Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Hydrogen vehicles

Attached is a link to an article on synthetic fuels. If this does work out it will be possible to continue to drive current IC cars on synthetic fuels with no need to convert to hydrogen.

https://www.evo.co.uk/fuels/202460/...re-such-a-thing-as-carbon-neutral-petrol

It’s good to read that Toyota said it has developed technology to purify its nitrogen oxide, or NOx, emissions. That aspect seems often to be missed when talking about burning hydrogen in ICEs and central heating boilers. They only talk about the lack of CO2 emissions. NOX is just as important.

I've always considered it a huge mistake how little funding and focus has gone into synthetic carbon neutral fuels ... it makes no environmental sense to trash the entire current transport infrastructure and replace it .... the environmental and carbon cost of that alone is monumental ... the ideal situation would be to continue to benefit from the environmental costs we've already paid of all our current hardware as long as possible, replacing as needed .... I suspect those who look at policy in the meta sense see this churn of ICE replacement as a driver for yet more expansionist economic growth (get rid of your perfectly good stuff and replace it with my nice new 'green' stuff ... which will cost you more but the Planet's worth it!!)... if it can be spun as saving the planet then so much the better, even if a proper holistic environnental audit would see it as nett negative in its impact.

K

Sadly the madness of modernisation is entrenched in history.

Just look at Beeching and the termination of steam traction in 1968 on the altar of dieselisation, because we couldn't afford total electrification.

Changing the whole system in months, and scrapping assets with years of life left in them was lunacy but that happened.

Closing down the mining industry on the back of political dogma.

And so on.

Be interesting to know whether my 50 year old Series 11a Landrover is “ greener” than a modern EV - based on whole life environmental costs? I can’t see many Teslas driving around in the 2070s?

It’s also more fun.

I don't think we've reached the point yet where EV values fall off a cliff edge, but as soon as it becomes clearer when batteries fail, and the scrap/recycling issues become better established, this will show the true environmental costs.

Nail on head there..

Exactly

The way things are going, there won't be much of anything driving around in the 2070s.With a third of the world effectively uninhabitable and the rest of it packed with millions of refugees and failing crops, anybody alive will be more interested in getting food and clean water than tootling around in motor cars.

You are a bit gloomy today, Tim.
Much of the planet is uninhabitable today, even excluding the seas.
Disease, war and famine will keep numbers to a level the planet can support.
Never forget that every species has the right to extinction, the question is "can we adapt quickly enough?"
I'm more optimistic, even though I'll not be here to find out.