[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?