It is true. The pollution, the messes, the break downs, the actual costs, the broken infrastructure, the missed opportunities to improve vehicles and engines, the political immaturity, and etc etc…there is nothing mature about ICE vehicles. They are primitive garbage.
There is something like 10k more parts on an ICE vehicle than EV. The break downs are expensive and time consuming.
You need to stop being one sided in much of your process. It is like getting half a discussion when you post.
You are correct it is funny. We have most people lined up reading press reports on how nutty Musk is and what crazy thing he just said. He is promoting a better vehicle. He loses sight of that.
The energy balance of ethanol from corn has been debated since the 70s. A lot of diesel goes into the planting, tending, harvesting, and transportation, and more fuel burned in the processing plant. But the corn lobby loves it.
The corn debate goes back to the 1920s. The auto industry did not want to shift power to the farmers. The auto industry knew lead was dangerous to the public around that time.
They chose lead because of power, money, and easy in using it.
You have to have lead or ethanol in the gasoline to give it power. You do not get a choice beyond that. I do not care who is crazy online saying otherwise. Gasoline wastage would soar without ethanol. 10% ethanol is optimal. They have known that since the 1920s.
An early octane improver was MTBE. That compound was phased out about twenty years ago, due to fears of ground water pollution. Ethanol was being used in gas, in place of MTBE, in the late 70s, before there was a mandate to use ethanol.
Using Ethanol has caused problems in older cars, due to it’s corrosive nature, acting on rubber and steel in fuel systems. Newer cars use rubber parts more resistant to ethanol, and fuel lines are now made of 304 stainless. These changes are on top of valve seats being induction hardened, as use of unleaded fuel, in cars designed for leaded gas, lead to accelerated valve seat wear.
Elevated fuel system corrosion rate, questionable energy balance, and loss of fuel energy density, but the corn lobby loves the ethanol mandate, so here we are.
You are right about the milage approximately 3% less.
But
Ethanol adds two to three points of octane to ordinary unleaded gasoline, so it boosts the performance of your engine . Because of its high oxygen content, ethanol burns more completely than ordinary unleaded gasoline and reduces harmful tailpipe emissions.
And
Leaded gasoline, which was commonly used in the 20th century, was said to improve fuel economy and vehicle performance. This was because lead, an “antiknock agent”, increased the octane rating of gasoline, which allowed for higher engine compression. This, in turn, made engines run more smoothly and efficiently.
But now car engines are built to make up for the problems the older cars needing lead had.
It was less that lead was so great and more than the engine designs had been so bad.
You can also make ethanol from sugar, or any grain, or from cellulose. Brazil uses ethanol from sugar cane. Rum is ethanol from molasses, the syrup left from crystallizing sugar.
So for experts like Dupont and Poets have been unsuccessful w cellulosic ethanol. They tried enzyme processes but its an old process using acid digestion. In theory you can make ethanol from corn stalks or weeds that grow on marginal land.
Ethanol from corn is possible because sugar prices are supported in the US. Ethanol from sugar is cheaper.
The corn ethanol discussion is a political diversion.
If you say battery electrics and hydrogen are impractical, fermentation ethanol is next in line. Or do you say nothing beats fossil fuels. So we are stuck with them as long as we have them.
I am saying that although for many people performance means more safe comfortable miles driven per dollar expended, for others it means more dramatic acceleration with accompanying muscular sounds per dollar expended, and ethanol/lead/MTBE allows that by allowing higher compression without premature ignition.
That is not what the data shows. Natural gas is growing faster than renewables. Electricity generation data from the EIA shows the GWh produced by natural gas plants and renewables. A summary of 2023 compared to 2022 below. The Renewables category is all non-hydro renewables, including large and small-scale solar.
Year Natural Gas Renewables
2022 1,687,067 GWh 707,310 GWh
2023 1,802,062 727,281
------------- -----------
Difference +114,995 +19,971
Growth in natural gas generation was bigger than the growth in renewables. If we look at the first 5 months of 2024, it appears natural gas generation is growing faster than renewables this year, as well, although the difference is not as large. Increasing consumption of natural gas means more CO2 emitted. Coal power generation appears to be flat this year, compared to 2023, but that is only for January through May.
Or, you could go to E85, in a car properly designed to use it, and get more VARROOOOM. I would suspect that what is happening is the engine management system is advancing the timing, and increasing boost, until it detects detonation, which happens later with E85, due to ethanol’s 105 octane rating.
Of course, you could just use a bigger engine instead of E85.
What have you gained. Maybe nothing, but maybe you have moved the pollution that you breathe to a far away place where it is more disperse. Or maybe you have moved it to a place where the CO2 is concentrated and can be captured. If everyone continues to drive and use gas yard equipment (just as two examples) then it is far more difficult to capture and we continue to breathe the exhaust air within our cities.
Waiting to convert all generation to carbon free just signs us up for a few more decades of driving around emitting CO2 AND smog. We can convert both at the same time, getting cleaner and cleaner air as we go.
What have you gained? Well, right off the bat, the electric solution is far more efficient, probably around 3 to 4 times more efficient on average. Then, if your electricity source is 70% fossil fuel and 30% renewable, then you gain another 30% there. And another huge advantage is that the mix can get better over time. If the vehicle will last 20 years through the various owners, maybe in the first year it “uses” 30% renewable electricity, maybe in the 5th year it uses 35% renewable, maybe in the 10th year it uses 45% renewable, and maybe by the 20th year it is using 80% renewable electricity. When you buy a gasoline car, it is using all fossil fuels in year 1, in year 5, in year 10, and in year 20.
Why would it be higher? Car people design and build cars they don’t do wind and solar installation or utility work. As for financing it all, it seems that there is plenty of money washing around in the fossil fuel business that could get diverted.
But there is a big cost in waiting to get into the EV business. Do it now or China and others will own it. Do you doubt this?
That paper was about using waste heat from a cement plant in Egypt. I suppose similar principles apply to waste nuclear heat. I don’t know enough about nuclear plants to understand the waste heat stream but I assume it is relatively low temperature. Is that enough to make it economical? If it is, how come they aren’t already capturing that heat and using it to generate electricity?