The EPA’s final rule follows a concession to labor unions worried about a rapid shift to electric vehicles, and a nod that EV sales are slowing

  • Neato
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    6 months ago

    ICE cars with synthetic, co2 neutral fuel are even better,

    Is that real yet? I’ve never heard of that in mass production.

    I think the biggest downside of ICE is you’re only getting a small fraction of the power out of the fuel, even if it’s carbon neutral. There’s a ton of waste in burning that fuel.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      No, various synthetic fuels have been used at points through automotive history, including ethanol in a lot of todays gasoline in the US, so technically correct. However they’re much more expensive and haven’t been able to scale or be carbon neutral. That ethanol example is the biggest rollout, but several studies claim it’s worse for the climate than burning gasoline would have been, while others have claimed there’s no way to scale it to completely replace gasoline

      You could even argue against the validity of the basic idea of carbon neutral fuel. The idea is you’re emitting carbon already in todays carbon cycle, instead of emitting carbon that was sequestered for hundreds of millions of years. However does hot air with excess carbon and other pollutants from burning, really do no more damage than the plant it was made from?

    • nexusband@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It is in Sweden, Finland, California, Italy and now Germany. (Although in a different form, called HVO, which is Diesel from garbage (even plastic) and needs roughly 1,5 kWh per Liter)

      The “waste” is irrelevant, if it’s made from power that could not have been used anyway, because it was made in a remote part of the world. We’re still a long, long way away from a global power grid. That power would have to be converted anyway - and we do have all the infrastructure ready to go for that liquid stuff.