Quote:
Originally Posted by P-hack
I think my instincts on compressed ch4 from co2 are spot on, though audi does admit it is a workaround for a grid that isn't up to the job, the same 1500 CNG cars it does fuel could possibly be 3000 electric cars from the same real estate, if you could charge them during off-peak hours (or peak as the case may be), and not perpetuate ICEs.
I suspect this approach is somehow linked to Audi's lack of an electric vehicle offering, but that might just be me.
|
I am sure that the major vehicle manufacturers could all manage to find the resources required to design electric vehicles. Building them is another problem.
Perhaps 5 years ago I can recall reading an article where the person in Mercedes-Benz responsible for investigating battery options, for hybrid or pure BEV, suggested that there simply wasn't the battery manufacturing capacity, throughout the world, to switch to BEV's in any volume. That would have to be built. Apart from utilising their existing skills and manufacturing assets, I suspect that is why ICE options are still being pursued by the car manufacturers.
Returning to the article linked to in the OP. The point the writer is making is that shifting wholesale to BEV's, in place of ICEV's, isn't going to be a solution. If we were to all drive cars like the Tesla S and Nissan Leaf et al we will still hit resource limits.
The doubling time of the Chinese economy, at the present rate of growth, is just under a decade. That of India's is just over a decade. We can hit resource limits very quickly and we are already past some of them (like AGW).
9 billion people in the developed world vs 1 billion. All 9 billion of us can't drive BEV's that are anything near to the same as the cars we currently drive. What is required is a complete rethink about our way of life and economy, including the type of vehicles we drive or indeed if we drive at all.
Will we see BEV's? Yes but there has to be a much greater change made than just that.