alt Hacker NewsWhen one gets in the weeds on EVs or ICE cars two things become shockingly clear: internal combustion is hilariously inefficient YET gasoline is hilariously energy dense. Most people's intuition is wrong on both of these points but then they cancel each other out.
Edit: another important point is that the "cost" to acquire gasoline is only the very end of the process. The energy has already been gathered, stored, and most of the processing is complete. Our cost (in money and energy) to "make" gasoline is really just gathering it. This is why the comparison to renewables is often a hard sell, it's just apples to oranges. Gasoline started on third base, renewables are batting from the plate. Some of the internal combustion enthusiasts are holding up e-fuels or synthetic fuels as the solution but then we have to pay for the entire energy gathering and processing pipeline and still be using a conversion method that's not at all efficient. It's the worst of both worlds.
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Every single ICE car driving down the highway is throwing away enough waste heat to heat a small apartment building on a freezing cold day.
The tyranny if the rocket/horse equation: You need energy to carry the energy you need to move.
There's a good reason so many sprawling civilizations of the past involve leveraging wind-power for transport.
Exactly. The environmental/social burden isn’t just the energy used in the raw physical form, but the cost to acquire and make it useable.
The problem with gas is not that burning it doesn’t maximally capture all energy, but that there are externalities to doing so.
Train locomotives have used diesel powered generators that then powers electric motors. Would this be less efficient than battery powered EVs? Or better asked, what would be the most efficient use of gasoline?
> internal combustion is hilariously inefficient
It's inefficient but not hilariously so. Modern ICE are quite amazing technology.
Combined gas turbines (you know, the energy source that powers your electric car) are about 60% efficient for the really good ones, minus 5-7% transmission losses, minus 10-12% charging losses, minus 20% loss in cold climates, lands you at around 35-40% efficiency from fuel source to the wheel.
The Atkinson-cycle engine in the Toyota Prius gets around 40% give or take some losses in the drivetrain. Electric have plenty of upsides, but for some people with cheap gas+high electric costs+cold climate you would honestly be better driving a hybrid.