Just a shower thought but most of the advantages of oil-based cars over electric ones (autonomy, ease of charge,...) just come from the fact that oil is liquid.

Couldnt we just have some liquid that stores electricity that we could just use in fuel pump and shit?

Some kind of borohydride (can't remember type). It readily gives hyrdogen to a fuel cell. It would send spent liquid to a separate tank. When fueling it would pump out the spent liquid (which is like soapy water) and take up hydrogen rich liquid. So you would be carrying liquid used/unused all the time.

The problem isn't the fuel. The problem is where to get the hydrogen. Which takes energy. Hydrogen can be generated from water at an energy producer of any type. Not sure what the efficiency is. Might take more energy than hydrocarbons. Which would defeat the purpose. Wind/solar basically are garbage in energy density. So that leaves gas, oil, nuclear, coal, etc.

I don't think there is any magic bullet for energy. Everything has drawbacks.

I have also heard about attempting to use existing hydrocarbons in fuel cells. They have to heat the fuel cell to like 3000 degs or some shit. Not sure if practical. Hydrocarbons are chock full of hydrogen.

I'd argue that there are far more serious issues with electric cars effectively replacing ICE that go way beyond whether or not the fuel is a liquid

To me, the main issue right now is affordability but if we're talking in a vacuum, I agree, refilling them is a huge issue

@spoiledgoods some of the diesel generator charging stations are the equivalent of 8 mpg. Which is insane when even shitty gas cars do 32 mpg. Premium for shifting the generation location.

@Demolishun ok so you're gonna hate me for this one but I'm pretty sure my grandmother saw that same post on Facebook that was making the rounds and was complaining to me about it (you two may frequent the same echo chambers). anyway some quick napkin math

Tesla's chargers are like 250 kW right? That'd take 30 minutes max to fully charge the average Tesla, which would buy you about 200 miles of range. Based on this diesel gen consumption chart I pulled up from hardydiesel.com, it'd be between 8 and 9 gallons of fuel to charge it when running at 100% capacity. So about 24 mpg and that's under 100% load which it would likely not be.

I'll tell you the same thing I told my oma: it is so vital to question the info you get on the internet. the propaganda is getting so sloppy and lazy yet people are falling for it easier than ever. They're literally just slapping numbers onto pictures at this point and it's working.

@spoiledgoods thanks for the update. Seemed low. But 24 still sucks.

the advantage of oil based over renewables is you can store the energy and our storage mechanism for renewables energy is absolutely retarded

but yes if you solve the storage problem you'd get very rich
Bitcoin miners make bank literally preying on the fact renewables can't store their energy, and that's a whole industry

@Demolishun yeah sorry if I came off as snarky, I can't help but feel like the entire point of EVs is to save an already-profitable car industry and it pisses me off kinda.

but speaking of wasting diesel fuel, I used to install wiring on pumpjack sites that would bring in temporary power via diesel gens that would burn through nearly $70k in fuel a month. the oil & gas companies didn't care as long as it was drawing crude into their lines.

people would sneak onto sites at night and try to steal the copper coming from the gens - thinking it wasn't tied into anything cause it didn't come from the power pole - and get roasted. pretty horrifying sight to start your day with.

@spoiledgoods there is another cost to ev charging stations. That is waiting in line or waiting for your car to charge. It takes about 5 minutes to fuel a regular car. If I had an ev I would be charging from home at night. But going long distance would be better to have a gas car. I get the utility for stuff you can do around town. But then comes the battery replacement...

Yeah, I am sure there is bullshit in fuel industry too.

Sure they'd be big and you'd need assistance and some machinery but what about a swappable battery? It'd be just a little more involved than swapping out a spent propane tank but you get your < 5 mins "refueling" target.

@Demolishun yeah for sure, the battery replacement is the biggest headache to me. like swapping a Model S battery is a herculean task compared to swapping a motor on a 5 Series let's say, and Tesla has all but given up on the concept (afaik it was just a pilot project)

idk how you feel about this but an EV could never replace an ICE for actual driving, for me anyway, like the emotional/spiritual part. might sound boomer-esque but to me they're soulless commuter machines and evoke no feeling in me.

@spoiledgoods I like the "idea" of the high torque of electric motors. But engines sound way cooler. My friend and I had this concept of putting electric motors in the hub/rim of the rear wheels (for front wheel drives). Use them to store energy on braking and give that boost to the car on taking off. If done right it could help reduce cost of in town driving and make a normally shitty car more peppy. Most "real" cars are real wheel drive aren't they? But I could still see this in a "sporty" car that is front wheel drive.

@spoiledgoods I was doing coding work at a race track in France a few years back. The coolest sounding cars were the diesels. The low pitch of the engine just sounded awesome.

Hydrogen is not a liquid in room temp but at least it's a fluid. Maybe try that?

@Demolishun A while back there was discussion about new clean water distillation methods. Basically most of the rain in cities on the coast comes from evaporation from the sea.

Well, there was this idea that they could build giant evaporation towers out in the ocean (near-shore), and just let it collect in those towers.

They determined one tower with the correct dimensions would be sufficient to supply a good chunk of say los angeles, with almost no additional energy use.

But the interesting thing to me isn't the fresh water implications.

The interesting thing is that engineers discovered a while back that you can derive electricity from the mixing of fresh and salt water.

So theres the potential with one of these towers, of simply dumping the fresh water back into the ocean around them (or a salt water basin at their base) and harvesting electricity from the gradient it produces.

No net salinity problems (brackish water). No additional pumping needed. No filters needed.

This doesn't solve the energy storage problem, but theres solutions to that to.

Recent work in 'chemical waves' (which the group working on that managed to store morse code in), could instead be used for hydrogen storage and closed-loop type system. The work they did was disulphide based, and thats an area with a lot of promise because it is fairly well understood.

My druthers would be something like magnesium doped gallium nitride (gan). It's made with NH3 or ammonia. These sorts of closed loops are understood and thoroughly researched already.

The hydrogen in Gan fills the holes next to the magnesium in GaN.

Heating to 400c releases the hydrogen.

Therefore I'd think (I'm no engineer or chemist though) that un-nitrated gallium magnesium can act as a catalyst for splitting hydrogen from ammonia.

And likewise heating it releases the hydrogen.

To continue, pellets of galluim nitride could be used in otherwords, as a solid hydrogen fuel/battery system, or in a closed loop ammonia atmosphere reactor.

It's an original idea I think. Came up with it when I was watching a history on how the blue LED came to be.

Anyone wants to throw me a million dollars for it or something I'd be more than happy, lol.

@spoiledgoods yea cars sucks fuckin murderers I hate them vroomers.

The vroomocide will come and nobody will be sad, coz we will all be on the street celebrating.

Ok but get this CRAZY idea: instead of having to refine a liquid through a chemical process, ship a liquid over to another country, and distribute it in that country…

Why not… and this is crazy I know… put a goddamn wheel on a dam, attach it to an axle and attach some magnets at the other end, spin it thru a coil of copper wire, and it makes this little zappy thing called electricty, and the main benefit of it is that you can store it in what are called… batteries!! Yayyyy!!!

ALSO… get this: the little parts of the zappy thing, called electrons, can travel almost at the speed of light through a wire!! So, with that being said, your crayon eating ass argument doesn’t really make any sense!!! Wowza!! That’s all for the education station today!! And remember kids, eat your vegetables or else you will become a moron!!!

@shovethisrant I do love crayons they're delicious.

Especially the sky blue one.

@shovethisrant idk bro sounds pretty communist to me

@spoiledgoods yea I grew up near a highway and now I think stalin was a pussy.

@mostr4am woke up and chose violence.