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Comment by geysersam | Hacker News Reader

Why would anyone want to use e-fuel in 2035 instead of electricity?

(Except for "luxury" brands that just want to be special to distinguish themselves from the rabble.)

Well the FDP party which is in the coalition govt of Germany and torpedoed the EU ICE ban in the last minute and forced the inclusion of this e-fuel nonsense for the whole EU is run by a dude who likes to drive a Porsche and who is friends with the Porsche company. Porsche is the only major car producer in Germany that favors efuels. So uh, I think the FDP doesn’t like the ICE ban, because as a Laisser-faire party, they favor “open technology solutions” and want the “market” to decide on the best technological solutions for the climate problem.

> Why would anyone want to use e-fuel in 2035 instead of electricity

It will depend on their needs and if the device covers them. For example (as said already even here): long distance travel, practicality of refuelling (no, the need of some will not be fulfilled by leaving the car in charge nightly), decent technology (e.g. some will refuse to own an internet connected vehicle).

Long distance and refueling will be solved by 2035. They’re close now. I’m will to bet all new gas cars are going to be internet connect too, it’s already heading that way, and has little to do with EVs

> I’m will to bet all new gas cars ... little to do

Would you drive them? Would you own an internet connected door, vehicle, pacemaker? Some would rather find the keys out of the asylum.

You say «little to do», but the point was that we are informed of «gas cars» without wireless connection, whereas word is that for some reason all electric vehicles seem to be. We know that some «gas cars» are spared, but they say all electric ones will be bound to the wave of improper engineering, so this defines some hope or way out for the traditional making and rules out the new one.

The very article you are responding to is touting energy densities that could lead to 1000 km in Teslas next year and the super chargers planned for the same time period would charge those cars in 15 mins. You do not even have to go out 5 years before “long distance travel, practicability of refueling” will favour EV owners. I just got back from a 2000 km EV road trip through the worlds second biggest country ( and one of the sparsest populated ). The longest leg between charging networks was about 300 km in the Rocky Mountains. The longest we sat at a charger was around 20 minutes. Most of that time was spent placing take-out dinner orders for the 5 of us in the car.

This is my first long trip in an EV vehicle but my wife drove about a 1000 miles through eastern Washington State a few weekends ago ( also mountains - even more remote ). She had to plan but there was certainly no risk of getting stranded. At least one of the hotels had overnight charging for free.

All this is today. These are going to be non-issues 5 years from now.

The core of the matter is this:

They are only LABELED as e-fuel cars. You can run them just fine with classical fuels.

EDIT: emphasis

A lot of gas stations have differently-sized nozzles for regular gasoline and diesel, and the fueling opening in the car is sized so that a diesel nozzle does not fit in a gasoline car. They should do something similar for e-fuel so people don't "accidentally" fuel them with classical fuel.

What you are forgetting is that diesel engines only work with diesel and gasoline ones only work with gasoline. This creates a natural incentive for the customers to not mix this up.

In the e-fuel vs trad-fuel story you do not have that incentive.

What you DO have, is an incentive to actually do the switch. Projections put e-fuel production costs at a 1500% premium over fossil fuels and wide spread availability is actually a hard scientific problem as even the announced global production capacity* of e-fuels is only enough for a few thousand vehicles.

* Apparently, to date, the biggest portion of announced e-fuel production misses either an energy provider or financial backing or both.

A good German summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnrudYCzh2E

I'll still be driving my land cruiser in 2035.

The ban is for new vehicles so that's not relevant.

Long distance trucks?

That was exactly my thinking actually..... I own an equestrian property as a hobby, I need a big diesel truck (1 ton) to haul horses, hay, tractor, etc... Sometimes for very long distances (>1000kms) for shows, etc... There are no viable options today, or in the near (10-15 years) future that offer viable alternatives in the form of an EV... at least not from traditional HD truck vendors.....

The EU ICE ban discussd here only targets personal vehicles. The trucking and aviation industroies are different discussions.

braBRAAAAAAP, that's why

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