New ICE Vehicles Banned in California by 2035

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

The RX8 had horrible fuel economy, but a rotary with higher rotor temperatures will dramatically reduce the unburned HCs and bring fuel efficiency near piston engines (at the cost of torque). It's been documented by Paul Moller's research. A mild hybrid system can make a hot running engine usable at low revs. If I ever have too much money, I'm going to have some aluminum side housings and zirconia coated titanium rotors made for the Renesis and run it at 11000rpm XD

Do you really think Koenigsegg Freevalve is much lighter than a cam driven system? There are separate actuators over each valve (which are very powerful because they need to open the valve in 1ms), plus the air source consumes a huge amount of power. He says "we can remove the throttle body to save weight", but throttles were never heavy to begin with. Likewise, do you really think the 3d printed turbo is that light? It's still a huge amount of steel. Also notice the crankcase isn't even carbon fiber.

The 70kg claim is probably the long block + the turbo + intercooler. It almost certainly does not include accessories, motor-generator, radiators, or the exhaust.

Anyways, yes electric motors should be able to get near 10hp/kg like Lucid Motors says with very high speed motors. Motorcycle engines do around 4hp/kg. Rotaries can do around 6hp/kg. If you need a very large amount of power, electric motors will be lighter. If you need a modest amount of power, then gasoline can still win since the fuel tank is so light.

It is probably just the long block that weighs 70kg, but the exhaust manifold is probably titanium, the turbos are 3d printed (if the GT2 RS' pistons could be 3D printed 10% lighter than imagine what Koenigsegg could do with the turbos that are hot, but not under huge loads), the longblock is a dry sump, the intake manifold is short and partially carbon fiber, etc.

The Freevalve eliminates a lot of size and weight. The head size is smaller because of the compactness of the system, so that alone reduces a lot of weight in the head. The cams, VVT/gear system, timing pulley, timing tensioner, timing cover, etc are all removed. There is no wastegate and not throttle body. All of this adds to an extremely light system, but of course the car is millions of dollars, so it would be.

That is all I was saying.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Spuds

Found this more related to Australian efforts, but it helps with background info. I think SA is just capturing the carbon from the traditional method of production.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018...without-carbon

I think it is clear from that article that hydrogen is clearly not an ideal solution. Essentially they are making ammonia like they make 4% of the hydrogen in the world--with a type of electrolysis-style process. If the energy from this process comes from green sources then it is a green process. The advantage might be the easier storage and shipping of ammonia. One problem is that it isn't green to ship and then truck ammonia around the world.

Converting hydrogen into ammonia only to convert it back again might seem strange. But hydrogen is hard to ship: It has to be liquefied by chilling it to temperatures below −253°C, using up a third of its energy content. Ammonia, by contrast, liquefies at −10°C under a bit of pressure. The energy penalty of converting the hydrogen to ammonia and back is roughly the same as chilling hydrogen, Dolan says—and because far more infrastructure already exists for handling and transporting ammonia, he says, ammonia is the safer bet.

Eventually the ammonia has to be converted to hydrogen. I don't know if this "cracking" can happen in a car, but it seems like it couldn't because of the size, and perhaps the conversion rate is too slow to deliver enough hydrogen to a car, so it isn't like a car could be filled up with ammonia. At 15kg per day, the reactor is making 0.625kg of hydrogen per hour, and the Mirai has a 5kg tank, which can take it 300 miles, which at 65mph is 4.6 hours of driving, and this means the Mirai is using about 1kg per hour of driving. Considering it would take energy to convert the ammonia to hydrogen, there would be a need for two to three reactors to make the hydrogen needed to power the Mirai per hour of highway driving. Obviously that isn't possible, but if they could miniaturize that then that would be pretty sweet because liquid ammonia is much more hydrogen dense than compressed hydrogen gas.

That last step—stripping hydrogen off ammonia molecules—is what Dolan and his colleagues are working on. In a cavernous metal warehouse on the CSIRO campus that has long been used to study coal combustion, two of Dolan's colleagues are assembling a 2-meter-tall reactor that is dwarfed by a nearby coal reactor. When switched on, the reactor will "crack" ammonia into its two constituents: H2, to be gathered up for sale, and N2, to waft back into the air.

That reactor is basically a larger version of Giddey's membrane reactor, operating in reverse. Only here, gaseous ammonia is piped into the space between two concentric metal tubes. Heat, pressure, and metal catalysts break apart ammonia molecules and push hydrogen atoms toward the tube's hollow core, where they combine to make H2 that's sucked out and stored.

Ultimately, Dolan says, the reactor will produce 15 kilograms per day of 99.9999% pure hydrogen, enough to power a few fuel cell cars. Next month, he plans to demonstrate the reactor to automakers, using it to fill tanks in a Toyota Mirai and Hyundai Nexo, two fuel cell cars. He says his team is in late-stage discussions with a company to build a commercial pilot plant around the technology. "This is a very important piece of the jigsaw puzzle," Cooper says.

The fine print with all this is still the idea that electricity is produced, and instead of being stored in batteries to be used, it is converted to ammonia then converted back to hydrogen then converted in the car to electricity to charge a car battery or the electric engine, which is inherently inefficient and adds more complexity.

I'm sure there is a place for hydrogen and ammonia in the future for certain applications. It just doesn't look that great right now.

[funwheeldrive]

I'm so glad that California has someone brave like Newsom in charge who sees the very real and immediate threat of climate change. Hopefully this is the first of many steps to prevent ignorant people from destroying our planet.

Newsom is a big part of why California leads the rest of the country.

[mrg666]

Originally Posted by funwheeldrive

I'm so glad that California has someone brave like Newsom in charge who sees the very real and immediate threat of climate change. Hopefully this is the first of many steps to prevent ignorant people from destroying our planet.

Newsom is a big part of why California leads the rest of the country.

Very well said. Thank you!

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

I think it is clear from that article that hydrogen is clearly not an ideal solution.

Chemical batteries aren't an ideal solution either. I think it's a bit unfair to compare what batteries could look like in 10 years to what hydrogen-based energy storage looks like right now. Both need further development and investment.

The difference between them is Hydrogen doesn't have a rich playboy face willing to say crazy things to make people excited about it.

Oh, and that Hydrogen-based energy storage fits better within our current society/economy/infrastructure architecture than chemical battery storage. Changing machines is actually pretty easy. Changing people is much, much harder.

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by funwheeldrive

I'm so glad that California has someone brave like Newsom in charge who sees the very real and immediate threat of climate change. Hopefully this is the first of many steps to prevent ignorant people from destroying our planet.

Newsom is a big part of why California leads the rest of the country.

[WildCard600]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

Why is that?

They don't have garages.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Spuds

Chemical batteries aren't an ideal solution either. I think it's a bit unfair to compare what batteries could look like in 10 years to what hydrogen-based energy storage looks like right now. Both need further development and investment.

The difference between them is Hydrogen doesn't have a rich playboy face willing to say crazy things to make people excited about it.

Oh, and that Hydrogen-based energy storage fits better within our current society/economy/infrastructure architecture than chemical battery storage. Changing machines is actually pretty easy. Changing people is much, much harder.

The physics doesn't change in 10 years. Either we store energy directly, or we convert it to ammonia/hydrogen then convert it to hydrogen (if ammonia) then convert it to energy for use or storage. That process is inherently less efficient and would require more utilities to generate power to do the same job. The only reason to do that is so hydrogen could do a job batteries alone couldn't do, but this is a shrinking proposition year by year.

With batteries, we have the system in place to already fuel these cars at home. Adding supercharger stations is incredibly easy in comparison to hydrogen fuel stations. Even if ammonia takes off, we would need to have maybe hundreds of 2m sized 'cracking' reactors at each fuel station, or something bigger, to process the ammonia, or we are left with shipping liquid hydrogen from a 'cracking' plant to the fueling stations, which ammonia avoids shipping large quantities of liquid hydrogen in transoceanic tankers, but is still not ideal at the local level.

With batteries, all we need is more, green utilities, and we need batteries. Tesla has laid the groundwork for other manufactures to follow where they can greatly reduce the factory footprint and carbon footprint of generating batteries, while increasing battery production rates, all from local resources.

Right now, we lack the infrastructure to produce ammonia or hydrogen in a carbon neutral way, nor do we have the fuel stations in place, nor do we have the means to rapidly scale these systems and some of them might be economical, as described below:

https://www.carboncommentary.com/blo...carbon-economy

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by WildCard600

They don't have garages.

People can charge and store their cars in parking garages that are better thermoregulated, and then they can summon their car using Autopilot. Just like setting their clock to wake up, they can program their car to arrive at their door at a given time. This technology exists now, and Tesla is set to roll out a full beta version of their full Autopilot system in a few months, but regardless of that timeline, the feature will undoubtedly be available in 15 years.

[WildCard600]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

People can charge and store their cars in parking garages that are better thermoregulated, and then they can summon their car using Autopilot. Just like setting their clock to wake up, they can program their car to arrive at their door at a given time. This technology exists now, and Tesla is set to roll out a full beta version of their full Autopilot system in a few months, but regardless of that timeline, the feature will undoubtedly be available in 15 years.

LOL

You don't get out of the city much do you ?

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by WildCard600

LOL

You don't get out of the city much do you?

I live in Santa Rosa, CA. Stand in the center of the city where hwy 101 and 12 meet and drive 3-5 miles in any direction and you will find fields and typically cows. Along highway 101, a person will be in and out of Santa Rosa in three miles. We have three buildings with ten or more floors (10, 10 and 14). By most metrics, it is a medium city just larger than a large town.

Just for transparency, I grew up on 50 acres in the countryside of Sebastopol with two horses, a pony and several cows. Going from the rural area into "town" meant driving 10-15 minutes into a 7k person township of Sebastopol and another 15 minutes to Santa Rosa.

The average person drives 29.2 miles per day. Wyoming was the most, and in Wyoming, the average person drives 16k miles per year or somewhere around 45 miles per day. The average commute is 16 miles to work in one direction in the US, so maybe it is 25 miles in Wyoming. I don't see any problem with the car parking in a town or township garage then picking up the person at home then dropping them off at work, then charging at the work garage or the storage garage, and then pick them up to go back home and then back to the garage again for overnight storage and charging.

With ride sharing, the car could pick someone up from a graveyard shift and drop them off in the countryside before picking up someone else in the morning and taking them into town. There are all types of possibilities too like garage sharing, where someone can rent out an extra space in their garage and also provide charging for that vehicle.

My point is that there are solutions.

https://www.carinsurance.com/Article...-by-state.aspx

[Sasquachulator]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

I live in Santa Rosa, CA. Stand in the center of the city where hwy 101 and 12 meet and drive 3-5 miles in any direction and you will find fields and typically cows. Along highway 101, a person will be in and out of Santa Rosa in three miles. We have three buildings with ten or more floors (10, 10 and 14). By most metrics, it is a medium city just larger than a large town.

Just for transparency, I grew up on 50 acres in the countryside of Sebastopol with two horses, a pony and several cows. Going from the rural area into "town" meant driving 10-15 minutes into a 7k person township of Sebastopol and another 15 minutes to Santa Rosa.

The average person drives 29.2 miles per day. Wyoming was the most, and in Wyoming, the average person drives 16k miles per year or somewhere around 45 miles per day. The average commute is 16 miles to work in one direction in the US, so maybe it is 25 miles in Wyoming. I don't see any problem with the car parking in a town or township garage then picking up the person at home then dropping them off at work, then charging at the work garage or the storage garage, and then pick them up to go back home and then back to the garage again for overnight storage and charging.

With ride sharing, the car could pick someone up from a graveyard shift and drop them off in the countryside before picking up someone else in the morning and taking them into town. There are all types of possibilities too like garage sharing, where someone can rent out an extra space in their garage and also provide charging for that vehicle.

My point is that there are solutions.

https://www.carinsurance.com/Article...-by-state.aspx

Your scenario is pretty much the reason for owning a car....which is to avoid the hassle of that scenario. The difference between owning a car and not owning a car in that scenario is that now you have to deal with getting your car via extra stops instead of just going straight to work and then straight back home via rideshare or taxi.

There are solutions yes but are they viable solutions? Are people going to utilize those solutions and are they going to be hassled by it.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Sasquachulator

Your scenario is pretty much the reason for owning a car....which is to avoid the hassle of that scenario. The difference between owning a car and not owning a car in that scenario is that now you have to deal with getting your car via extra stops instead of just going straight to work and then straight back home via rideshare or taxi.

There are solutions yes but are they viable solutions? Are people going to utilize those solutions and are they going to be hassled by it.

There are no extra stops. You wake up and the car is in the driveway. It takes you to work and home. The car is autonomous, so it'll park itself back at the garage. I just said it could be made more efficient, but it isn't necessary.

[WildCard600]

I look forward to hearing how much the monthly rent to one of these autonomous parking garage spaces would be to make it economically viable to whoever built it.

Considering how much it currently costs to rent a "dumb" space I imagine it's going to be hilariously absurd.