[tialaramex]

> biofuel-based vehicles can, in theory, be manufactured locally with machine tools

The excellent thing about electricity is that it's fungible. Electricity from a wind farm in the North Sea, a nuclear plant in the South of France or a Texan solar panel is identical as far as the electric vehicle is concerned. In contrast with bio-fuels if you can't make the right chemical soup for this specific model of engine well too bad, buy a new engine or undertake expensive conversion.

There are immediate practical advantages (many EV owners never spend any time putting "fuel" into their vehicle, unlike with ICE, since just charging it whenever it's sat around doing nothing is easy with electricity) but there are also large strategic advantages in terms of energy independence.

To get even the poor efficiency of modern internal combustion engines took a lot of careful engineering which would be undone by your "local machine tools" approach, so that makes the bargain even worse. In contrast it's easy to build high efficiency electric motors, and we've been doing that in many applications for years.

To the extent the answer isn't EVs that's because the answer is less car culture.

[cesarb]

> In contrast it's easy to build high efficiency electric motors, and we've been doing that in many applications for years.

Playing devil's advocate: in the case of EVs, the hard part is not the motor, it's the battery. If it were easy to build high efficiency and high capacity batteries which are also small and light enough to be used on a vehicle, we'd have EVs everywhere long ago. (A second hard part is the power semiconductors, to convert the DC from the battery to variable frequency AC which can be used by these high efficiency electric motors.)

[userbinator]

In contrast with bio-fuels if you can't make the right chemical soup for this specific model of engine well too bad, buy a new engine or undertake expensive conversion

Something like biodiesel is almost entirely a drop-in replacement, and diesel engines will burn a wide range of flammable liquids. Gasoline engines can be fairly easily converted to burn a bunch of other fuels too.

[tialaramex]

> diesel engines will burn a wide range of flammable liquids

Rudolf Diesel's engine will indeed burn lots of things to produce power. But the diesel engine in your 2022 car isn't just Mr Diesel's machine with nicer bodywork, it has been carefully fine-tuned for efficiency, ride, emissions and other considerations, including by using self-lubricating fuel injectors. If you use the wrong fuel on a good day you destroy those benefits and on a bad day you're also destroying the expensive engine itself.

[bluGill]

Sure, but the biofuel is a lot more energy dense. People do buy large tanks of fuel so they can drive long distances where there are no gas stations. Think trips across Alaska, or Northern Yukon. Most of us live in range of a gas station and so just stopping for gas every few hundred miles is more reasonable than a large tank (which has issues), but you can do that. You cannot get nearly as much range out of a battery, no matter how large the trailer is.

[tialaramex]

It is true that if you need energy density then you want to carry fuel and not use batteries, although whether biofuel makes a good choice I'm dubious about.

'course if you're just driving a hundred miles to see Aunt Tilly, and then fifty more to see Grandma, and then a hundred more to see your old friend from high school, well, those people all got electricity, and as we saw the EV doesn't care that it's not that premium Supercharger electricity, it's all the same if you can wait. So stay the night.

Long distance wilderness trips are both (a) not something most people ever do, so we are not talking about a mass market product here and (b) not well suited to the typical private motor vehicle of today. Who is maintaining roads across the wilderness that so few people use there's no gas station ?

I didn't ask who built them 'cos that'll be the US Government or a State Government, both huge fans of building sexy new projects. But to drive on it a decade later it needs maintenance, which isn't sexy new infrastructure and I'm guessing if there's no gas stations there's no road repair budget. Which means now you need an off-roader, maybe a pretty serious one, or running out of fuel will be the very least of your problems.

[bluGill]

Those 1% trips just outside a EV range are a problem. Liquid fuels are everywhere and fast. Charging infrastructure is still lacking, though if you plan at least most trips are possible. The time to charge is still ... though realistically you should take those breaks anyway most people don't