[bubbleRefuge]

EV's have other benefits. Ultimately, when economy of scale is fully realized, perhaps electric motors are cheaper, cleaner, and easier to maintain than ICE's. Perhaps automobile supply chains will become similar to laptop/Iphone supply chains ( ie extremely efficient) . Perhaps EVs are easier to re-cycle. Perhaps they perform better on the road. For ex, accelerate and stop faster . Perhaps there will be a 5x 10x 20x breakthrough in battery technology?

[cpprototypes]

When comparing just technology, EV cars are superior. Far greater engine efficiency, less complexity and moving parts, efficient transmission of energy from power plants to vehicle, etc.

But we live in an oil world. There are billions of cars out there. Cars are big investments that are handed down generation to generation like houses, especially in developing countries. EV car sales are still a drop in the bucket compared to ICE car sales.

If we want fast and rapid action on climate change, the quickest path is not pushing EV. It would be massive investment in reducing the cost to make synthetic oil. This may seem impossible, but that's what many said about solar competing with fossil fuels. EV car enthusiasts often talk about how EV cars get immediate environmental benefits from power plant upgrades such as burning coal to solar. But how much more orders of magnitude environment improvement would we get from carbon neutral oil creation? If a cost effective way was found that could compete with fossil fuels, billions of cars would immediately benefit environmentally.

Again, another computer analogy. Imagine someone invented a beautiful new elegant programming language that reduces CPU energy use by 50%. At the same time, someone found a way to reduce JVM CPU energy use by 20%. If we wanted the shortest path to worldwide energy reduction in CPU, what would be faster, just update the JVM for millions of servers or rewrite everything in the new programming language?

[seanp2k2]

Don't we already kinda do this with Ethanol, and aside from how growing so much corn is also bad for the environment, how it's a less efficient fuel, and other concerns (indirect land use change etc), it already works to des crease our dependence on the stuff in the ground?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_S...

[cpprototypes]

Ethanol is terrible, especially corn produced ethanol. The type of process I'm referring to is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-diesel

The inputs to this are just energy + water + CO2 = oil. No corn or other plants required. Currently this type of technology is far from cost competitive. But that could potentially change if more was invested into this area.

[imh]

I was under the impression that oil combustion, not oil production, was the part that hurt the environment. Is that not correct?

[dredmorbius]

The concerns I've got over EVs:

1. They're fundamentally a materials properties based technology. That is, you're dependent on storage substrates (especially lithium), conductors (especially copper), lightweight body materials (especially aluminium), and various specialty components within parts for the specific set of features of an EV. It turns out that lithium, copper, and aluminium are all at least somewhat constrained in overall availablity, some highly.

A conventional oil-fueled car works pretty well with iron (exceptionally abundant), with carbon added for steel (actually something of a concern: 15% of global coal consumption is for coking fuel), and a few stray odd bits. Overall, an oil-fired ICE auto is far less dependent on specific material properties of scarce material resources than an EV.

2. Batteries simply don't have the energy densities of liquid fuels. Tesla's success has, frankly, stunned and amazed me, though much of it seems to come from exceptionally good energy management. There are uses to which that's all but certainly not sufficient. Heavy overland freight trucking, marine transport, and air travel -- a future with these in abundance will not run on batteries.

There are some other options. Trucking using catenary cables or (literally) road trains, with battery capacity for a few kilometers of off-grid distribution, could work. Trains can be electrified, though doing so for the US rail network poses high challenges. Ships were once powered by the wind, and may well be in future. High-capacity, high-speed air travel is pretty much impossible without liquid fuels though. The alternatives are either a) hugely expensive or b) much smaller and/or slower.

One option for air might be higher-speed zeppelins, possibly utilising solar power.

The 1930s German zeppelins had peak speeds of about 80 mph, cruising of around 70 mph. That made for about a 30 hour Atlantic ocean crossing. Designs in the works suggest about a 140 mph top speed might be possible. An ultra-light, high-efficiency solar cell over the upper fabric of such an airship might supply much the needed motive power, and lift would be obviated through a lighter-than-air gas (probably helium).

Airships have other problems -- they're fragile, have a limited service ceiling (the Graf Zeppelin cleared a mountain range in the USSR by only 150 feet, close to its 6,000 foot ceiling), and would be dangerous near storms or other disturbances. Landing in high winds is difficult. But they're at least an option.

[antisthenes]

> The 1930s German zeppelins had peak speeds of about 80 mph, cruising of around 70 mph. That made for about a 30 hour Atlantic ocean crossing.

The distance between NY and London is ~3500 miles, which would make that trip 50 hours at the very minimum, not 30 hours like you suggested.

Travel to other countries would take even longer, unless your plan is to just ferry people over the Atlantic and distribute them via train after.

[dredmorbius]

You're right. I'd underestimated crossing times, though prevailing winds also cut time to as little as 43 hours eastward. From Wikipedia's page on the Hindenberg (unattributed):

"The ten westward trips that season took 53 to 78 hours and eastward took 43 to 61 hours."

Given that high-speed land-based rail would be an option, the ferry-to-rail option seems a strong contender, actually.

Remember: the whole concept of moving any significant distance at a rate of more than a few miles an hour is quite modern.