Electric cars vs gas-to-liquid technology

[Spectre_nz]

This is a little inspired by Secretary Chu's comment "I would put every cent into electric cars", which I now realize was directed at electric vs hydrogen cars, but initially I thought he was comparing electric cars to alternative ethanol fuel.

Before I start, I should say, I'm somewhat biased on this topic. I work for one of those companies looking to make it big with ethanol fuel technology and I'm pretty enthusiastic about what we do. I'd say most of my bias comes from the fact that I don't know enough about electric cars to make a full comparison. My gut feeling is against electric cars, but I'd like to quantify if this viewpoint is valid or not or if I actually do have an unjustified bias. Anyway.

So, ignoring the hydrogen dream. Electric cars vs internal combustion. If someone could produce a 'green' fuel, ie, one sourced from renewable feedstock that was competitive against fossil fuels, would electric cars still be better?

I was reading up on the landscape of gas-to-liquid technologies and someone had made the very valid point that, if you're going to turn something like syngas into ethanol fuel to burn in an IC engine, why not just burn the syngas straight off and run an electric generator, then power a fleet of electric cars. He had a valid point, I haven't worked out all the math, but at least in terms of energy its more efficient to just burn it for electrical power.

However, I don't know how well electric vehicles can get that power to the road, or how much electric motors and batteries are liable to cost or weigh, what the upkeep costs would be like and so on. I realize his point assumed he could get the 'ideal' electric car, whereas most gas-to-liquid proponents talk about how things could be if they had the ideal conversion technology. One side wants to couple tried and tested electrical generation with currently experimental electric vehicles. The other, wants to couple experimental fuel technologies with tried and tested internal combustion powered vehicles.
The reason my gut instinct is against electric cars is, electric cars have already been competing against IC engines and lost, (granted there is the vicious cycle of, there is no infrastructure for them, so they're expensive one off experiments, so no one bothers to build infrastructure for them) at least until governments have begun mandating and subsidizing them.

So that would seem to imply that if you could produce an alternative fuel that was competitive with fossil fuels it would out compete electric cars by default. But how much of that is just a lack of electric car technology? Liquid fuel has the advantage that its easily portable, easy to store and all the existing infrastructure is adapted around liquid fueled vehicles, but assuming the infrastructure was there, could an electric fleet be on par or superior to an internal combustion fleet? In all areas? or just specific ones like initial cost, ongoing cost, endurance, acceleration, power-to-weight and so on.

Edit:
Just in case anyone is about to derail this with a tangent on why corn ethanol is bad, I'm talking about using syngas or something like it to make fuel - some low cost and otherwise waste gas source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_gas

[Norade]

Electric cars have lost for many reasons, not the least of which are large oil companies ensuring they never get a fair chance. However beyond that I don't know enough to add anything to this thread.

[Darth Tanner]

However, I don't know how well electric vehicles can get that power to the road

From the production models I've seen tested on programs such as Top Gear electric vehicles can match and exceed traditional petrol engines easily. Although the mini car electric vehicles that are cheaply available are little better than milk floats.

or how much electric motors and batteries are liable to cost or weigh, what the upkeep costs would be like and so on.

Total costs are higher at the moment because of the need for large batteries. Mass production should help with this but they will remain more expensive than similar petrol engines cars for at least the next few decades as technology is developing rapidly. Obviously this extra initial investment can be made back from the fact your running off the grid rather than barrels of black gold.

The reason my gut instinct is against electric cars is, electric cars have already been competing against IC engines and lost,

Main problems I see with electric cars...
1. Battery is very heavy and expensive. Current batteries can take up the whole rear of a car and as mentioned make cars more expensive than comparable petrol engines.
2. Range, even top of the range battery powered cars have ranges in the area of 200 miles, with more moderate production cars having ranges from 50-100 miles. This is a major failing for electric cars down to the fact that refuelling is practically impossible during a journey (recharge takes many hours/lack of recharging facilities) and that range will steadily decrease as the battery ages limiting the usefulness of actually owning a car rather significantly.
3. Refuelling, as mentioned home charging is the only practical solution at the moment without massive infrastructure development to create a network of high capacity rapid charging stations, which is unlikely until oil is running at $500 a barrel by which point it might be too late.

Just in case anyone is about to derail this with a tangent on why corn ethanol is bad

The most obvious problem is that your primarily going to get it from either natural gas or coal, which has all the problems of oil except with an added refining stage. Alternatively you get it from biomass and encounter all the problems of contributing to higher food prices and world hunger.

The biggest problem about switching away form oil is that all the replacement substances have massively lower energy content levels, syngas as I understand it has about 1/2 the energy level of oil which means your going to have to triple production on a per barely ration just to maintain current fuel levels. Not to mention in theory double emissions!

[Marcus Aurelius]

Total costs are higher at the moment because of the need for large batteries. Mass production should help with this but they will remain more expensive than similar petrol engines cars for at least the next few decades as technology is developing rapidly.

Well, 20 years from now a pure internal combustion engine car is not going to be marketable at all, unless you somehow manage to replace nearly all other crude oil based products or produce enough ethanol for the cars, both of which are highly unlikely.

2. Range, even top of the range battery powered cars have ranges in the area of 200 miles, with more moderate production cars having ranges from 50-100 miles. This is a major failing for electric cars down to the fact that refuelling is practically impossible during a journey (recharge takes many hours/lack of recharging facilities) and that range will steadily decrease as the battery ages limiting the usefulness of actually owning a car rather significantly.

Which is still quite sufficient for nearly all commuter traffic. If you need better range you can buy a plug-in hybrid, or once the fuel costs are too high for them as well, use a train or a ship.

3. Refuelling, as mentioned home charging is the only practical solution at the moment without massive infrastructure development to create a network of high capacity rapid charging stations, which is unlikely until oil is running at $500 a barrel by which point it might be too late.

It is unlikely that crude oil prices could ever reach $500 (unless the US dollar is significantly devalued). About $200 is probably the maximum industrial economy can take before a major depression follows. Some people in fact believe that the high crude oil prices in summer 2008 were a major contributor to the recession, although this being economics it is almost impossible to prove until the next one comes.

The most obvious problem is that your primarily going to get it from either natural gas or coal, which has all the problems of oil except with an added refining stage. Alternatively you get it from biomass and encounter all the problems of contributing to higher food prices and world hunger.

Only if the biomass is from potential food sources. The so called 2nd and 3rd Generation biofuels are supposed to get the biomass from cellulose (forests and agricultural waste) or algae, respectively. 2nd Generation biofuels are already known to work, but unfortunately their contribution can never be very significant. At best they could replace perhaps 10% of petrol/gasoline and oil based diesel currently used for ground traffic alone. 3rd Gen biofuels on the other hand are still quite unproven in any kind of significant scale and the list of failed scailing attemps from lab to industrial scale is already getting rather long.

The biggest problem about switching away form oil is that all the replacement substances have massively lower energy content levels, syngas as I understand it has about 1/2 the energy level of oil which means your going to have to triple production on a per barely ration just to maintain current fuel levels. Not to mention in theory double emissions!

Ethanol and biodiesel do not have "massively lower energy content" on optimized engines (lower yes, but not "massively"). The main problem with them is that the efficiency of photosynthesis is very low, which in turn means that on order to replace oil based fuels with biofuels you need very large areas for the plants. Basically only algae grown on oceans could deliver anything close to those levels.

[Sky Captain]

Currently cost of a battery pack is the biggest obstacle. To be able to drive as far as IC powered car requires several hundred kilograms of best batteries. In all other aspects electric cars are better, they can also run on energy sources that are impossible be scaled down to car use like nuclear reactors, dams and wind generators.

[Qi__]

I would like to sketch you the ideal solution -or-, at least a step in the direction of.

About the electric source:
The most ideal source of power that can handle the huge demand is geothermic energy.
If you can drill deep enough, like 3 miles deep, it is possible to enter water in and get steam out of the well, and drive a sizable electrical power plant, one next to each major city anywhere on earth. The first step is taken to make it cheap; being able to do it through only one well. The next step is being able to drill that deep, which is a problem almost solved through the thermal lance drillhead.

About the electric cars:
There has been invented the wireless power supply.
This is not a solution to drive around without batteries, but merely a solution to easily recharge any battery-powered device.
So it is possible to equip every parking place with an embedded power supply, and for that matter equip every highway with hotspots. Payment of the power can go through electronic micro-payments. So you drive over a hotspot in the highway, receive 0.1 watt-hour of charge to your battery, and negotiate wireless to pay $0.0008 from your bank account to the power company, two hotspots per second. And the micro payments are summed each day to turn up as authorized payment on your account.

[Simon_Jester]

That reminds me of the solar panel roads; you'd have to tear up a lot of asphalt to make that work, and you'd be sticking some moderately sensitive electronics under the pavement...

[Sea Skimmer]

Currently cost of a battery pack is the biggest obstacle. To be able to drive as far as IC powered car requires several hundred kilograms of best batteries. In all other aspects electric cars are better, they can also run on energy sources that are impossible be scaled down to car use like nuclear reactors, dams and wind generators.

You can make the money of the batteries back, if they are good enough, and we by all means should force car companies to buy back the batteries at the end of the lifespan to ensure they are recycled. An equally big problem is just that with any existing battery you’ll need at least three or four hours to recharge which doesn’t work if you need to drive more then one charge per day. Some projects are in the works for quick recharging batteries and really big capacitors (which present a whole new line of safety risks) but right now those are not serious design options.

[Marcus Aurelius]

An equally big problem is just that with any existing battery you’ll need at least three or four hours to recharge which doesn’t work if you need to drive more then one charge per day. Some projects are in the works for quick recharging batteries and really big capacitors (which present a whole new line of safety risks) but right now those are not serious design options.

Yes. With current tech, if you absolutely positively need more than 150-200 km range, plug-in hybrids are the answer. This of course means that biofuel technology is not necessarily in direct competition with electric cars, since you could very well build a PHEV with the ICE optimized for ethanol or biodiesel. The only problem I see with this scenario is that the mere possibility to continue using ICE for long distance travelling will keep them so popular that most of them have to burn oil based fuels anyways, and although it would be better than having ICE powered cars only, it will not be a very sustainable; at best it's an interim solution.

[Spectre_nz]

Batteries look like they could be a real killer...

Just the perception that your equivalent fuel tank was going to shrink by 10% every year would turn a lot of people off. I imagine you could wear the compromise of hybrid fuel/electric much more effectively if you supported your fuel generation with solar/ geothermal electric power rather than vehicles that compromise weight and cost for dual functionality.

You could escape the need for a battery all together; liquid fuel is your energy storage medium, while clean electric tech cracks water and carbon dioxide to turn into alcohols. Anyhoo.

As for conversions that actually work,

Using perfectly good hydrocarbons for conversion is indeed, silly, which is why any reasonable ethanol alternative would capture carbon from waste sources; industrial flue gas, woody biomass, municipal waste, corn steep liquor, kraft liquor from the paper pulp industry, old tires or basically anything combustible.

Google-fu has failed me... does anyone have a statistic of annual fuel use in the US?

Working on the assumption that the production of 1 ton of steel produces half a ton of carbon monoxide in the process (thats just a number that has been thrown around at work, I don't have a verified source for it), and that the use produced 109 million tons of steel in 2004, US steel mills could (under perfect conditions that ignore real world inefficiencies) produce 13.6 million tons of ethanol, annually.
How much more would ethanol would you need to keep the US fueled?

[Darth Wong]

How much more would ethanol would you need to keep the US fueled?

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/ ... tml#demand
The US consumes roughly 9 million barrels of oil every day. At 42 gallons per barrel and 4 litres per gallon, that's 1.5 billion litres per day, or 550 billion litres per year.

I don't see how you can make that much ethanol from waste sources.

[Spectre_nz]

Sweet flying fuck, that's orders of magnitude more than I expected...

(did not do the maths failure )

Edit:
And now that have done the math, US annual steel production wouldn't even cover the oil consumption of little ol' New Zealand here.
I was hoping more for an optimistic percentage, not a drop in the bucket...

[Spectre_nz]

Gah, double maths failure.

US steel waste could sustain New Zealand, for two-ish years. Not that that helps the US any.

13.6 million tons of ethanol, going by this site: http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html

Equates to just under a 110 million barrels of oil. Yay 12 days of supply for the US.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Equates to just under a 110 million barrels of oil. Yay 12 days of supply for the US.

In a peak-oil documentary I saw a couple of years back somebody compared replacing all oil based fuels to putting a permanent colony on Pluto. Replacing oil based fuels just for ground traffic is admittedly a little easier, but it's still a really big technological challenge. It's too bad it doesn't make good public speaking material.

[Tolya]

Right now, don't count on electric cars becoming widespread. The increased demand would wreck the existing power grid, requiring immense investments in new power plants.

And power has to come from somewhere. If it's a coal power plant then it doesn't make much difference if you're not polluting the environment with your fancy electric cars. Somebody else had to pollute for you to make the car move.

It seems that every big car maker boasts about how they plan to launch an EV vehicle. Frankly, nobody knows if they are going to be 1) practical 2) marketable.

Which is why everyone is so keen on hybrid technology, which really isn't about running on electricity, but rather introducing a new motor to boost the effectiveness of traditional fuel. I've driven a 5-litre 400 bhp Lexus 600h that does about 25 mpg (US).

[Marcus Aurelius]

Right now, don't count on electric cars becoming widespread. The increased demand would wreck the existing power grid, requiring immense investments in new power plants.
And power has to come from somewhere. If it's a coal power plant then it doesn't make much difference if you're not polluting the environment with your fancy electric cars. Somebody else had to pollute for you to make the car move.

It seems that every big car maker boasts about how they plan to launch an EV vehicle. Frankly, nobody knows if they are going to be 1) practical 2) marketable.

Which is why everyone is so keen on hybrid technology, which really isn't about running on electricity, but rather introducing a new motor to boost the effectiveness of traditional fuel. I've driven a 5-litre 400 bhp Lexus 600h that does about 25 mpg (US).

I would not "wreck the grid", at least not in most parts of Europe (or Japan for the matter). There is plenty of spare capacity in the night. The North American grid is notoriously fragile, so I don't know about that. Most likely there could be problems there during the summer when ACs are running. Generating electricity from coal is certainly not a good thing, but at least there is enough of the stuff for another 30-50 years. Not so with crude oil with current consumption.

Electric vehicles are not at all unproven technology. Whether they are marketable or not depends on many things, like always, but technically they are quite feasible. Even with NiMH batteries their range is sufficient for normal commuter traffic, which is usually less than 100 km per day.

Conventional hybrids (non plug-in) I am not that excited about. You can get almost the same fuel efficiency with advanced ICE only solutions such as Volkswagen TSI, Toyota Valvematic or Nissan VVEL. If you already have fairly big batteries and a relatively powerful electric motor, it's a no-brainer to extend that a little bit further and make a PHEV.

[Lagmonster]

Has anyone considered the possibility of highway-capable electrics that are just starting to come to market, such as the Tesla cars out of California? I'm no engineer, so I'm curious how they rate against the current crowd of mini-commuter electrics like the Zenn? Teslas certainly seem to, on paper, shatter many of the problems I've read about with electrics, but I don't have the mechanical know-how to judge them properly.

[Tolya]

Electric vehicles are not at all unproven technology. Whether they are marketable or not depends on many things, like always, but technically they are quite feasible. Even with NiMH batteries their range is sufficient for normal commuter traffic, which is usually less than 100 km per day.

Actually, the guys behind Chevrolet Volt conducted a study which showed that the average travel distance a day for a US citizen is about 30 miles. That's why they used to brag that their car can run on electric energy only.

Conventional hybrids (non plug-in) I am not that excited about. You can get almost the same fuel efficiency with advanced ICE only solutions such as Volkswagen TSI, Toyota Valvematic or Nissan VVEL. If you already have fairly big batteries and a relatively powerful electric motor, it's a no-brainer to extend that a little bit further and make a PHEV.

The only problem I see are higher servicing costs - at least with Toyota Prius, because Im not familiar with servicing protocols in other HEV's. Every 2 or so years you have to change the batteries, which costs a formidable amount of money.

I agree about the hybrid vehicles being very excitable, particularly the concept behind Chevrolet Volt and using a diesel engine solely to power the electric motor. Im surprised that no one thought about this earlier - those ultra heavy dump trucks (like Komtasu 900's) had this kind of propulsion for years.

Having said that, I hope that V8 gas guzzling Ferrari's and Porsche's never disappear so one day I can finally have one of them. And I want a ride in one of those ultra heavy dump trucks.

[Tolya]

Has anyone considered the possibility of highway-capable electrics that are just starting to come to market, such as the Tesla cars out of California? I'm no engineer, so I'm curious how they rate against the current crowd of mini-commuter electrics like the Zenn? Teslas certainly seem to, on paper, shatter many of the problems I've read about with electrics, but I don't have the mechanical know-how to judge them properly.

Top Gear summed up cars like Tesla Roadster pretty well. Everything is fine until you have to go somewhere beyond the normal range. Waiting a few hours while the battery recharges in the middle of the road isn't very entertaining.

[TheLostVikings]

Has anyone considered the possibility of highway-capable electrics that are just starting to come to market, such as the Tesla cars out of California? I'm no engineer, so I'm curious how they rate against the current crowd of mini-commuter electrics like the Zenn? Teslas certainly seem to, on paper, shatter many of the problems I've read about with electrics, but I don't have the mechanical know-how to judge them properly.

Top Gear summed up cars like Tesla Roadster pretty well. Everything is fine until you have to go somewhere beyond the normal range. Waiting a few hours while the battery recharges in the middle of the road isn't very entertaining.

It's worth noting that Top Gear outright lied their ass off when they presented the Tesla, it did not run out of power during their test at all. They just made it up to get some more drama out of the episode.

[Tolya]

It's worth noting that Top Gear outright lied their ass off when they presented the Tesla, it did not run out of power during their test at all. They just made it up to get some more drama out of the episode.

Yes, everyone even mildly interested in the series knows that. But how does that invalidate their point that it takes 3,5 hours to fully recharge the batteries on Tesla Roadster if it happens to run out of juice?

And that 3,5 hours is using za 240V 70 ampere high power connector, not the usual 220V (110V in Europe) wall socket.

Sorry. distance from Warsaw to Gdansk is more than that. Meaning I couldn't visit PeZook in this car without having to recharge.

Right now Tesla (and as a matter of fact, any EV/PEV vehicle) is an expensive gimmick. Hybrids are a much more viable option right now.

[Singular Intellect]

The US consumes roughly 9 million barrels of oil every day. At 42 gallons per barrel and 4 litres per gallon, that's 1.5 billion litres per day, or 550 billion litres per year.

Has the US cut their oil consumption in half? I thought the figures were at least double that for the US.

[Surlethe]

What's your source for that?

[Marcus Aurelius]

What's your source for that?

I don't know his source, but this should be reliable*:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/energyexplaine ... ge=oil_use

It appears that the number Mike gave is just for motor gasoline.

* For use and past statistics. Their projections are fairly typical overly optimistic stuff designed not to scare people with the D-word or the P-word.

[Marcus Aurelius]

And that 3,5 hours is using za 240V 70 ampere high power connector, not the usual 220V (110V in Europe) wall socket.

Sorry. distance from Warsaw to Gdansk is more than that. Meaning I couldn't visit PeZook in this car without having to recharge.

Right now Tesla (and as a matter of fact, any EV/PEV vehicle) is an expensive gimmick. Hybrids are a much more viable option right now.

Wall sockets in Europe are nowadays actually 230 V, but usually you would not have more than 16 A available in a typical house and sometimes only 10 A (electric stoves may have 400 V three phase and 10 A per phase, but normally that's already reserved for the stove).

For travelling from Gdansk to Warsaw: use a train. I agree that electric cars are too expensive for most people right now, but you better hope it changes before 2020, if you want to have some form of four wheel motorized personal transport available 20 years from now. Otherwise better to learn how to handle a horse