It's just a great storage mechanism.
Storage is also a big issue when it comes to renewables. You could take in carbon in areas with lots of sun and ship the fuel to areas not well suited for solar generation.
This really would be a game changer for lowing the net carbon output.
This also means you could solve one of the big problems in the power grid, peak generation. Use the extra capacity during off peak hours to generate fuel that is later used to fire up power stations to supply peak demand.
A gallon of petrol - 40 miles (realistcally and using UK gallon).
According to Tesla their charging is 92% efficient so reduce that 200 to 184 miles.
Your process is 4.5 times less efficient than just putting that electricity into the EV? Is that right?
If so - and your process is carbon neutral (big if) - what's the point in a future where EVs dominate?
EVs won't dominate some important uses for a long time, e.g. aviation and marine shipping.
It might also be worth looking at where airplanes tanker fuel, that is to say, carry more fuel than they need for their current leg because refueling at the next stop would be difficult or expensive. Apparently a lot of that currently happens on short flights to small islands; while I hope Wright Electric and/or the EViation Alice will eventually take over that market, in the short term that's a market that might be willing to pay a bit more for liquid fuel made from air plus local solar panels.
Fuel oil that can be burned in combined cycle power plants in the winter may also be valuable for dealing with seasonal imbalances in demand vs renewable generation that lithium ion batteries can't cost effectively balance.
The DOE's 2020 targets came three years ahead of schedule. Their 2030 target is $0.04/kWh [2], which would work out to $2.40/gallon. Mix in the fact that a bunch of countries (and US states) have implemented carbon taxes and you've got yourself a good long term investment.
[1] http://solarcellcentral.com/cost_page.html [2] https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/articles/2020-utility-scal...
Taxes are low as here in the US (a) many people hate taxes and (b) with such a low population density, commerce is very reliant on road vehicles. So raising taxes has an outsized impact on commerce.
Assuming they get to 50% efficiency, that's $1.69/gallon.
Sounds crazy low, but I hope it's true.
[1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/texas-muni-signs-cheap-sola...
My view is that is more a question of when than if and that the point where it stops mattering relative to the comparison to fossil fuels depending on your point may already be quite near or even in the past.
Some places are still getting expensive solar, some places are bidding at 0.025/kwh. It doesn't really matter. What matters is what the bids will be ten years or so from now, which is when realistically this could start becoming operational at a meaningful scale.
It's 2019. Ramping up production for something like this takes some time. A decade can fly by for a startup like this. Doing the math with 2019 prices and efficiencies means you get a very conservative view of what would be possible now with today's level of technology at today's scale.
However, an investor needs to look a decade ahead. Or longer and assign some probabilities to likely outcomes. The outcome where there's no progress whatsoever in making clean energy tech better in the next ten years seems unlikely. So, betting on < 1$/gallon as a feasible goal in 1-2 decades seems like a reasonable bet. If the rest of the technology works as advertised (room temperature synthesis and extraction of alcohols) and the technology can be scaled at reasonable cost, that ought to be basically a money printing machine. The lower that price drops, the better. As long as oil remains the primary source, you can pocket the difference as profit.
Today's price for standard gasoline here in the Netherlands is 1.83 EUR/litre, which is currently equivalent to 7.75 USD/gallon.
I don't understand your rail/car replacing flying argument. There are no signs that flying is going to get so expensive that people would rather pay for it with so much of their time.
Using a process like this would essentially make the fuel simply a much better battery for airplanes than our batteries today.
A lot of people in the world. And Americans would pay close to that without subsidies + rising gas prices.
In the UK, people pay approx $6 per gallon for gasoline.
Of that, AUD 0.41 is federal fuel excise, and AUD 0.12 is GST.
If you change that chart to USD and Gallons you'll find this around the cost of gasoline in New Zealand.
[1] http://www.hydroquebec.com/business/customer-space/rates/rat...
China’s EV goal is 20% of new vehicle sales by 2025. That is to say, 80% of sales in 2025 will still be gas. (So will the 100 million gas vehicles sold in China between now and then). We are a long ways away from not needing this tech.
Electric cars can't compete against gasoline cars until the price hits about $6/gallon. And considering that crude prices are relatively low, but gas in CA is almost $4/gallon in the Bay Area, it doesn't take much time for normal rates to hit $6/gallon in the next 10 years or so.
At that price, it becomes more economic and that's the time frame probably what they're targeting as well.
And the national average (today) is $2.95, you might as well compare Hawaii and Alaska which are also economic islands.
>it doesn't take much time for normal rates to hit $6/gallon in the next 10 years or so.
The national average 10 years ago was $2.45, which is $2.90 accounting for inflation. The only way gas hits $6 is if we have a second Great Inflation or massive political changes in the United States and abroad.
By that measure, Florida or Oregon would be economic islands due to their anomalous taxes.
no, we're taking Soothing30MinuteRelaxingBreaksAt200MileIntervalsAwesomeHappy™ brought to you by Tesla™ instead
It's there when I need it for the long road trip. But daily life is effectively refueling-free.
What percentage of round-trips are under 200 miles? NHTS recorded the distance from ~750,000 car trips in 2009 and found the 95th percentile is 30 miles, and the 99th percentile is 70 miles. Somewhere on the order of 1 in 1,000 trips needs a Supercharger stop along the way.
IF this is as good as they claim I don't see electric cars as worth it as a first car. They are slightly cheaper for an in-town only commuter car, but the downsides of electric cars (expensive battery replacement, limited range without long recharge times) are something that fans hate to acknowledge. Note that I said first car, once you have decided to have a second car electric is probably better.
With V3 Supercharging, you can drop in with your Model 3 at 15% and be at 80% in 24 minutes. In my road trip experience, that's barely enough time for everyone to use the bathroom and pick out a beverage. [2]
[1] - https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-...
[2] - https://twitter.com/privater/status/1103567772301193216/phot...
So if you are starting the day with 95% charge, and ending the day plugged in at your destination with 15% charge, that means you can travel about 450 miles with just one ~20 minute stop to charge along the way.
How is that not fast enough? The only issue is if you can't plug in at your destination. Maybe in that case you have breakfast near the next Supercharge on your route.
Yes, it is something you might have to think about for a minute. The guidance software will map out Supercharging stops for you.
I do expect that they will figure out a reservation system which tracks and queues vehicles en route, like an air traffic controller, to cut down on inefficient ad hoc queueing at the location.
It would be super fun to program such a system, backend and front. Even more so as the cars become increasingly autonomous.
For now at least you can click on the map and see live how many chargers are in use.
You can wait around for 12h to charge, or you can turn in your cores and pay for 100% capacity batts now. And the swap would be quicker than standing around filling up a tank.
But no. Each ev is different and proprietary. The chargers aren't even the same.
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1090933_standardized-el...
So swapping batteries is hard to do, and unnecessary for most drives. Sure, you’d want to be able to swap batteries in five minutes like pumping gas. But who’s going to ship batteries out to the middle of Kansas, build infrastructure, and pay technicians just for people on a road trip who want to swap batteries?
But you’d still need to have expensive batteries in stock on location, technicians and equipment. I can’t see that ever being done at scale.
For day to day use EV doesn't need trips for gas station to refuel - so you actually save time.
For long trips - yes.
Because I keep track of my mileage and have to carefully babysit the process (likes to overflow) I’d say I lose at least 10 minutes every time I get gas, and that’s every 130 miles or so.
Only 130 miles? Is that normal? My car can easily go 600 miles on a 15 gallon tank (diesel), but I've had it for so long I don't remember what other cars are like.
Now I'm curious how long it actually takes. Next time I fill up I'll time it.