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Old 02-15-2025, 08:17 PM   #104 (permalink)
JSH
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Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard View Post
That's informative. Where do e-fuels fit in?
They don't - at least not for normal road vehicles. They make sense for race fuel as fuel is a tiny fraction of the cost of racing so they can afford to pay $45 per gallon. They make sense for applications like airplanes where you need the energy density of a liquid fuel.

eFuels are basically turning electricity into fuel. The problem is that it is a massively inefficient process and then you take that product at burn it in an engine that wastes 70% of the energy. At the end of the day you are getting about 15% of the original energy to the wheels.

That means you need 5x the input renewable electricity if you are going to use that electricity to make efuel to power an ICE vs just using it to direct charge and run an EV. ICE H2 has the same problem

Fuel Cell H2 is about twice as efficient as ICE H2 or eFuel ICE but you still need 3X more electricity than what is required for EVs.
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