Electric vs Gas
xkcd.com

Alt text:

An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that’s the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

  • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3043·
    6 months ago

    The motors have never been the problem, it’s always been the battery. See train engines, they are a diesel generator with electric motors.

    This is where history pisses me off. We should have been headlong into battery research after the oil embargoes. Could have been 40 years faster.

    • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6332·
      6 months ago

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

      Spelling

        • cron@feddit.deEnglish
          10·
          6 months ago

          Renewable fuels exist and are used today, but the efficiency and pollution aspects still apply.

          • Revan343@lemmy.caEnglish
            1·
            6 months ago

            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.

            • cron@feddit.deEnglish
              3·
              6 months ago

              I was thinking about fuels like HVO. They work well, but have their own ecological implications.

              • Revan343@lemmy.caEnglish
                2·
                6 months ago

                Ah. I’m generally skeptical of any plant-based ‘green fuel’ because they generally take up agricultural capacity that would otherwise be producing food

        • rmuk@feddit.ukEnglish
          3732·
          6 months ago

          No, it’s renewable. But… not in any practical timeframe.

          • Delta_V@lemmy.worldEnglish
            45·
            6 months ago

            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.

            • AEsheron@lemmy.worldEnglish
              321·
              6 months ago

              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.

          • aname@lemmy.oneEnglish
            8·
            6 months ago

            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.

          • AeonFelis@lemmy.worldEnglish
            34·
            6 months ago

            Only if we bring back the dinosaurs. There are six movies (and counting!) explaining why this is not a good idea.

        • RogueBanana@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          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.

          • AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialEnglish
            102·
            6 months ago

            A lot of people have been having their cake days recently. Guess it’s the first anniversary of the Reddit exodus.

      • spujb@lemmy.cafeEnglish
        316·
        6 months ago

        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! ☀️

          • spujb@lemmy.cafeEnglish
            51·
            6 months ago

            v true but i also dislike how biofuels get smorked into yet more CO2 which is kind of a problem rn

            • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
              23·
              6 months ago

              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.

              • spujb@lemmy.cafeEnglish
                8·
                6 months ago

                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.

                • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  21·
                  6 months ago

                  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.

        • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.worldEnglish
          229·
          6 months ago

          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.

    • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
      254·
      6 months ago

      I hope you are not talking about battery locomotives.

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

      • EarMaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
        18·
        6 months ago

        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.

    • BastingChemina@slrpnk.netEnglish
      72·
      6 months ago

      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 ?

    • ColeSlothEnglish
      31·
      6 months ago

      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.

      • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        6 months ago

        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.

        • ColeSlothEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          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.

          • Syrc@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            6 months ago

            Wasn’t aware that EVs were already that heavy. Then yeah, I guess that’s definitely not feasible, at least not at the moment.

            • ColeSlothEnglish
              2·
              6 months ago

              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.

    • SwedneckEnglish
      11·
      6 months ago

      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.

        • SwedneckEnglish
          12·
          6 months ago

          okay? i’m talking about the world though, so typical for people to just assume america is all that matters lmao

          • DogWater@lemmy.worldEnglish
            21·
            6 months ago

            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

    • Veidenbaums@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1454·
      6 months ago

      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.