Electric and Alternative Vehicle Fuels

Interesting comparisons of various combinations of internal combustion, battery and hydrogen drive trains.

It’s difficult to see hydrogen overcoming the fuel cycle inefficiencies:

“One kilogram of hydrogen gas is expected to drive a FCV approximately 100 kilometres (under US EPA test conditions).

“This translates to an input of 80-100 kWh of electricity per 100 km travelled (after accounting to electrolyser inefïŹciencies and energy losses), compared to less than 30 kWh for BEVs (after accounting for electricity transmission losses).

a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle powered from main the main grid is likely to produce three times more emissions than a battery electric vehicle

When the grid is decarbonised, hydrogen fuel cells cars will deliver emissions of 17gCo2 per km, while battery electric vehicles will deliver around 6gCO2 per km.

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Is nothing sacred? :scream:

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Another rechargeable battery breakthrough.

It works as a rebuttal for me personally considering an electric car, given my personally similar enough situation

It’s already possible to get a week out of a mobile phone without recharging the battery. You just need to use them less. In PNG I could get 8 to 10 days out of my Telstra Samsung flip phone. Partly due to the low tech network which sometimes supported sms, and partly from dread fear of paying around $2.50/min to phone home. My father could get his to last the best part of a month! You turn it on to make a call and turn it off when the call has ended. :grin:

Will the temptation for some with an EV to drive slower to go further? Aussie vehicles average only 35km per day, probably less if you delete the occasional longer journey. Is part of the way forward to offer up a much cheaper vehicle with a smaller battery for urban use only? Perhaps only 50km typical urban range or less?

No need to reinvent the wheel or sweat on new technology options?

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Heh, I agree that the vast majority of people would only ever travel small distances, but I hope they don’t de-prioritize longer range batteries. I travel around 150kms per day just to work and back, and a trip to Sydney from Newcastle is going to be around 400kms. I don’t want to have to worry about being stranded because I can’t pour in some more charge roadside

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So are you better off commuting daily in a vehicle capable of the occasional trip to Canberra or using a more cost effective vehicle for the daily commute and renting as appropriate for longer trips? Going further, if autonomy becomes a reality, would you be better off owning a vehicle or buying kilometers in the most appropriate vehicle for the job?

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The greater community may be eager enough or desperate enough to need to make a rapid reduction in transport emissions at a cost most of us can afford.

There are already plenty of long range options for EVs. It is simply a matter of the extreme cost of an 80-100kWh battery. When compared with even a standard household storage battery with typically between 6 and 24kWh capacity, todays EV options are still expensive, hence this topic?

I guess you could always hire a battery trailer for a day and swap and go at Woolies batteries with you shopper discounts as needed on those long camping trips.

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Geez, I average a lot more on my bicycle each day, for zero pollution, and a lot less expense.

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Good questions. I think for most people it’s a very major mindset change, and figuring if it will be more cost effective will make comparing electricity or phone plans seem simple.

For me I never buy new in cars so it will also be dictated by availability and trust-ability of second hand batteries and their cars

It’s even harder to calculate if renting travel capability will be cost effective for daily long commutes. Heh, if uber (pricing) is anything to do by, definitely not :stuck_out_tongue:

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Interesting thought. Given that commuting tends to happen at predictable times, might the solution be some variation on public transport? Filling four or five seats (booked like uber’s app, perhaps) would probably make for quite good pricing. Not having to pay for a driver should further reduce costs.

Car shares and hire cars look good until one factors in the inconvenience and having to pick up and drop off the vehicle and where that might be, or have it dutifully delivered on time every time, and having to plan/book ahead or risk being without. Therein lies the difficulty with ‘selling’ it.

Ah!

Consider the only cars allowed on the road are AI controlled, cost a small fortune to buy and maintain and are supplied by only one of two global companies, Boeing or Airbus Industries. Oops, wrong business model. Google or Uber?

Only if they get there first and rule the world, oops I mean roads! :grin:

Unless the vehicle comes to you.

In the case of “new-age public transport” routing on-the-fly past whoever has asked at that time and calculating optimum routes to the destinations of each passenger.

Good point. Should failure to plan/prebook carry a financial penalty?

If few to no vehicles are owned by individuals, will there be much of a second-hand market? Corporates will probably run vehicles until they’re no longer economical, so they’d be a poor buy. Being owned in bulk will make recycling easier. Might individual ownership be restricted on environmental grounds?

Of course, this is all predicated on autonomy. That’s a bit off-topic, but electric power and autonomy do seem related.

I used to commute 110 km/day. After a full day’s work, I figured I was a danger on the roads, so resorted to public transport. That more than doubled my travel times, but probably extended my life.

In the past I’ve done the public transport thing, however our village gets a total of 4 trains per day, and patchy buses. It was OK while I was single and carefree but with family and frequent needs to bounce around multiple suburbs for errands before getting home, no longer so easy.

And no, I personally wouldn’t consider uprooting our lives to live somewhere more convenient to be a good solution.

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