Why Are Our Government So Blinkered About Electric Cars When There Are Projects Like This?

[DTCwordfan]

https://www.haruoni.com/#/en

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/business-environment-and-energy/porsche-breaks-ground-synthetic-fuel-plant-chile

I'm not against hybrid cars as in current fuels+ a hybrid unit and also DRs will be coming through shortly.

I am anti electric at the moment as, firstly, over 40 percent of it is made from oil and gas and probably more at the moment given the demands of winter and the market disruption. All it does is push the envronmental problem of fossil fuels up the line and 'out of sight'.

secondly, think of all of those pollutants, emissions already 'invested in' and then the infrastructure and even the jobs tied with the current distribution network - which will increasingly be made redundant.

Yet, here we have a project that looks to make hydrocarbon fuels with its source raw material being CO2 from the air, reacted with green Hydrogen and hydroelectric power to make 650 mln litres a year of petrol/diesel - and at the same time, locking in the CO2 to a sink from when it enters the plant to the exhaust pipe of the car. And this to be done, I believe at a strike-cost of 74c/litre which isn't that far off today's basic cost ex refinery.

The technology is fundamentally an old one - Fischer-Tropsch and was used by the Germans in WW2 and the s.Africans in Apartheid based off coal gas. But here we have an environmental way of being able to use current investments in fuelling our vehicles. It would be a brilliant opportunity for scotland/Wales etc - and then countries like Norway.

Therefore why bring down the shutters on h-carbon fuelled vehicles and close our UK eyes to this technology - we should be actively encouraging it to be developed in the UK......Wake up our Government - and I mean all parties, even the Greens.

[ToraToraTora]

On what basis do you determine that the government are "blinkered"? Have they not said all new cars must be electric by 2030?

[bobbinwales]

Ttt... he's saying electrics not good....there's a better solution here

[naomi24]

^That's how I read it too.

[davebro]

Personalised transport is on the way out - manufacturing and running cars on any sort of fuel for the numbers of people who will want them is simply unsustainable in the long term.

[ToraToraTora]

well the title seems to be berating the government on it's electric car attitude.

[ToraToraTora]

The problem is that those synthetic fuels still produce exhaust gases. They are not "climate neutral" any more than the Drax power station is.

[ToraToraTora]

davebro: "Personalised transport is on the way out - manufacturing and running cars on any sort of fuel for the numbers of people who will want them is simply unsustainable in the long term. " - indeed, I have often said, to much derision, that if the masses can afford personal private transport then it's far too cheap.

[Old_Geezer]

Unsurprising. It seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction just to be seen to be doing something, albeit when there wasn't any solution fully ready at the time (or now). As mentioned much electricity is created from fossil fuel anyway so not as green as we'd want. Plus we hardly had capacity to spare.

Was rather hoping "green" hydrogen production would prove the way forward.

In any case personal transport is here to stay as we ain't going to tolerate going backwards in our hard fought personal freedoms.

We do need to shrink the world's population though to prevent permanent gridlock.

And ideally stop insane folk using vulnerable transport and blaming others when they get hurt; which is inevitable if you do daft things.

[TheChair]

This is a strange but of logic. "I am anti electric at the moment as, firstly, over 40 percent of it is made from oil and gas". So nearly 60% is made from renewables, but you're against it?

[DTCwordfan]

didn't say against renewables/nuclear - however - the CO2 remains neutral in the Porsche project, other than construction, but when it is in the system, then it is in a carbon-sink. As to particulates and NOx/sox these can be engineered out as the CO2 is transformed to methanol in the process and then taken into hydrocarbon fuels. For instance this can already be done for diesel using Nat-Gas....see shell's smds project in Malaysia.

By the way my 's' key is not working properly on my laptop.....