Why an F1 car is more energy efficient than an electric car
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I'd bet the energetic cost of refining gasoline from crude oil is much larger than that for the coal or "powerplant oil", thus seriously offsetting that 33% vs 50%?
This is ignoring the more obvious fact that a powerplant can operate at nearly constant efficiency, while a real car driving on a read road will have a wildly varying efficiency, even with a hybrid engine...)
And even if electric is "less green" now, we are kind of sure that we can drive down the price of electric power very low in the future (solar, renewable, classic nuclear, fusion etc. ...only one breakthrough in only one of these will have huge price lowering consequences), while the price of oil can only go up...
Let's compare worst case scenario for what we don't like and ignore all inconvenient facts for what we like.
Lazy
I get all of my electricity from a nuclear power plant, so if I had an electric car the title statement would at least be false for me. For people on solar, the title doesn't make any practical sense, as less efficient solar panels aren't causing any extra pollution (except during their initial construction).
Yeah, and there's no unaccounted for externalities with that strategy.
If you use more power, that doesn't come from running the nuke plant more (we run them at 100% all the time) or building more nuke plants (politically impossible). Instead it comes from coal/oil/wind/sun: something else.
A hybrid car - or an outright gasoline car - always must rely on oil of some sort to be able to run. We do not have a clean, reasonable alternative for this as we do with electricity.
That's wrong. An F1 engine has to do about 800 miles/1200km based on current rules. In testing over 4 days Mercedes completed about 2000 miles and I believe that was without an engine change. Obviously these numbers are much less than a person would drive in a year but significantly more than a couple of hours. I'm sure they could be designed to go longer and be continue to be efficient of necessary too as rules have forced this change over the years.
Making the engine last longer would likely require a huge increase in weight, which would reduce efficiency.
You just can't compare racing engines to road car engines. A race engine idles at the same revs as a road car redlines.
I guess I should have said "several" instead of a "few". I did not say a "couple" ;)
Also, they could be designed to go longer but they'd be a lot heavier. That would negatively impact the energy efficiency.
Again I'm a huge fan of F1. From an engineering and $$ standpoint it's amazing. Doesn't make the article any less disingenuous though.
Your comparison is disingenuous.
Obviously racing engines are highly tuned and not suitable for general use, but there's no reason I can see that TJI technology could not be adapted for normal engines.
Which I realise isn't your point but IMO it's what an F1/FE comparison should count.
Of course F1 cars are not an efficient means of transport. The point is that the new rules introduced constraints that have produced real innovation in efficiency, giving significant gains that could be utilized in passenger vehicles. This is the real news, not silly headlines like "F1 cars are more efficient than electric cars".
* It is difficult to utilise heat that is a byproduct.
* Energy is lost during transmission.
If you need to burn fuel it can be more efficient to do so at the point of use. Small domestic gas boilers (Micro CHP)[0] are being designed to generate electricity, and can use the heat within the household. They have excellent thermal efficiency and can use existing pipeline networks.
For the foreseeable future we need to burn fossil fuels to balance out renewable generation. Being able to do that efficiently is important. It also leaves the door open to green fuels, however far fetched that might be.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_combined_heat_and_power
http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/opinion/f1/ferraris-formul...
My understanding is that they pre-ignite a tiny amount of fuel in a special chamber, which forces the main fuel-air charge into the cylinder through targeted nozzles, making a very effective and targeted fuel air mixture, which can be leaner as the mix is so good.
But it does provide a fair bit of power, and I'm looking forward to seeing Honda race it tomorrow for the first time (Mercedes and Ferrari have it already, Honda bringing it to Canada this weekend, not sure about Renault). This might improve McLaren's lackluster performance and even up the racing a little.
"Furthermore, this process allows ... peak indicated thermal efficiencies up to 45% - not to be confused with the reported > 48% thermal efficiency that Mercedes is achieving for its entire F1 power unit."
I don't remember anyone struggling with fuel loads in a long time like they did early on with the new engines.
Excess heat energy is captured from the turbo with the generator instead of blowing the excess out of the waste gate. The turbo is pre-spooled by turning it with the electric motor so the internal combustion engine runs at or near stoichiometric optimal fuel-air mix at all times.
The other motor generator does regenerative braking and can drive the engine.
The Mercedes engine is rumored to develop around 950 horsepower from the 1.6l V6 engine (of which about 160 are from the electric motors).
I'm hopeful that similar technology will find its way to road cars. City buses in particular would benefit a lot due to frequent stops.
By now they would have removed the driver, and that would take most of the $$ out of F1 ;)
The Williams 1993 car was in many ways the high point of tech for F1. Since then, I think FIA have been trying to balance the rules for (1) safety (2) balancing the role of the constructor and the driver, and ensuring that driver skill was a major part of the equation.
The Williams car with active suspensions was the last technical improvement that was not a rules loophole up to maybe the Mercedes f-duct and wing stalling. F1 has become a spec formula with the only goal to keep lap times more or less constant and some common ground with production cars (the current hybrids, Le Mans too.)