Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pantalaimon 1138 days ago
You still need fossil fuels for the chemical industry, transportation, etc.

Even if electricity becomes cheap (we can already do that with wind and solar) changing everything else is a huge task.

2 comments

Well you need hydrocarbons, but cheap scalable fusion would make it a lot easier to source the hydrogen from water, the carbon from ambient CO2, and mush them together.
Transportation is already in the process of shifting. EV cars and trains, obviously, are the present. EV cargo vans are "days away" from the present (especially looking at things like Walmart's massive uptake in EV logistics, but also Amazon and UPS and FedEx's various deals). EV semitrucks are "months away" from the present. Air and sea have the longest lead times and are indeed the furthest behind, but are seeing a lot of pressure to explore cheaper alternatives (and are talking about very interesting electrification ideas and are seeing prototypes and early adopters).