Quote:
Originally Posted by Efthreeoh
Your bolded passage is the essence of the issue, you believe humans are affecting the climate in a NEGATIVE way, so you believe there needs to be action taken to FIX the problem. The reason ships and planes are not the target of Government's zero-carbon climate agenda is because those vehicles cannot be electrified and serve the purpose they are used for. Even if ships and planes could be (battery) "electrified" the cost to produce such vehicles would drastically increase and performance would drastically decrease, which would drastically increase the price of commercial air travel and commercial shipping. BTW most modern ships are high-efficiency diesel-electric, just like rail trains.
The problem with battery EV is it does not scale to large vehicles. It doesn't scale because of the massive difference in the stored energy of petrol fuel compared to a chemical battery. Physics and chemistry limit the energy density of batteries. While batteries may get somewhat better with energy density suitable for automobiles and light trucks, they will never reach an energy density necessary for long-distance commercial shipping and certainly not commercial air travel. Batteries are somewhat suitable for personal automobile travel, but as you point out there are significant issues with BEV (range, recharge time, infrastructure support). The obvious solution is to scale down diesel-electric (or gasoline) to a use case for personal automobiles. The technology already exists and real-world ICE efficiency can easily be doubled, if not tripled, in a matter of a few short years. The reason ICE-electric drivetrains work so well in trains and ships is because those vehicles do not constantly start and stop for traffic. Inserting a battery into the electrical generation system solves that problem because it allows the generator to dump electricity into the battery. Further the combustion efficiency of ICE can be increased by 40% to 50% because in an ICE-electric drivetrain the engine can be tuned to its peak combustion state since it does not need to make power over a curve to deal with constant vehicle speed deviation. The ICE can then be made lighter and out of higher temperature-rated materials (like ceramics) because the engine is no longer a structural part of the drivetrain and does not have to deal with the mechanical shock of acceleration and deacceleration.
The issue with climate fearers such as yourself is you believe "technology" can solve any problem. You believe humans can actually control the climate (for better or worse). Neither is the case. My problem with a person such as Harry Metcalf is he is a diehard Petrolhead, made his fortune from writing about ICE cars, highly inefficient ones at that, but he is concerned about climate change. Hypocrisy at a professional level. When people like you believe carbon emissions are the problem, use of a very high-density fuel is banned and alternative, highly efficient personal automobiles using petro fuels cannot developed. Creating ICE-Eletric vehicles make the most sense because they do not disrupt the electrical energy production industry and does not affect the petrochemical industry. Politicians the world over are not smart enough to understand these concepts.
And you bitch about Americans being ignorant.
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And I'd add one more thing concerning planes. Putting batteries into a vehicle that weight is everything is fool hardy. Most of the energy to get the plane in the air is going to be spent on just the sheer weight of the batteries...forget about cargo and any passengers at that point. And let's not forget the time still required to recharge these batteries. Can you imagine at an airport where it would literally have to have it's own power generating plant to recharge these batteries. And I don't even see how electrification of aircraft would even work unless it follows the model of swapping batteries. Now you have to have a huge stack/surplus of batteries to support commercial flights. How does this added competition for needed elements to produce the batteries work with the already competitive environment with automobiles?