this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023

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Climate Activists Tell the EV Industry to Fix Its Filthy Supply Chain (www.wired.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/news

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, um, they're not wrong, but it feels like a waste of resources, considering we have MUCH bigger fish to fry. Go protest the oil companies. Protest the coal factories. Protest public infrastructure. Protest consumerism in general.

Feeding anti-EV rhetoric is simply going to damage their cause. This looks like a front-page story for Fox News and conservatives will add it to their misinformation arsenal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Yea, this is a purity test we don't need.

[–] SkybreakerEngineer 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Look, I'm all for green energy, but there really isn't a way to make steel without coal, or at least carbon. These protestors are idiots.

[–] Wooki 1 points 9 months ago

Green hydrogen into the mix helps reduce the amount needed but you’re right at the end of the day

[–] pensivepangolin 9 points 9 months ago

Let’s also not forget about “artisinal” mining. The conditions it’s practitioners work in are horrendous. Environmental justice can and always should vindicate the rights and welfare of the workers.

[–] RagingRobot 2 points 9 months ago

Are they just against cars in general then? Lol what's the alternative they are suggesting?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

BEVs aren't the future. They are heavily dependent on mined metals and are basically unsustainable. Society has no choice but to move on beyond them.

[–] afraid_of_zombies 3 points 9 months ago

There has been a great deal of advancement in battery recycling.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I have an idea. What if we attached a power line directly to the car, so we didn't need a battery? Of course, it'd only be able to run on specialized lines. To get the most out of those lines, we could chain cars together. And since the specialized hardware doesn't make sense to own, we could have municipalities own them and charge a fare (or better yet, just make it part of taxes).

[–] afraid_of_zombies 4 points 9 months ago

Great. I got another idea. Let's take this train and put it in a station that isn't near anything. Then we charge for parking. Then we make rideshare pickup far away from the platform so everyone has to walk in the dark rain passed the line of unmoving taxes. Oh the train station itself should double as a homeless shelter. If there is any food sold there it should be at 8000% above a grocery store (a small part t of me dies everytime I see Hudson sign). We shouldn't use any new tech at all so it is a totally mystery when trains arrive and leave. Basic problems such as things broken should stay broken for months. Every single part of the experience should be as miserable as we can fucking make it.

[+] [email protected] -6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I prefer the future using efuel because EV manufacturing is very easy to cheat. I don't even believe that the EV lobbying is done in good faith.

Edit: I don't know why but efuel is the only subject whatever counterargument I receive is always not to the point. If people instead say it has a flaw in the manufacturing process, citing a scholarly article, I'd take it seriously. But nobody has done that so far.

Edit 2: yeah, the replies I got for this comment confirms my first Edit.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Efuel is oil and auto industry propaganda. 80% of electricity used to make efuels is simply wasted in inefficiencies.

That same electricity could be used to power an EV instead at much higher efficiencies.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Have you read what I wrote?

Edit: efuel is net-zero.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My understanding was you meant we should keep petrol cars but replace gasoline with a synthetic efuel. If that is correct then my rebuff is still my response. If my understanding is incorrect please elaborate.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Seems you don't understand that efuel is net zero. When it comes to efuel, it doesn't make sense to argue with someone who doesn't understand that part. So, I stop engaging with you here.

Anyway, I meant that EV manufacturing process has too many ways to cheat, while in case of efuel the regulations only have to happen at the factory to achieve net zero.

That's all I have to say. And that's a fact, whatever you say.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Let's say you have 1kw of electricity. And you have two choices for that electricity.

One, you take that electricity, use it to crack hydrogen from water, then use more of that electricity to synthesize the fuel with atmospheric carbon, then transport that efuel to a station, then burn that efuel in an engine that wastes upwards of 75% of the energy in that efuel as heat loss.

OR, you take that electricity, and you charge a car, and the car uses that electricity to move via motor that only wastes 15-20% of the energy.

The solution is obvious yes? You're basically wasting grid capacity to keep gasoline cars alive.

Bonus, instead of just being carbon "net zero", you can use the carbon capture to sequester it and be carbon negative instead, since with efuels you're just releasing that captured carbon back into the air. Isn't it better to be carbon negative than carbon neutral?

Extra bonus? How about not giving everyone near a major road increased amounts of asthma and lung cancer due to tailpipe emissions, since carbon dioxide isn't the only thing coming out of cars.

Extra Extra Bonus? How about not polluting the water table of every city in the world with oil leaks.

Efuels make zero sense. It actually makes MORE sense to just fucking burn good old fashioned gasoline and do carbon capture than to waste grid capacity.

The only purpose Efuels exist is to brainwash people like you into fighting electric vehicles so fossil fuel companies and auto makers can try to run out the clock.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I don't understand your main part, which is the energy efficiency (edit: I mean, that's bot the point). I'm talking about the regulatory problem with the EV manufacturing that makes is very hard to actually achieve net zero with EVs.

The rest is fine.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don’t understand your main part

Yes, people who like to pump efuels share that problem. If you can't understand it you will be stuck believing in oil-industry claptrap.

I’m talking about the regulatory problem with the EV manufacturing that makes is very hard to actually achieve net zero with EVs.

The main issue with gas cars is the gas, what you're saying is a red herring that doesn't even make sense.

Answer me this: Is manufacturing gasoline cars carbon free?

Of course not!

EVs and Gasoline cars both currently involve carbon output. So you're trying to imply that somehow making a battery pack (the big differentiator) is a process that produces such a huge amount of carbon, that it outweighs the 10k+ gallons of gasoline an ICE car burns throughout its lifetime.

That's an extraordinary claim. Where is the extraordinary evidence?

[–] [email protected] -5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Answer me this: Is manufacturing gasoline cars carbon free?

I stop here. Manufacturing EVs aren't carbon free either. Actually, manufacturing the battery emits far more carbon than manufacturing an engine.

So, all I see from you is move the goal post repeatedly while not countering my main point: difficulty of regulation in manufacturing EVs.

[+] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

You don't get the point. Efuel is net zero.

Efuel is made from the CO2. Therefore, even if you run your car, you are not increasing the CO2.

On the other hand, EVs actually do put more CO2 in the sense that manufacturing the batteries adds CO2.

Finally, my point is that this battery manufacturing process is hard to regulate. Do you now see how my opponents don't properly reply to my argument!?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Here's my view:

Efuel is less efficient, simply because engines that use it are. We waste at least 50% of the energy put into it. Google also says most common cars waste between 60-80% of the energy. This means while Efuel is net zero in terms of production, assuming the energy put into creating it is all clean and 100% efficient. If we view the production and use of efuel as a cycle, you're wasting half the energy every time. Every time the tank is fueled.

Electric engines generally waste roughly 20%. There's some additional loss across the charging of a battery, but it's still far better than a gas engines efficency.

The problem is the energy and waste from battery production, which makes them worse than gas car manufacturing. But they pass gas cars as long as they are used long enough. And here's the important part, we can improve and change batteries and their production process. We are seeing massive research into this and especially into batteries not involving rare materials. We can also improve recycling of batteries. These are all things we can do to avoid oil and gas. Because gas engines are less efficient, and even with Efuel as net zero, the process of production and loss in use is just worse than electricity based use.

And electricity can be clean energy. If we just find better batteries, we can move to a much cleaner process. But a long as we remain on inefficient gas engines, we will always have co2 pollution, along with other pollution. Eg. If Norway with 98% clean electricity swapped to all electric, and battery with the car got on the same level of gas engine in terms of production waste/pollution, we'd be saving so much energy and waste because of the much higher efficiency of electric engines, and reduction in gas use. Efuel can never do that, it will need green energy for production, and waste more energy in use. Thus I see no reason to push this over electric vehicles.

There's other downsides, such as heavier cars cause more road tear and air pollution. So ideally we'll also move away from cars as much as possible. But trains, busses trams and so on can also be all electric and thus more environmentally friendly.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I honestly don't understand why everybody talks about energy efficiency like it's a problem to net zero. It's not.

Do you guys mean that, because efuel is energy inefficient, it is net-positive? That's wrong.

And therefore my point stands. I've been reiterating this logic like 10x already in this post, but somehow there will be always another reply with the same flaw.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It's simple. We can go that way and effectively spend double the energy to drive a distance. I don't think it's exactly double but from 40% efficiency to 80% is the engine efficiency. So the number is just a simplification.

Reducing energy use by 50% would mean less energy having to come from other sources. Which aren't necessarily green today.

Both solutions are improvements, but again, why go for the less efficient one when electricity is better?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Please stop talking about efficiency. It has nothing to do with net zero, nor with my point. If you don't, I'll treat you as someone purposefully misleading the discussion.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Honestly, are you guys payed by the lobbyists? Or are you guys copying and pasting some article downplaying efuels?

I can't find any other explanation on why you guys all fixate on efficiency although that doesn't affect the net zero CO2 emission from efuels.

And I have explained this like 100 times and somehow it always gets ignored, as if you people are doing strategic propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

You got that timecube vibe.

[–] haventbeenlistening 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Even under ideal conditions, efuels are still very energy intensive. It's also interesting that the biggest advocates for efuel adoption are oil companies.

Critics highlight that manufacturing e-fuels is very expensive and energy-intensive. Using e-fuels in an ICE car requires about five times more renewable electricity than running a battery-electric vehicle, according to a 2021 paper in the Nature Climate Change journal.

Some policymakers also argue that e-fuels should be reserved for hard-to-decarbonise sectors such as shipping and aviation - which, unlike passenger cars, cannot easily run on electric batteries.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/what-are-e-fuels-can-they-help-make-cars-co2-free-2023-03-07/

You also should try to elaborate on what it means to "cheat" because it sounds like you are just making up a Boogeyman after listening to too much Fox News.