xkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas

I think people forget that petroleum is condensed and distilled solar energy. One gallon of gasoline is the results of years of solar energy.

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Non renewable solar energy unfortunately.
- Renewable fuels exist and are used today, but the efficiency and pollution aspects still apply.
  
  If you're making your diesel from CO2 pulled from the air, pollution aspects don't really apply (at least, CO2 emission issues don't, there's still NOx, but that's what cat piss is for).
  Problem is, converting atmospheric CO2 back into fuel makes the efficiency issue drastically worse. Maybe with enough solar panels and windmills, and use the Fischer–Tropsch process with the excess energy that the grid isn't consuming.
  Of course, that would be for mobile fuel, if solar plants were going to do anything like that for later use generating electricity during peaks, making diesel is dumb; you'd want to use hydrogen or ammonia for in-place energy storage.
  
  I was thinking about fuels like HVO. They work well, but have their own ecological implications.
  
  Ah. I'm generally skeptical of any plant-based 'green fuel' because they generally take up agricultural capacity that would otherwise be producing food
- No, it's renewable. But... not in any practical timeframe.
  
  That's not the definition of renewable.
  
  It is iv we use it sustainably.
  
  Not really. Its trees from a time before micro organisms evolved the ability to eat dead trees. These days, the solar energy collected by trees will get used to power the metabolisms of fungi before those trees can get buried and eventually become new coal & petroleum.
  I suppose an impact from a sufficiently large asteroid could turn the entire crust of the planet into magma, sterilizing it and therefore opening the possibility that new oil might be created some day.
  
  IIRC it is actually mostly from algea. A small amount from some fern-like plants. By the time trees existed, they were being broken down by bacteria.
  
  I think I read somewhere that oil will not be produced anymore because now bacteria can break down that biomass that it previously didn't. Hence, non-renewable even on long timescales.
  
  Only if we bring back the dinosaurs. There are six movies (and counting!) explaining why this is not a good idea.
  
  Technically no. Only if we erase bacteria capable of breaking down trees.
- Energy density is a huge advantage which most people find hard to give up especially when the biggest problem that we face is invisible to most people. We can't fix a problem if we ignore the cause.
- Happy cake day!
  
  A lot of people have been having their cake days recently. Guess it's the first anniversary of the Reddit exodus.
oops you posted irrelevant pedantics that verge on misinformation 😧
sure it’s distilled solar energy that cannot be renewed. relevant language highligted. no one “forgets,” this. literally no one. it’s just not relevant to a timespan less than millions of years. cheers! ☀️
- Petroleum can't be renewed, but biofuels can be.
  
  v true but i also dislike how biofuels get smorked into yet more CO2 which is kind of a problem rn
  
  Biofuels are carbon-neutral. They release CO₂ when burned, but it doesn't matter because that same CO₂ had recently been sucked out of the atmosphere by the plant they came from.
  
  In theory true. In reality not true.
  While U.S. biofuel use rose from 0.37 to 1.34 EJ/yr over this period, additional carbon uptake on cropland was enough to offset only 37 % of the biofuel-related biogenic CO2emissions. This result falsifies the assumption of a full offset made by LCA and other GHG accounting methods that assume biofuel carbon neutrality. Once estimates from the literature for process emissions and displacement effects including land-use change are considered, the conclusion is that U.S. biofuel use to date is associated with a net increase rather than a net decrease in CO2emissions. study
  Not passing judgement on anything, just putting the facts out there that I happen to know :) Biofuel may or may not be a good tool to move toward more sustainability, and it’s certainly better than petrol.
  
  My biofuel of choice is biodiesel produced from byproducts of chicken rendering that would otherwise become waste/pollution anyway. ¯(ツ)_/¯
  The way I see it, we should electrify all the things that can be (urban driving, both freight and passenger trains, etc.), maximize the use of those things (e.g. by shifting long-haul freight away from trucking and back towards rail, and shifting airline travel to high-speed rail), and then use biofuels for the relatively-niche stuff that's left instead of spending excessive effort trying to get electric to cover 100% of cases.
- Um piss off. It is not irrelevant or misinformation. That is exactly what petroleum is.
  You clearly can't understand a factual statement from an opinion I never said it was good I never said it was bad I just said it was. If you'd bother to take a moment to think about it. You would realize that I was referring to the fact that petroleum is extremely energy dense. For the very reason I stated. That is fundamentally why petroleum has become a successful energy source and why it's been so difficult to replace.
  You're welcome to point out where I said it was renewable. I think you're going to have a difficult time finding that statement.
  As for being a pedantic ass that's clearly your territory. A pedantic ass that it likes to put words in other people's mouths.
  
  Your post was bordering on irrelevant to the original comment. In light of that the information you provided can really only be interpreted is as pro-fossil fuel.
  
  Just because you can only interpret it that way doesn't mean it is true.
  
  mean comment alert 🚨 opinion invalidated

I hope you are not talking about battery locomotives.

With overhead wires the train has a practically unlimited battery capacity.

There are use cases for battery trains. In remote, mountainous locations where the cost for electrifying a track is very high it is not uncommon to use electric trains with batteries. Here in Germany we have several regions where diesel trains have been replaced by them.

Oil is honestly an amazing product, chemistry wise there is so much we can do with it and energy wise it's a extremely concentrated and easily transported form of energy.

Energy wise one liter of oil is equivalent to 10 person working for a day !

I repeat, using one liter of oil is like having 10 "slaves" working for us for a day.

Its easy to see why oil became the base of our modern civilization, and easy to see why we don't manage to stop using it even though it's destroying us.

Source - How much of a slave owner am I ?

Not really. Battery tech has always been advancing. Even today electric vehicles have barely come up with anything new, battery wise. Everyone wants something better than lithium base. No one can get anything to market.

It advanced at a glacier pace because there was no massive driving force. It only kicked off a bit with cell phones and then in any substantial way with laptops. (Yes, batteries existed before that for different things, but there was no massive driving force.) Now imagine what would have happened if we funded it starting in the 1970s.
Didn’t sodium batteries start getting marketed recently?
- Yes, but no one's even glancing at it for use in vehicles. The one that's finally getting into production is 70wh/Kg. Not nearly energy dense enough yet for ev's. Lithium batteries are closer to 300wh/Kg. In other words, they take up 1/4th the space and weight. EV's are already a thousand pounds heavier than non ev's and that's already causing extra tire pollution issues and having to overbuild suspension parts and bearings. Making them another 3,000 pounds heavier than that is just out of the question. Let alone making the space to fit the battery.
  Sodium is going to change the world with its power storage capabilities connected to solar. Anyone on like 75% of the planet could 100% live off the electric grid problem free with enough solar panels and a big sodium storage battery.
  
  Wasn’t aware that EVs were already that heavy. Then yeah, I guess that’s definitely not feasible, at least not at the moment.
  
  Yep. A size of vehicle wise comparison would be that a tesla model s sedan weighs around 4,600 pounds. A toyota Corolla weighs around 1,600 pounds less at around 3,000 pounds.
  Even the newest and most powerful mass produced American made car ever, the "C8 Corvette Z06" with its big V8 gas engine with 670 horsepower weighs in at around 3,650 pounds.

pretty sure most trains are powered by either overhead wires or third rails? considering that urban rail systems are always electrified and those have A LOT of trains.

Freight trains are diesel electric.
Not in America
- okay? i'm talking about the world though, so typical for people to just assume america is all that matters lmao
  
  The point is about utilization of electric motors, if it happens anywhere on earth it's possible. You're trying to insinuate that it isn't true. And it is. Being American has nothing to do with it you dunce

Exactly this. Imagine if gas powered motor could recharge in mere 12 hours and run for up to half the distance. Ah, that would be the dream.

And if you and 5 of your neighbors decide to refuel at the same time during peak hours you have a real chance of overloading your neighborhood grid. And your fuel tank is dead in 5 years, replacing which is more than half of your used cars cost.

Everything non-portable uses electric motors from the time the first wire was invented.

Boy it sure is easy to win a debate when you use fictional information
- I am being serious - can you factually counter those points? I'd like to know the truth of the matter.
  
  I can. Electric car batteries last 10+ years, often longer than the body work of the car. Lookup Lithium Iron Phosphate, this has around 5-10x the cycle life of conventional lithium batteries. Combine this with the complex heating and cooling systems, battery and charging management in modern EVs and you have something that lasts as long or longer than even a diesel engine.
  Cell phone batteries die quickly because both their construction and the way they are managed favour capacity, cost, and charging speed over longevity. Car battery design is much more focused on longevity by comparison. They are also cycled more often and more completely than most EVs.
  Grid issues are a real problem. Cars can be used to make this worse or better depending on how they are deployed. If they are charged during peak energy production from solar they can actually help rather than hurt the grid.
  You can also rapid charge a car in like 30 minutes. You don't need 12 hours.
  
  Thanks, I'm not sure why I was downvoted for asking a legitimate question.
  
  I suspect people just assumed you were the same person who wrote the sarcastic comment before the one you replied to and that you were just being combative
  
  Well.
  To fully charge a leaf at a public fast charging station takes an hour. https://www.nissanusa.com/experience-nissan/news-and-events/nissan-leaf-charging-101.html
  My up! can get about 260 miles out of its 30ish liter tank. That is about 1/3rd more than a new leaf. Hardly half the distance.
  The electric grid will be fine. This is not the first time it's expanded because of new technological demand. And I've never heard of 5 EVs overloading the grid.
  And if the person above could read they'd see that all of these are battery problems, something the original comment said we should have put our focus improving on long ago.
  Edit: I'll just add that I love my ICE cars as much as the next petrol head, but the future is electric cars for at least daily driving. We've pretty much perfected combustion engines at this point. F1 engines sit around 50% thermal efficiency, and we're not gonna get any meaningful amount above that (but I will be happy if it turns out I'll have to eat my hat in the future). I just hope petrol engines don't become banned in the future for the enthusiasts.
  
  Batteries don’t fail after 5 years, for starters. Source: literally any used car site
  
  15 minute recharge adds hundreds of miles of range
  https://www.tesla.com/supercharger
  
  No, you see, that's not how it works. The battery needs to be filled to 100%, just like a gas tank. And you should only ever charge once you're under 10-20%, just like a gas tank (it's silly to top up every day, that's just a waste of time). We must be able to exactly replicate the current paradigm for people to be able to adjust.
  I drive about 150 miles a week and get gas every couple of weeks. It takes 5 minutes. If I have to go to a charger I'll be there for hours. It's absurd.
- https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform&path=1&year1=2023&year2=2025&mclass=Small+Cars&srchtyp=newMarket&pageno=1&rowLimit=50
  When you look at fueleconomy.gov you will see that the furthest a compact ev can go is 149 miles while the furthest a ice compact car can go is 594 miles
  https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/01/why-the-ev-boom-could-put-a-major-strain-on-our-power-grid.html You can read cnbcs article on how the grid is already pretty spread thinn with us already increasing our power demand by almost 3,000% in the last decade without even considering ev charging
  https://www.motortrend.com/features/how-long-does-it-take-to-charge-an-ev/
  According to motor trend DC charging is the fastest way to charge your EV and it still takes just under two hours Couldn't find a source that studied how long a ice takes to recharge but considering how ices are currently extremely common you can easily test that yourself and probably already know it's so quick you don't even think about it
  https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a31875141/electric-car-battery-life/
  According to car and driver those lithium ion batteries you mentioned while yes they can last a decade most cars typically stay on the road for give or take 30-35 years and lithium ion batteries are inherently expensive and prone to thermal cascading ie catching fire also full charge and depletion wears the battery down over time
  https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/electric-car-battery-replacement-costs.html According to Edmunds.com the average cost of ev battery replacement costs anywhere from 5,000$ to 15,000$ So what point was made up
  
  You have all kinds of nonsense in your post. Like you limit it to just compact cars for no reason. When you don't limit it to just compact cars then you get EVs with 516 mile range
  https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=PowerSearch&year1=2023&year2=2025&minmsrpsel=0&maxmsrpsel=0&city=0&highway=0&combined=0&YearSel=2023-2025&MakeSel=&MarClassSel=&FuelTypeSel=&VehTypeSel=&TranySel=&DriveTypeSel=&CylindersSel=&MpgSel=000&sortBy=Comb&Units=&url=SearchServlet&opt=new&minmsrp=0&maxmsrp=0&minmpg=0&maxmpg=0&sCharge=&tCharge=&startstop=&cylDeact=&rowLimit=50
  And charging a car for 15 minutes gives you hundreds of miles of range
  https://www.tesla.com/supercharger
  Etc.