- electricity will continue to drop in price as Solar/Wind continue to drop in LCOE over then next ten years
- BEV batteries will continue to drop rapidly in price over the next decade until the initial cost of BEVs will be structurally less than any ICE drivetrain
- highway self-driving, or highway "pack" driving, is going to get a LOT more prevalent. Highway self driving for trucks will likely converge/evolve with infrastructure to enable long haul trucks to self-drive at slower rates (more efficient) overnight and then be operated at "normal" speeds during the day.
So the number of trucks will probably be irrelevant in the long run. The key metric is probably the one that always mattered: how much to move a ton of cargo per mile. BEVs are probably close or will pass in 5 years ICE transport on equipment / fuel / energy costs alone. In ten years batteries will be so cheap that ICE drivetrains will simply not be a sane option except in the most extreme cases (long haul ultra-rural routes, long haul in deep winter, etc).
Maintenance wise, BEVs are simpler, less fluids, etc. They also might be more resilient to breakdowns. If you have a HUGE battery pack and three axles of power delivery (the Tesla design apparently uses the three axels for acceleration and then only one at cruise), then if one of the drive motors fails, you can fallback to another drive motor usually used only for acceleration. You can subdivide the huge battery pack and if part of it goes out, you have enough juice and drive motors to limp to someplace.
And again, long range can probably be boosted with swappable extra power trailers. Recharge rates will be moot because the power trailers are precharged. The power trailer can probably be shaped to increase the semi's rear aerodynamics better, and increase the overall efficiency of the semi as well.
> [improving battery tech]
This would be nice if it actually happens, but so far the new chemistries still have many unsolved fundamental issues, not to mention safety issues when increasing energy density further.
> [cost per mile / energy costs]
No arguments here, eventually EV running costs per vehicle will be cheaper. But there will probably be surge pricing for charging when renewable output is low. It won't be easy to manage that risk from a business perspective.
> [self-driving]
Sorry to be snarky, but weren't there supposed to be thousands of people's Teslas operating as robo taxis for 5 years now? I'll believe self-driving truck convoys when I see one operating without journalists or politicians watching.
Also, outside of your "power trailers" (see below) running the truck continuously like that would require battery swapping, which is a promising idea but also has a long list of unsolved problems (wear&tear, additional frames and braces required with swapable battery, cost of labour for swapping a truck's battery 4x per day).
> So the number of trucks will probably be irrelevant in the long run.
This left me dumbfounded. Double the traffic, double the CapEx, double the inspections/maintenance doesn't matter at all?
> [range extending trailers]
So your EV truck already lost 5+ tons of cargo space to a battery, now you wanna hitch an extra trailer (another 5~ tons for the frame and 5 tons for another battery. Since the max legal weight is 40 tons your range-extended Semi can now only transport around 10 tons of cargo compared to 25 tons for the most capable diesel trucks.
Those are reasonable use cases, but: - those are entirely different types of engines - which are already able to use ethanol today - and none of which mazda is even producing engines for
This is Mazda. They have yet to get serious about electrification. Worse than Toyota in that regard. I am beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt that this was anything but “hey we don’t have to make BeVs!!”
They've already announced 3 BEVs and 5 hybrids by 2025 so wouldn't say they aren't investing in EVs. Considering how bad the current batteries are for the environment and the limited supply of lithium I don't see why alternative fuels that leverage existing infrastructure is a bad thing. It remains to be seen but BEVs might not be the be-all end-all especially if you include vehicles where range and weight is important like semi and planes.
Announcing isn't releasing.
Even Toyota's first attempt (bz4x) is laughable for a company with their engineering pedigree. First the wheels fell off so often they had to do a recall. Now they're saying that you can fast charge the car a maximum of two times per day, software limited.
If I was a tinfoil hat wearer, I'd say they're sabotaging themselves on purpose.
AFAIK they have a 100 mile compliance car that, true to the definition, can’t be purchased in the USA unless you’re one of the few. That should count as a negative.
Good for them. An electric Miata would require a battery with an unheard-of energy density.
Explain Aptera.
“Someone has more venture funding than taste”
Range could be a reason too. EV's have a decent range nowadays, but in wintertime the range could decrease dramatically. With an ICE you always know what your range is.
A hybrid can give the best of both worlds. A hybrid with a battery range of 50 miles can reduce your ICE usage by a factor of 10 easily (the vast majority of trips are shorter than that). But a lot of people think that reducing emissions by only 90% is not enough. With this you get to the full 100%.
Well, ICEs do drop in range in winter. Not as much as a BEV, and I believe some of the BEV range loss was the HVAC which has improved.
I too think the 50 mile hybrid would have been a game changer. In an ideal world, 10 years after the Prius release (1997?) in 2007 the US government mandated a 50 mile all-electric range PHEV for all consumer cars.
But now the car companies face a choice: invest in a BEV drivetrain, or invest in a PHEV drivetrain. Almost all will do the BEV, because CEOs that don't get fired (see: BMW, VW, etc).
A major problem with cars that they're very sticky because of the cost structure you're used to: expensive to buy but cheap to drive per km. Once you join the car club it's got you. This drives people to do all their transportation in cars once they have made the big investment in the the expensive car that has low marginal costs.
ICE cars running on renewable but more expensive fuel would provide a good option to the expensive EVs as we ramp down fossil fuels.
efficiency only matters to offset the impacts of dirty methods of energy capture or storage
it's believed we can have cars and equipment on synthetic fuels producing waaay lower lifetime emissions than equivalent battery electric vehicles
when that's the case, it has potential to reduce the scope of the mobile emissions problem to a degree where we can focus almost exclusively on cleaner centralized energy capture, for which the most difficult engineering has already been done, and storage, which needs more attention and investment either way
it would also allow for a quicker transition away from fossil, by giving people a more affordable transition option (or free, if cars don't need conversion) vs. buying electric, and by using more of the energy infrastructure that's already in place
There is a dream that synthetic fuels or hydrogen will suddenly get their own Elon Musk who will drive down the wholesale price to a viable level.
But in the end (25 years+) I think synthetics will be used for hobbyists to run their vintage vehicles on track days and weekends.
Hydrogen has the second largest manufacturer of vehicles on the planet behind it and its still not viable.
That's actually an interesting use case, vintage vehicles, old diesel trucks used near radio telescopes, etc. That said, I doubt that market would be large enough for the amount of money currently being invested in it.
motorsport is a quarter trillion dollar industry, about 50x the size of the synthetics market, and there are already a ton of teams engaged in research partnerships with fuel companies
just at the highest level: formula e is floundering; f1's 2026 regulations will introduce a 100% sustainable fuel while making the electric part of the powertrain _less_ sophisticated (removing the MGU-h, so no more energy recapture from turbo spindown)
all three of these seem perfectly realistic:
- synthetics take off widely
- synthetics don't take off, but get far enough along that they are competitive with existing popular race fuels (which go for $10-15/gal)
- synthetics don't take off, but they get far enough along that speciality fuel producers can stand up their own supply chains with marginal r&d spend, but can't compete with other race fuels... for the first 5-10 years, then the race fuels are made illegal
It might be worth using for non EVs once we give healthy prioritization to sustainability?
Because they have been dragging their feet and will go bankrupt and this is a last ditch effort to slow down the transition to EVs
Sportscars and motorcycles are fun :)
It sounds like they ran it on straight ethanol. This isn't new or news. Many production cars can run on straight E in good weather. The mileage claim doesn't make sense though because ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline.
It'd be nice if this blogspam linked to the source so we could verify details.
Coryton (the fuel supplier) has a PR post [1] about it with a few more details. Their Sustain fuel is "blended bioethanol and biogasoline" [2]. Sustain 100% might mean either it's 100% bioethanol or 100% biogasoline, I haven't been able to find anything saying what the percentage means.
[1] https://coryton.com/lab/news/mazda-using-sustain-100-per-cen...
what goes into making bioethanol other than corn? what goes into making biogasoline?
I too was frustrated that they didn't say what the fuel was. It led me to believe that it's ethanol too. They just didn't want people to see the article as the nothing burger that it is.
I looked at several other sources covering this and they're all similarly quiet about what the fuel actually is. Looking at they supplier's (Coryton's) website, they boast about 'bespoke' synthetic fuels. So I'm guessing it's Mazda that's being shy about the details.
Yup. The "innovation" here is in the car, not the fuel.
There is another engine design, a linear piston engine, which is just a piston connected to a magnet and coil. The engine generates electricity (at a constant speed, constant load) and this is fed to an electric motor. So the car is a hybrid. It's more efficient than a regular engine (which turns a large crankshaft etc.) and the fuel probably can be more finicky since the combustion cycle can be tuned for one operating point.
Believe it or not most passenger cars won’t run on ethanol unmodified these days. Even running on 50 or 80% ethanol blends usually requires custom ECU maps to run.
Let’s not even talk about all the things in the fuel system that seem to have a shorter life with ethanol involved, particularly injectors.
you need to spray 30% more fuel if it’s ethanol than if it’s gasoline, no?
To add to this...hasn't Brazil been producing cars capable of running on pure ethanol for the last two decades?
I don't think that this is a very good application for the technology. Compared to lithium batteries, synthetic fuels have much higher energy density, but much lower energy efficiency. Modern EVs achieve plenty of range, charge quickly, and the somewhat larger weight doesn't really matter in a vehicle, unless you want to race it.
However, I am quite excited about using them for CO2-neutral long-distance flights. Being able to reach any place on earth in 24h is awesome, and there is simply no battery technology that can power a practical airplane.
Same here, am excited for what happens in the coming year. I did read on HN some time ago and just checked, SWISS airline working together with Synhelion https://www.swiss.com/magazine/en/inside-swiss/sustainabilit...
> I don't think that this is a very good application for the technology. Compared to lithium batteries,
Mazda also have an all-electric car, the Mx-30. (Starting MSRP $33,470)
It's the worst EV on the market. It's only a compliance car, not something they expect anyone to drive.
Toyota/Subaru aren't much better. Japanese carmakers seem to hope that BEVs are only a fad.
Why do you think it is the worst on the market?
It’s Doug DeMuro’s Worst Car of the Year. Every other review I’ve seen is also overwhelmingly negative.
It has a range of a “city car”, but a price of EVs with double the range.
It has max 50kW DC charging, while the competition has >100kW speeds. This makes the short range even more limiting.
It’s not even powerful, even though high torque is the one easy trick for EVs.
It’s a conversion of a gas car, not a dedicated platform, which wastes cabin and storage space. Mazda failed to keep the same front/rear weight balance making the car reportedly handle poorly.
It’s technically at the level of 2009 Renault Zoe or the old Leaf, but for a price of 2019 eNiro or the current Kona and Cupra Born.
> It has a range of a “city car”, but a price of EVs with double the range.
I agree that the price is too high, but that is the case for all EVs
> It’s a conversion of a gas car, not a dedicated platform
Maybe because the platform was so safe/good... I love my current Mazda CX-5 (not EV)
I don't doubt you love your CX-5, but I can't emphasize enough how much of a fuck-up the CX-30 EV is.
Platform matters. BEV platforms are skateboards with flat floor and wheels basically at the very corners. OTOH CX-30 has an empty transmission tunnel taking up cabin space, and is so cramped they couldn't even fit normal-sized rear doors, and it's almost a 2-seater. Dedicated EVs of the same length have full-sized doors and spacious rear seats.
Mazda took out the engine, and didn't rearrange or rebalance anything else to match. No extra storage. They just left a hole and dangling cables under the hood. They've taken a front-heavy car platform and unbalanced it by making the the rear heavier.
EVs are expensive mainly because of batteries, but this one has a half-sized battery for a price of a full-sized one. You're not even paying for a better rest of the car. It's just a mediocre Mazda with a low-end EV tech that is 10 years behind. The EV side of it is really really bad. Old models of Zoe and Leaf that you can get for <$10K have this level of range and performance.
"one easy trick" is harmful for public road IMO
When you consider the limited availability of batteries, electric vehicles don't make sense compared to hybrid ones.
Neither make sense compared to halving our speed limits.
“For the first time I can remember, we can access all the supply we need for both businesses.” Martin Viecha, Tesla IR, September 2022
https://electrek.co/2022/09/12/tesla-access-all-the-batterie...
...for Tesla cars. Which are an insignificant part of the world car production.
Do this exercise, pick a workman's work vehicle that has a hybrid version. Make note the mpg difference between the hybrid and regular model. I do mean a workman's vehicle, not a hybrid Versa or the like. A full sized van. A pickup.
Take the Tesla battery pack kWh and divide by the workman's hybrid drivetrain's batt pack. This is how many workman's vehicles could be hybridized with one Tesla.
Look up, make an estimate, the miles a workman drives per year. Do the same for the tesla.
Calculate the fuel burned by one tesla and N regular workman's vehicles and compare that to N hybrid vehicles + one Honda accord.
The scenario with the Tesla ends up burning (much) more gasoline than with the hybrids.
Now multiply that the number of Tesla's made per year.
Is this number high or lower than the number of workman's vehicles made every year?
Note, for simplicity, we haven't even considered far more damaging scenarios involving heavy vehicles doing stop-go all day. Like a municipal van. Or a garbage truck. Or package delivery.
Also note, for simplicity I did not consider the CO2 emission of driving a Tesla. I don't want to get into a "greenified grid" debate.
Teslas are about making rich yuppies keep their cake and eating it too. It makes them feel good, neigh superior, about their over indulgent, over consuming lifestyle. If they truly cared about CO2 they'd be clamoring for lower speed limits.
Except it's not CO2 neutral.
It just didn't come from dinosaurs, it's still a long hydrocarbon that burns.
What timeline for CO2 neutrality will satisfy you?
The fuel in TFA game from ag-waste. So presumably it's carbon neutral on a ~1-2yr timeline.
CO2 neutrality does not make sense in the context of a timeline. it is a mathematical rate, positive being an increase in the atmospheric reservoir and negative being a decrease in the atmospheric reservoir.
No amount of time producing "nearly neutral" increases to the atmospheric reservoir will produce an improvement in runaway existing CO2 feedback loops.
A mathematical rate literally includes a timeline. Common timelines for rates are per second, per hour, and per year. Saying “CO2 neutral per two years” is non-standard but valid.
[edit for clarity]
Biofuels have at least two huge issues:
The first is that solar PV has already well exceeded the efficiency of growing crops for fuel by multiples. Then there’s wind, nuclear, hydro, etc. Biofuels consume far more land than renewable and zero carbon ways of generating electricity. Even worse they consume fresh water. Electric generation consumes very little water by comparison.
Secondly and related to this biofuels compete with agriculture for food. You frequently hear about using farm waste but there is only so much of that. Our machines use more calories than we do so try to scale that up and soon you are growing crops for cars. That’s a bad path to go down in a world where population is expected to peak as high as 11 billion. Much better to run machines on stuff we can’t eat than to set up a competition.
The only good bet against EVs is in heavy and long range vehicles not cars. I am skeptical of electric trucks not because they can’t be done but because I am skeptical of our will to build out adequate charge infrastructure. But trucks account for a lot less liquid fuel use than cars so solving the car problem is a huge win. If we electrified light vehicles we could cut liquid fuel use by more than 50%.
That doesn’t mean all car companies should totally cease ICE production though. There will still be some market for them into the foreseeable future. I expect EVs to take the bulk of the market though.
I’m confused. This sounds like a good thing if the problem was an oil shortage, not CO2 pollution.
Explain why they aren’t solving the wrong problem?
The synthetic fuels are made from sources such as hay, which, theoretically is a net neutral to the carbon cycle since the hay's carbon came from the atmosphere already. This approach doesn't contribute additional CO2 to the atmosphere like traditional fuels do. However, not sure what the carbon costs are to create this synthetic fuel so that is a variable in the total carbon gain to the system.
Maybe we have more than one problem that needs solving?
1. Synthetic fuels still take a minimum of 110g CO2 to produce one MJ of fuel.
2. Synthetic fuels still emit CO2, sox, nox etc. at the tailpipe
3. "Synthetic" fuels still use natural gas as the feedstock in production.
4. We do not have enough renewable biomass to use as feedstock to replace our current use of non synthetic fuel.
Synthetic fuel from renewable feedstock should only be used where we cannot replace ICE, for example planes.
Synthetic fuel for cars is pure heresy from the environmental point of view. We already are at the limit in the production of wood pellet for heating (the forest are suffering enormously from climate change), bio gas is using not only waste but also corn and "good" crops to be produced.
And of course, the process to convert all this biomass into a fuel is consuming a lot of energy.
Please, do not dream of everything green with synthetic fuels everywhere, this can only be part of a small part of the transition.
1) How much of this fuel could be made at scale — how much of the type of agricultural waste they use is available worldwide?
2) Petrol is great for passenger cars, but the world runs on diesel and fuels that are more or less equivalent to diesel, like Jet-1A. Can they make that?
The global agricultural waste production isn't enough to run the current amount of vehicles on compressed biogas - never mind this synthetic stuff. It's an amazing option among others though. CBG is easy to produce locally and gasoline powered vehicles can be modded to use it quite cheaply as long as you can fit the CBG tanks somewhere.
Companies have made drop-in compatible jet fuel from biomass.
Does that work with the process described in the article, can it be done at scale, how much does it cost? While I hear about a couple of these breakthrough alternate fuels a year, I’ve yet to see a single one that doesn’t fall down on at least one of those areas. The first one isn’t a deal-killer — you could have an alternate fuel product for petrol and a different one for fuel oils, but if they can’t be made economically at scale, these technologies are useless for all but niche purposes.
I don't know what the process in the article is, so I cannot answer that question.
We can conclude the Virent process is not competitive at current prices (or else it would be done more widely.) The more relevant question is would it be cheap enough to work in a world without fossil fuel net CO2 emission. It would have to be cheaper than obtaining the fuel from oil, followed by direct air capture and sequestration of CO2, for zero net emission.
You can run a diesel engine on vegetable oil!
Not as useful as one would hope. The world produces 20M tons of vegetable oil vs 4B tons of petroleum.
20 M is rapeseed alone, the total is slightly more than 200 M.
Synthetic fuels should only be used going forward for hobbyists who want to keep classic cars going. They likely will be, and should be, expensive. Even if they are "carbon neutral" (unlikely as they still have higher costs associated with transportation than electricity), they still involve burning which always creates pollution, and any ICE requires lubrication and cooling which also today involves toxic chemicals.
EVs are much more efficient and better for the environment beyond the most obvious and biggest benefit of not having a tailpipe that spews CO2 into the air.
In other words; nobody should be hoping "carbon neutral fuel" is a path to continuing our status quo.
And as here, syn fuels are useful for satisfying regulators.
Toyota was also testing out synthetic fuels on their 3cylinder platform. I'm glad mfgs are testing different things and not just sticking to one thing just because everyone else is doing that. Interesting how Japanese carmakers are still not convinced on full electric, time will only tell. https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/toyota-gr-86-n...
> Simply put, the synthetic fuel operated much like normal gasoline would have, without the emission drawbacks of the latter.
Hmmm. The fuel is hydrocarbons; so the emissions are at minimum CO2 and particulates.
The usual theory here is that fuels made from plants are carbon neutral in that while the fuel produces CO2 when burned, the plant it was made from consumed an equivalent amount of CO2 while alive. (Which, even if true ignores particulate and NOX emissions. See also: green washing.)
This also ignores a dire problem humanity has created for itself: massive amounts of arable land wasted on fuel crops rather than food for people.
It's similar to the farming industry producing incredible amounts of food just to feed cattle rather than to feed people. Not all crops grow on all land, of course, but as long as there are large scale famines in the world, I think it's immoral to dedicate so much land towards inedible foodstuffs.
We're already burning forests under the guise of "renewable fuels" that assume we've assured that the forests are allowed grow back the next 100 years even when biofuels are no longer profitable.
There are good reasons to rid ourselves from fossil fuels where we can, not just because of global warming but also because of political reasons (the oil states getting away with literal murder and a blind eye being turned towards their funding of what would become 9/11, for one). However, I fear that these plant based "alternatives" will be quickly bought up by the oil industry, touted as the future of green energy, and used to postpone greener alternatives to the internal combustion engine yet another decade.
"made from plants" will need a citation.
The Porsche/Exxon syn fuel uses natural gas as it's feedstock, for instance.
I'm pretty sure the Mazda pr guy was just smart enough to omit that detail, not that they are hiding it's magical eco friendly origins.
This other press release from Mazda's fuel supplier doubles down on the agricultural waste talking point. In this case 'straw' was used to create ethanol which was the feedstock.
https://coryton.com/lab/articles/the-opportunity-for-sustain...
Some more drawbacks : 1. the plants are usually grown using fertilizers that are made out of, ironically, fossil fuels. 2. the process of turning the plant into fuel might also create emissions that need to be taken into account.
Fertilizers can also be made without fossil fuels.
One really has to distinguish between CO2 that would be emitted by the process in the current fossil fuel economy, vs. CO2 emitted when the world is off fossil fuels. In the latter, where do the carbon atoms come from if not from the biomass, and hence from the air?
Apparently they produced it with agricultural by-products. So no net CO2 (other than the energy it takes for the transformation)
This is a cool data point but I personally wouldn't call 45 mpg "staggering" - it's definitely good but not unprecedented by any means, many TDIs or smaller gas engines can get that on the freeway. The research into synthetic gasoline fuels is inspiring but at a certain point seem impractical and too-little-too-late. There are already well established "alternative" fueling technologies that are very easily accessible and likely cheaper.
I just did a long highway trip in an MX-5 and got about 38 mpg on the recommended 93-octane gasoline. I was not driving the vehicle to optimize for mileage. The article quotes the same. I mention it because it is an obtainable 38 mpg.
Driving long distances on the freeway typically is the best way to optimize for mileage though? at least seems you couldn’t have been going too fast ;) Must’ve been fun in the mx5
Sadly, it was all dark and wet during the trip and I had just put on winter tires. Still, the ramps were fun.
Does anyone know what ever happened to Mazda's skyactiv thing? Was supposedly going to help ICEs be more fuel efficient by adding an extra stroke cycle with water? Seemed very promising, but I haven't heard anything about it in years.
You’re probably thinking of Skyactiv-X [1] which is kind of hybrid between a normal spark ignition and compression ignition. It’s been in the 3 in Europe for a couple years but never came to the US. I’ve heard it’s a combination of cost and not-great horsepower, plus it runs louder. Basically for a lot more cost you get something inferior to hybrid in a lot of ways.
It's out there but not in the US. It doesn't deliver as much torque/HP and apparently US market prefers the torque over fuel efficiency
It is disgusting for the author to call the synthetic fuel "emission free"
It's still a long hydrocarbon chain that breaks down into CO2 during combustion.
This entire line of reasoning is avoided in the article, so I can only imagine it was sponsored by BP or SA.
Efficiency is a double edged sword. Hydrocarbons will always have a higher energy density than batteries due to physics, which is great when moving heavy things.
Trucks are probably a good use case for synthetic zero or negative emission fuels.
I saw a video of an offgrid station that makes hydrogen from solar/water to power farm/work trucks. That seemed pretty green and cost effective in the long run.
I think heavy duty trucks and such will still work on gasoline even in an EV future. So why don't these companies try to solve that problem in a carbon neutral way?
Heavy duty vehicles will move to either diesel/biogas hybrids (they can replace ~30% of the diesel with gas nowadays without any major engine mods) or to full CBG with combustion engines. Farms can produce their own CBG with relatively minor investment, basically fueling all work vehicles with cow farts =)
Some kind of hydrogen/biogas generator hybrid might be viable too.
Some will become fully electric, but it's heavily dependent on the usage profile. There is a mining truck in use today that's never charged - but it's a special case where it goes uphill empty and comes back down in full load with regenerative braking.
Diesel will slowly go away because of the ever tightening emissions noose. It's just getting harder and harder to have something that's both compliant and has a lifetime TCO that's lower than equivalent gasoline engines that can more easily meet their (more stringent) emissions requirements.
The bar for what kind of usage makes diesel cheaper than gas over all is constantly creeping higher. Notice how a huge fraction of smaller medium duty trucks have gasoline engines these days.
And the other benefits of diesel (torque, efficiency) are being provided by turbocharging.
Having trouble parsing this, does this mean there is a liquid fuel thats diesel+cow farts or will diesel engines incorporate compressed biogas injection?
You can supplement diesel with cow farts without a major engine remodel. The mix is 70/30 IIRC.
It's just hard to manufacture gas in a efficient way. It's a really complex and hard to make molecule and the most abundant source of ingredients for it is the carbon in the ground.
You can use atmospheric carbon but it's very hard to pull it down out of the air because it's very dilute.
That's why hydrogen is such a big deal and being focused on instead. It's harder in every respect, but the base component is water, which is very easy to get.
Long haul is better served by rail, and EV trucks work perfectly well for short haul. I don't necessarily see that that is the case.
I support anything that keeps the wonderful Miata just as it is. (Okay, fine. I more so support anything that keeps the earth healthy and sustainable.)
Yes and yes. A simple naturally aspirated engine takes bio-ethanol/e85 just fine, though the benefits seem limited to fewer fine particles, with comparable carbon emissions but a much larger agro impact.
Can we just use Ethanol with hybrid system? I mean, in ethanol are very common fuel, if we combine this with hybrid, thas a win win IMO.
Is this the one that was discussed on Joe Rogan by Randal Carlson recently?