On 8 May 2021 at 10:10, (-Phil-) via EV wrote: > Biofuels can at least be carbon neutral, as you can close the > carbon cycle. It will take a long way to get there of course, as the > complete biofuel production cycle is also still a carbon intensive > operation, but this can be fixed over time.
With all due respect, "this can be fixed over time" is a bit too much hand- waving for my taste. The problem with biofuels is that growing and harvesting crops, processing them, and transporting the fuel to the use point requires substantial energy input, and most of it comes from carbon based fuels. Even fertilizer and pesticides are made from petroleum. I just don't see that equation changing fast enough to get us to carbon-neutral in time. The only biofuel application I can think of that *might* get closer sooner - and I'm not 100% sure about even this - is electricity generation. For example, Uruguay's power system runs largely on pulverized Eucalyptus wood. The problem with this is that petroleum giants have governments bought and paid for, and they can't make money from distributing wood chips as easily as they can from corn processed into ethanol. There's also the fact that food turned into fuel while people are starving round the world has some ... ethical considerations. > To get to electrification quicker, I still think some hybridization is > good. Your point about improving utilization of limited battery-production capacity is a good one. We need to keep plugging ahead (sorry) with battery recycling, and with developing batteries that use less exotic materials. NiMH, anyone? Hello? But at the consumer level, I think that the use case for hybrids - I mean real ones, not "you naver have to plug it in" pseudo-hybrids - is fading as true BEV battery capacity grows and rapid charging facilities multiply. It's also easier and more efficient to add PV capacity to EV charging than it is to add "renewability" to ICEV refueling. Finally, a BEV is mechanically much simpler and at least theoretically more reliable than an ICEV, let alone a hybrid with the complexity of both. I haven't run the numbers, but intuitively, manufacturing a BEV has to be less carbon intensive than manufacturing a hybrid, and it should have a longer service life. Like LPs and phono cartridges in 1980, today's ICEVs are highly complex, almost impossibly refined machines only made affordable by serial production and massive amounts of long-term development. Like CD players in the late 1980s and early 1990s, EVs are evolving rapidly and quickly declining in cost, thanks to economy of scale and research into battery optimization. Perhaps I'm being uncharacteristically overoptimistic, and I could certainly be wrong, but I think that what CDs did to LPs by 1995 is what EVs are poised to do to ICEVs now - if politicians will let them. True hybrids may still have a place, but I think (and hope) not for much longer. David Roden, EVDL moderator & general lackey To reach me, don't reply to this message; I won't get it. Use my offlist address here : http://evdl.org/help/index.html#supt = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = That's not a "cloud," It's just someone else's computer. -- Anonymous = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/ LIST INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
