In a few decades the internal combustion engine will be to transportation what the typewriter is to typing today. It’s kind of mind boggling, but there is really no alternative if we want to stop increasing the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere.
Trucks, tractors, planes, ships. Sure consumer cars will be EV but ICEs are not going anywhere
Efficiency plays role for our day to day car tasks, but when you have to deal with external forces or higher requirements of momentum, then you need more energy period. Towing, beating high-speed drag / waves, climbing high, cannot be addressed with smarter design. You need to be able to store somehow enough energy to deal with these external forces / additional required momentum
Yes. However, the Carnot efficiency means that most of it is lost as heat. Suddenly the advantage is not that large anymore.
F150 can tow 13,000 pounds and has a 27 gallon tank (almost 10 Tesla’s).
Currently gasoline has about 50x more energy per unit weight than a tesla battery pack.
Battery energy densities have tripled in the past 10 years. Keeping on that pace, it would take over 30 years for batteries to be competitive with gas.
When you account for the astoundingly bad efficiency of ICE, though, the gap in usable energy decreases. This is why a tesla can go 300+ miles with a battery that can only store the same energy as 2.4 gallons of gas.
If there's one thing that EVs are not, is "light". Model S ranges from 4,561 to 4,941 lbs. A model 3, 3,648 to 4,250 lbs. A Nissan Leaf - 3,538 to 3,946 lbs.
In comparison, a Honda Civic weights 2,771 to 3,012 lbs.
Regenerative breaking is nice but it's very dependent on the particular drive and terrain. Heaters are power hungry as there is very little waste heat that can be used (again, due to the high efficiency), unless they are heat pumps.
The main reason they can go so far with so little energy is the efficiency of electric motors.
> as hydrogen has similar power/weight characteristics to gas
No it doesn't! It has horrible energy density per volume, compared to any gas or liquid fuels. You can improve this by using high pressures (energy loss) or cryogenics (even more energy loss). But it's pretty bad to begin with. Turns out that the best way to store hydrogen is by adding some carbon atoms to it.
Obviously we are not comparing about the weight of an EV compared to an apple or vehicle that doesn't require a battery. We are talking about extreme measures taken to make the car lighter so it can improve range. Replacing cheaper steel with more expensive aluminum, reducing even surface area of plastics, reducing wires. Truly amazing steps were taken to reduce weight.
> No it doesn't! It has horrible energy density per volume,
volume? Seriously? "The energy in 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of hydrogen gas is about the same as the energy in 1 gallon (6.2 pounds, 2.8 kilograms) of gasoline." https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_basics.html
Source: http://www.uigi.com/h2_conv.html
Well, yeah that was my original intention. Teslas get comparable range to ICE vehicles while using less than 3 gallons of gas. That comparison to ICE vehicles demonstrates the efficiency of electric vehicles.
Hydrogen can be created with nearly any energy source: renewable, natural gas, etc.
There is a large infrastructure for moving fuels.
Just that they get lower efficiency than a fuel cell version, and apparently are sensitive to load, so mostly suited to constant-load applications, which a car typically isn't. Otherwise it'd have been interesting as fuel cells also have some serious drawbacks and seem to develop very slowly.
> Hydrogen can be created with nearly any energy source: renewable, natural gas, etc.
Yes. Although efficiency is kind of bad, so it doesn't make sense to use fossil fuels to make H2 for cars - we'd just be increasing emissions as opposed to generating electricity for use in BEVs. H2 has its place as intermediate term (before batteries get cheap enough) energy storage of surplus wind and solar power. It makes more sense to use the H2 for other things than cars though - ships, trains, long-haul trucks, possibly planes.
>There is a large infrastructure for moving fuels.
Which I bet has to be seriously adapted to handle hydrogen. You wouldn't be able to move syrup with the existing infrastructure, because it's very different to gasoline. H2 is probably a lot more different - it needs much tighter seals, it embrittles materials such as steel, which is used everywhere for e.g. gasoline storage. It is cryogenic and under high pressure. Finally, it'd be stupid to lock ourselves into an energy storage tech that relies on a physical fuel that has to be transported around, when electricity is right there, partly built out already and requiring no physical trucks, trains, boats etc to get to the consumer. It's just stone age and the only reasons people think it sounds like a good idea is that they're so used to it working that way.
Already across most of Europe all subsidies and discounts that applied for "eco friendly cars" no longer apply to Hybrids.
That leaves few people wanting to buy a hybrid - it won't be cheapest or most eco friendly.
It depends what you mean by 'bulk'. I see a major future here for big trucks-- right now, 99%+ of our long-haul tractor trailer semis are pure ICE. There is no way to fully electrify that fleet quickly, so I believe hybrid tech is being seriously underestimated in this space (especially for retrofitting).
I've been expecting to see this emerge for over 5 years, I'm not sure what's taking so long. Likely it's a catch-22 of the industry being resistant to change, while large chunks of (reluctant) investor funded R&D are necessary to make it viable. In any case, I think some larger scale tests are finally being run this year, so I'm looking forward to the results of that.
As far as consumer vehicles go, well... we should electrify almost all of it. Simply the best choice for the majority of use cases. But that's going to take a while, and will affect battery availability, which is all the more reason why big trucks will need a longer transition phase that hybrids are perfect for.