Friday 7 February 2020

So that's it for battery cars then?

Excellent article in the March 2020 edition of Motorsport magazine.

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/ The article which is all about engine technology and fuel is not on-line yet. But here are some highlights:-  

“From 2025, we could be seeing cars powered by two-stroke engines, using a zero-carbon fuel, which are more eco-friendly than Formula E racers…

F1 is also looking to pioneer the use of synthetic fuel made in a laboratory, rather than being drilled out of the ground and refined.

Small-scale facilities have already shown that they can filter carbon out of the air and combine it with hydrogen to form the hydrocarbon chains that make up fuel. When it’s burnt, that same carbon is then released back into the atmosphere.

If surplus renewable energy (wind farms can produce more energy than is needed on a blustery day) is used to make the fuel, the process can be made largely carbon-neutral. The chemical formula can be altered to replicate existing fuel.

But increased benefits come when the engine is designed with the fuel, allowing the use of greater compression ratios and improving efficiency. Factories to produce the fuel industrially are under construction and Symonds believes that F1 could use it within a few years – despite a higher cost. “As soon as there is enough around we should be doing it and we’re not that far away from what we need”, he says…

EU rules stipulate average carbon dioxide emissions for new cars should not exceed 95g/km. The easiest way for manufacturers to meet the target is to sell more electric cars.

However, these figures don’t take into account the emissions released when producing vehicles: several studies suggest that making an electric car produces more carbon than a conventional one.

“This will be rethought again in 2023 – hopefully in the right direction,” says Ulrich Baretzky, director of Audi Sport engine development, and the man behind the petrol and diesel engines that secured 13 wins for Audi at Le Mans.

“Then electric vehicles will be dead – or some of them. I certainly think that the internal combustion engine has a long future and I think it has a future that’s longer than a lot of politicians realise because politicians are hanging everything on electric vehicles.

“There’s nothing wrong with electric vehicles, but there are reasons why they are not the solution for everyone”.


Or Johnson’s ban of petrol and diesel engine motor vehicles is just stupid?

15 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

I'd be happy using manufactured fuel. They could drop the duty rate to account for higher production cost.

Lola said...

MW. By the way of things under freedom and markets the price of the fuel would rapidly decrease. And what's more oil Sheikdoms would suffer. Or would they. Plentiful sunshine to produce green electricity for electrolysis plants would seem to ague against that.

(A neighbour of mine uses supermarket vegetable oil to power his diesel 4x4. It's less per litre than diesel. He does some chemical magic and off he goes.)

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, supermarket veg oil is not cheaper. It's £1 a litre without tax. Diesel is about 40p a litre without tax.

Bayard said...

Mark, L's neighbour isn't paying fuel tax, so the comparison is £1.00/l for veg oil and £1.25/l for DERV. (Actually, it appears you can buy 5L of veg oil for £3.50 inc VAT, so that's 70p/l.) Mind you, if we all started doing it, the price would go up, plus you need a mini refinery.

I still think that series hybrids are the best way forward, because of the superior performance of electric motors and regenerative braking. When all this climate madness is over, a manufacturer might make a diesel series hybrid and, hey, we'll be where the railways were seventy years ago.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, I meant cheaper as in "requires less resources to produce".

Also, they can fine you for using red diesel in a road car because it's tax evasion. Can they fine you for using veg oil?

Mark Wadsworth said...

This technology looks promising.

Bayard said...

"Can they fine you for using veg oil?"

I don't think so. You can smell when a car's running on biodiesel, so it's not hard to tell. My brothers have run their cars on bio for years and never had any hassle.

Bayard said...

Also most biodiesel is made with waste cooking oil, so effectively costs almost nothing to "produce", although that wouldn't apply to stuff bought from the supermarket.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, fair point re used veg oil. That reduces the cost a lot.

But it's a niche thing. If everybody did it, they'd soon run out of used cooking oil.

Dinero said...

I agree there is potential to improve the internal combustion engine. Ideally the output from the egines exhaust would have no sound, pressure or heat, as those things are lost power that could have gone to the wheels. Turbochargers capture some of it.

benj said...

Yep, some of us have been banging on about this for years. Here and in motorsport magazines ;)

The cost and impracticabilities of a battery economy just aren't realised by most people. Synfuels+hybridisation seems to be the cheapest, if the tech can be scaled up.

A CO2 tax, with credits for its removal would certainly make things more viable. Of course, politicians prefer shroud waving to sensible econ. Car industry chiefs have said as much (not that they care too much one way or the other).

Lola said...

All. Science has been deployed. It is now possible to make net carbon zero petrol and diesel. Industrial scale production is being worked on. Battery only cars are dead. As long as virtue signalling principles free idiots like Johnson can have these facts hammered into their thick heads.

Bayard said...

"facts hammered into their thick heads"

What makes you think that they are interested in facts? All they are interested in is stories that help them and their friends make money and/or play well to the Party faithful.

Lola said...

B. Yes. I know that really. It's just sometimes, sometimes, you sort of just hope...

Physiocrat said...

Why not put wind generators on the roofs of cars and trains, etc, so that the electricity can drive the vehicle? That way you have a perpetual motion machine.