this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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The thing is when gasoline is used to power a car about 80% of the energy is loss to heat and only about 20% is used to actually move the car on average. It’s worse when you are doing acceleration and better when cruising at a steady speed on a level surface.
Yeah, so you have to divide it by a factor of 5. Which still makes gasoline roughly 5 times as energy dense than this prototype battery, instead of 25 times.
Another problem is the increased complexity of fossil fuel vehicles, specifically in stuff like the engine, gears, pollution filters, etc. A fossil fuel vehicle is just intrinsically more complicated. Which doesn't directly relate to the density, but it gives electric vehicles an advantage.
Also no regenerative braking
Which is where hybrids have a huge advantage, getting the best of both worlds
The weight itself is an engineering challenge.
With passenger vehicles, the problems have largely been solved. With motorcycles, there are still some tradeoffs on range (especially highway). With large cargo trucks, the weight causes issues with range, weight capacity, and charging times. With aircraft, there's not really competition on the horizon.
And electrification of heat production itself for climate control, cooking, hot water, industrial processes, etc. is coming along, too, on an application by application basis. (But note that the energy "lost" to heat is less of a factor for these uses.)
In general efficiency, modern cars are a lot closer to 40% than 20. E.g. a Prius engine is at 38,5%.
It was interesting to see F1 engines go past the 50% mark, a few years back.