MIT Says We're Overlooking a Near-Term Solution To Diesel Trucking Emissions (arstechnica.com) 123
An anonymous reader shares a report: Trucking in the US is still driven by diesel-fueled, compression-ignition (CI), internal combustion engines. Daniel Cohn and Leslie Bromberg, a pair of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published a paper with the Society of Automotive Engineers, suggesting that the best way forward is not to wait for all-electric or hydrogen-powered semis, but to build a plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) truck with an internal combustion engine/generator that can burn either gasoline or renewable ethanol or methanol. Such a setup preserves the range and affordability that's expected of diesel long-haul trucks while significantly reducing the emissions associated with diesel. To boot, it's a near-term solution; no waiting for battery weight to fall or hydrogen refueling stations to be installed.
A hybrid heavy-duty system isn't a completely novel idea, though a PHEV system has yet to be widely applied and tested in long-haul heavy-duty trucking. A company called Hyliion introduced a hybrid electric-diesel truck in 2017, and San Diego uses a hybrid electric-compressed natural gas bus on its transit system, though the former still grapples with diesel emissions and the latter is not for long-haul use. But there are some distinct problems with all-electric and all-diesel trucks that a hybrid flex-fuel truck could solve. First, freight companies are looking for the cheapest way to transport goods from point A to point B, so expensive electric vehicles don't make short-term economic sense, especially if you're competing with other freight companies using cheaper diesel engines.
A hybrid heavy-duty system isn't a completely novel idea, though a PHEV system has yet to be widely applied and tested in long-haul heavy-duty trucking. A company called Hyliion introduced a hybrid electric-diesel truck in 2017, and San Diego uses a hybrid electric-compressed natural gas bus on its transit system, though the former still grapples with diesel emissions and the latter is not for long-haul use. But there are some distinct problems with all-electric and all-diesel trucks that a hybrid flex-fuel truck could solve. First, freight companies are looking for the cheapest way to transport goods from point A to point B, so expensive electric vehicles don't make short-term economic sense, especially if you're competing with other freight companies using cheaper diesel engines.
Well it works and it's not new (Score:5, Interesting)
There's another kind of heavy diesel-electric vehicle that's been around for decades: diesel locomotives [howstuffworks.com].
I keep wondering how light passenger cars got the hybrid treatment first and long-haul trucks still haven't, when the first successful experience in the field clearly pointed to the latter being the ideal candidate.
Re: Well it works and it's not new (Score:1)
Nobody's overlooking it anymore because side effects will soon go away
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I keep wondering how light passenger cars got the hybrid treatment first and long-haul trucks still haven't
Trains didn't have batteries until recently. Instead of regenerative braking, diesel-electric locomotives used a carbon pile beneath the engine to dissipate the motor braking energy. Cars went hybrid first because it was easier to build them, because they didn't have such large power-handling requirements.
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Even most PHEV automobiles have very little all-electric range. The car that comes closest to the description in TFS is the Chevy Volt, with 55 mi EV range plus unlimited gas-powered range at ~38 mpg, which is pretty good mileage for a car that weighs 3700 lbs. It's the only PHEV I'm aware of that can truly function as 100% EV or 100% ICE -- If you never plug it in, it functions just like an ICE car; if you never fuel it, if functions just like a pure EV. Most (if not all) of the other PHEVs have such short
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Sorry, I fudged the numbers a bit because my Volt is a 2013, before the version-2 upgrade in 2016. You're right, the newer range is 53 mi, not 55, though the actual mileage you get depends on the temperature outdoors and how you drive. I'm pretty sure the curb weight of the first-gen Volt is 3700 lbs, but it could be that Google gave me bogus info (I didn't dig very deep). As for the mileage, I've taken several long trips already in the couple of months I've had the car, and I'm getting around 38 mpg, which
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They're not hybrid in the same sense as hybrid cars.
In fact, IMHO wouldn't call them a hybrid at all: The diesel never turns the wheel directly, the electrics motors never work without the diesel engine generating electricity, there are no batteries involved in the powertrain. Power always comes from the diesel engine.
It's a diesel engine with an electric transmission.
The electric part of a diesel-electric locomotive just replaces what would be the gear box & clutch / torque converter in a car/truck.
The
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I keep wondering how light passenger cars got the hybrid treatment first and long-haul trucks still haven't, when the first successful experience in the field clearly pointed to the latter being the ideal candidate.
Trucks typically have a longer life expectancy than passenger cars with significantly more miles being driven annually, yet we can see trucks spewing black smog into the atmosphere all the while a fairly recent passenger car will fail an inspection if any of the rigorous emission thresholds is reached.
Seems a bit more attention on other forms of transportation would be warranted, including trucks receiving the hybrid treatment. There's also been interesting development in using gas turbines as the generator
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I keep wondering how light passenger cars got the hybrid treatment first and long-haul trucks still haven't
Cost/Benefit. It's easier to electrify / hybridify (not a real word :) ) a passenger car, and the effect of doing it is greater (light duty passenger cars make up the majority of transport related emissions). Additionally there is higher turnover in passenger vehicles.
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Partly it's because there were individuals who were willing to pay a premium to be green, and were willing to buy early hybrid cars before they made economic sense. A first generation Prius saved fuel, but most drivers would not get back the extra cost of buying it over the lifetime of the car. Since then the price of gasoline has increased and the price premium for hybrids has dropped, but even now the payback for hybrid cars in pure economic terms is marginal for non-urban drivers. (The hybrid is a big wi
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In the '50 in Italy were used electric lorries using overhead wires powered by an hydroelectric central [progettodighe.it] that was an hack made because the road was steep for the engines of the time and for the electric company, electricity was cheap.
For public transportation the problem of electric vehicles was solved more than 100 years ago wit
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What does "most efficient fuel" mean? Fuels are not efficient.
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Sure they are. You can measure efficiency many different ways for fuels. Usable energy delivered / mass for example. Also, EROEI is an important one.
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Historically [diesel fuel] was also cheaper, though that changed a decade or so ago.
The FUEL ITSELF is still cheaper. But the TAXES are higher.
That's allegedly as a convenient way to collect money from the commercial trucks to pay a proportionate share of the road building/repair costs.
But it's interesting that the state governments didn't jack diesel fuel taxes up so far that the fuel was selling at substantially more per gallon than gasoline until there were a substantial number of diesel cars on the roa
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Annoying to have to pay some "heavy truck road damage tax" when driving a car that's lighter than what, 70% of cars on the road?
And once a very well intended American trucker came running screaming & flailing at me "NOOOO! DON'T! THAT'S DIESEL FUEL!" as I was about to fill up my 96 Jetta TD in the United States.
I told him "Yeah, it's a diesel car." he just stood there dumbfounded for a good 10 seconds before saying "Really?".
I guess it's pretty rare in some states..?
No one overlooked this (Score:3)
Hybrids really shine when they are compared against gasoline engines that do not run full duty. I donâ(TM)t think they compare so well against either diesel or full duty situations. That is, a battery bank isnâ(TM)t going to help much when the truck is spending itâ(TM)s life already at full throttle.
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Trucks do operate very close to or even at full throttle at highway speed (the laws of aerodynamics are a bitch for what is effectively a 12' high wall going 70mph) and he was first talking about gasoline engines which are very inefficient at anything but full throttle.
Diesel engines don't suffer from this issue owning to not having the throttle valve in the intake that gasoline engines have. Gasoline engines effectively have a brake put on the engine when they're not being floored to keep the air-fuel rati
Re: No one overlooked this (Score:3)
Yup. For stop start driving in cities hybrids make sense. For long distance driving the battery is just a deadweight being dragged around by the ICE thats doing all the work. Also diesel is much less flammable than petrol or methanol and doesnt require a spark, so diesel vehicles are allowed in some industrial places that spark ignition cannot go. Eg fuel depots.
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You say this only because you fail to understand what the purpose of hybrid in this application is. It is not for energy recovery made possible by "stop start driving in cities".
Re: No one overlooked this (Score:2)
Go on a thermodynamics course then get back to us.
Re: No one overlooked this (Score:3, Interesting)
However you say it in whatever fucked up dialect of English you speak, here in England where real English is spoken we say go on a course. And the only advantage of a hybrid setup is for energy recovery plus to prevent engine labour at low rpm. So go get youself a fucking clue.
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Ah England - the Xerox PARC of the English language. They invented the tech but never really understood it. Extraneous u's in color and honor. All those awkward -re endings leftover from French. Swallowing articles and prepositions left and right (you go to THE hospital and agree TO something). Poor limey bastards.
It took Americans to clean up the cruft and turn
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American is just a nasal screwed over dialect of a real language.
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This^^^ and then use batteries for when you DO actually stop/start, accelerate to pass, and for pulling up a hill so you don't have to ramp up the engine RPM too much to generate the electricity needed to power the electric motors only up that hill.
Hint: even long haul trucks don't run full throttle all the time. So the question is, how do you recover the massive amounts of energy when they have to slow down/ hold on the down hill and then use it when you need to accelerate again/ pull back up the hill.
Whic
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Only if its a serial hybrid, not parallel. Almost all car hybrids are the latter.
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I think the researchers fail to understand a few things as well. GP is correct— the ways hybrids improve include regenerative braking, increased starting torque, potentially simplified transmissions... and that is about it. From an energy perspective, a long-haul truck isn’t going to benefit much from a hybrid design, but there are minor gains (~1-2%?). From an emissions perspective, I’m sure it helps in several areas (especially around the depots where it can charge from the grid).
But,
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I think the researchers fail to understand a few things as well. GP is correct— the ways hybrids improve include regenerative braking, increased starting torque, potentially simplified transmissions... and that is about it. From an energy perspective, a long-haul truck isn’t going to benefit much from a hybrid design, but there are minor gains (~1-2%?).
Driving up through Florida from Miami to Jacksonville, I'd agree with you. But, as soon as you approach Atlanta, that battery is going to pay for itself in dollars and health benefits. The hills on I-85 around Atlanta are steep, and the road is packed. Car drivers won't speed up on the downhill so that you can get a running start at the next incline, so you end up burning your brakes on the downhill and dropping down to 35mph with the hammer down on the uphill. A battery pack replacing a dead axle (the
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When I first bought my prius, I thought that was true too. It wasn't. I had a long trip- Beaverton to Prineville in Oregon planned. Going I got a very respectable 40 miles to the gallon. No great shakes, I thought, many similar small gas engines got similar, in the 25-35 MPG range. Then I drove home- and got 65 MPG.
Reminded me of my underpowered Honda Spree scooter I drove in college, which could hit 45- downhill and with a tailwind......
Re: No one overlooked this (Score:2)
Is that what the trip computer told you? Id take it with a pinch and then some.
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No improbable.
My 1.2L 3cyl non-hybrid gasoline ICE gets about 50mpg avg on my commute in the summer. Roughly confirmed by gas tank fillup and some math.
The more recent hybrids firmware cycles the ICE when cruising between struggle-to-charge-the-batteries and completely off, the very first hybrids didn't.
I've been able to push my non-hybrid to 58mpg by driving "stupidly" efficient on the highway when no one was around: floor it in 5th (no downshift) to 75mph, let go and cruise down to 45mph, repeat.
Kind of i
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Hey, that is how I drive...
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That's because at long haul driving most modern passenger car engines can get into the upper 30's/40mpg. My 2012 VW Golf non hybrid with a 5 cylinder engine can manage 38/39mpg as indicated on the dash for long term highway driving. I'm talking 1hr+ going at highway speeds.
The problem ICE engines have is city driving that is stop and go where you have to dump a ton of fuel into the engine to accelerate the car. Hybrids help with this by using electrical energy that was recovered during braking to accelerate
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Except not all semi-trucks are operating in "on the interstate 99.9% of the time" mode - they're used in semi-local transport. For example, local grocery stores aren't directly stocked from thousands of miles away... their stock is trucked from a local distribution center that's probably 10-50 miles away. In this case, while the semi is certainly still doing a fair bit of highway driving, it's also spending a significant amount of low speed, stop and go driving.
It's also true that many countries other than
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Don't forget slowing down for traffic, getting cut off, keeping speed on down hills ... and then the reverse of those. Batteries sized right to store that energy can be useful; they can also just be straight up charge on the long straight while the motor/generator is operating at peak efficiency.
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The problem is the amount of energy we'd be throwing at the batteries and the required size.
Cars already struggle with the regenerative braking without catching on fire or prematurely wearing down the batteries making it practically a joke, it's a negligible amount of energy that is recuperated (supercaps would be great for this but we're not there yet).
They've experimented with air-oil compressors on city delivery trucks since that can handle a very quick "recharge", it's effectively an air spring that get
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Yep, you at the the parent are spot-on. This is a solution looking for a problem. Diesel is still the best for long-haul (range, durability and cost-effectiveness), and short-haul is going to be handled by electric Semis.
A viable alternative for long-haul would be electric freight trains. We probably could have had that by now if we had put the right incentives and regulations in place years ago.
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For stop start driving in cities hybrids make sense
Maybe, if the hybrid can carry enough charge to get through most of the day without depending on the ICE. But carrying several tons of battery means carrying several tons less cargo, so maybe not.
Re: No one overlooked this (Score:5, Interesting)
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and great efficiency from the turbine.
Turbines are much less efficient than diesel engines, topping out at about 30% for shaft power. Automotive diesel engines hit over 40% for cars and 45% for bigger vehicles. Marine diesels get into the low 50s.
Pretty much the only thermal plants which beat diesel are large combined cycle gas turbine/Rankine hybids, which are heading towards about 65%. And you need huge low pressure turbines and a good sub atmospheric condenser to get there.
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Diesel-steam hybrids would make more sense for long-haul highway trucks and there's research being done into it right now.
New materials mean less boiler maintenance downtime which is part of what killed steam locomotives, along with the time it took to refill the water tank but that'd be less of an issue for a diesel-steam hybrid that can keep going without water, just less efficiently.
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If you've ever had your car rumble sitting next to a semi idling at a light, you know the answer to that question. There's a ton of wasted energy there for urban areas.
Freeway long haul? Well, there are efficiencies at 65mph too.....my prius goes into electric silent mode every time I go downhill no matter how fast I'm going.
And of course, as the first post pointed out, hybrid diesel-electric locomotives have been the norm on rails for the past 60 years, since the mid 1950s.
Re: No one overlooked this (Score:3)
Diesel electric locos have nothing to do with energy saving and everything to do with not having to have a very complex and fragil emechanical transmission system going to 12 wheels on 2 pivoting bogies. Before electric there was diesel hydraulic which solved the same problem albeit less reliably.
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Well, there is *some* energy saving advantage. As you alluded to in another post, if the diesel is running at the optimum load/speed, it's hard to beat. With hybrid systems that charge a battery that powers the electric engines, they can run the ICE at optimum speed 100% of the time (or turn it off if the battery is at capacity), regardless of vehicle speed. So a hybrid semi could cruise down the highway at 40, or 55, or 65, or 70, whatever, depending on conditions and such, and still run the ICE at optimum
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" As you alluded to in another post, if the diesel is running at the optimum load/speed, it's hard to beat."
True, but there's some serious conversion losses in the generator and some more in the motor controller system.
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Just adding: Rule of thumb is optimistically about 10% loss (90% efficiency) in the electric generator, another 10% loss in the electric motors (they're the same thing but used "backward"), those stay pretty consistent through their life (replace the bearings, brushes, and off you go).
The motor controller system efficiency varies greatly.
So ignoring the controller system and wiring losses we're down to 81% (0.9 * 0.9) transmission efficiency, or 19% losses.
The were attempts at direct-drive diesels to increa
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You're joking about steam engines. Their efficiency hovers around 10%. The vast majority of the energy in coal is wasted either simply to keep the water boiling and exhuasted out of the stack while the engine is standing still, or used in warming it all up for a few hours in the first place.
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Isn’t it more for starting torque?
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It's because a mechanical clutch pack on a freight train would melt, wear down, and/or explode under the required torque and a shifting gear box would have a similar issue.
And even when they got that to somehow hold up and work, it made maintenance too difficult.
Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They had 4 diesel engines, with 4 torque converters, 4x 1-way ratchet clutches, 3 differential gear boxes to drive the wheels, AND 2 more diesel engines just acting as superchargers for the 4 other diesel en
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I would not call diesel freight trains hybrids. They do not have any electrical energy storage on board. They are purely an electrical generator on wheels and that generator drives the electric traction motors. This is for no other reason than the mechanical complexities of mechanically linking the diesel engine down to the traction wheels and for fuel efficiency. Most engines have a small RPM band where they are most efficient. The diesel locomotives run their engines in this RPM range and vary the energy
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my prius goes into electric silent mode every time I go downhill no matter how fast I'm going.
And most diesel trucks activate their Jake Brake [wikipedia.org], which makes them extremely loud but they're not burning fuel.
hybrid diesel-electric locomotives
Diesel-electric locomotives are not hybrids. They are electric locomotives with on-board diesel generators. The diesel engines never drive the wheels.
And only recently have some railroads started experimenting with adding battery packs to recover energy while braking.
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If you've ever had your car rumble sitting next to a semi idling at a light, you know the answer to that question. There's a ton of wasted energy there for urban areas.
Auto start-stop doesn't require a PHEV, though. A mild hybrid will do just fine.
Freeway long haul? Well, there are efficiencies at 65mph too.....my prius goes into electric silent mode every time I go downhill no matter how fast I'm going.
Diesels are very good about not wasting fuel. But there's regen...
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Sure, that's why locomotives are all pure diesel....
There are more reasons to go with a hybrid drive than just duty cycle and regenerative braking.
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Diesel has higher energy density, but that doesn't mean burning it produces less carbon or results in a more efficient engine. Furthermore, the engines proposed in the hybrid solution are not the same "high torque industrial engines". What's "pants-on-head retarded" is your failure to understand the things you comment on.
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When the engine is driving a generator, you can optimise the engine and generator to operate at whatever torque and RPM works best.
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How about simply switching them to biodiesel (by law)???
1. Biodiesel is CO2 neutral, but does nothing to reduce particulate pollution.
2. We would need orders of magnitude more biodiesel that is currently produced.
Burning Food. (Score:3)
Never a good idea to burn food.
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spent cooking oil
Not nearly enough. Particularly if you health nuts don't keep up your end of the deal by eating more fried food. To make an appreciable dent in the fuel market, you are going to have to grow something like palm oil. On a huge scale. Here comes the deforestation and the end of the orangutans.
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And that goes double for bicyclists! (50 mpg of O.J.)
It won't scale up. (Score:1)
Yeah every year the local newspaper always runs a feel good story about the area kook who converted his VW Microbus to run on discarded cooking oil he collects from the nearby restaurants, but the thing is there are just not enough Chinese takeout joints to supply the entirety of the trucking industry.
From TFA: (Score:5, Insightful)
"...However, the private sector does seem to have dipped its toes in hybrid long-haul truck powertrains. In 2017, truck engine maker Cummins announced that it would be developing a 100-mile-range electric semi with a diesel generator on board that could extend the battery range to 300 miles. Last September, the company debuted a hybrid electric and diesel or natural gas powertrain called the PowerDrive. ..." ...and they haven't sold ANY because no serious freight company is willing to a) spend more than they have to on boutique technologies; b) sacrifice both weight capacity and RANGE (these have ranges of 100 miles, or 300 miles with a larger weight sacrifice). A typical truck 7mpg with 300gal tanks has a range of TWO THOUSAND miles and can be filled/turned in about 30 mins. These electric vehicles require 8 hours for full charge.
Sure perhaps some city buses or school buses will use the tech because (apparently) they don't have a bottom line to meet. But real trucking co's are already bled white by new rest hours, requirements to buy new eco-trucks (making the used sale value of their old units plummet), idling units, and a lack of drivers. It's not like there's a surplus of wealth in the business.
And trust me, you don't want to see the cumulative impact of even a 15% increase on transport costs across the supply chain.
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Weight is a HUGE deal. Trucks are limited to 80,000lb on US roads. Every pound for batteries, is a pound less in money making cargo. While you can buy a truck with 300 gallon fuel tanks, not many are sold that way, because that's just more weight that isn't making money.
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The real question has to do with miles traveled daily, and drive cycle. Hybrids save the most fuel in stop-and-go traffic. Hybrids (or even full EVs) make sense for school buses or garbage trucks, but not so much for long haul. The particular place they could shine, though, is in port drayage. There are also additional considerations in particular locations. Some states (California in particular) prohibit idling, so you have to use an expensive and typically failure-prone APU to provide power for climate co
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If you're able to dial back on the "herp derp gubbmint *drool*" attitude, you might actually be able to engage your brain. Warning: it might hurt.
London already has loads of diesel-electric hybrid busses. Heavy urban traffic is almost the perfect use case for hybrid vehicles and also greatly reduces the most polluting phase of diesel engines in high population areas.
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...it's almost like I already said: venues where apparently bottom line profit isn't the main motivator, they might work.
L2Read, dipshit.
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Well that's not quite what you said and I misunderstood. Sorry for being a dickhead about it.
Re:Do it for trains (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, most freight lines in the US aren't electrified. BTW, some locomotives can run both on electric systems and diesel -- i.e. any longer-distance train out of Grand Central in NYC. They run on 750VDC third-rail from Grand Central through upper Manhattan, then start the dlesel when they stop at 125th St/Harlem.
The solution should be massive electrification of freight rail in the US. Regardless of opinions about passenger rail, rail freeight is extremely efficient. Friction from steel wheels on steel rails is much lower than rubber on road, and it can be powered using electricity without lugging fuel, batteries, and/or an engine around.
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The solution should be massive electrification of freight rail in the US. Regardless of opinions about passenger rail, rail freeight is extremely efficient. Friction from steel wheels on steel rails is much lower than rubber on road, and it can be powered using electricity without lugging fuel, batteries, and/or an engine around.
By the way electric rail for passengers could be a viable alternative to private transportation. This need planning and investments. Operations research is less cool than AI for self driving cars but making public transportation more efficient could be a better investment. Unfortunately the urban sprawl that was made viable by the automobile makes difficult for big suburban areas to have good public transport.
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One hundred years ago trains were the best form of transportation in my area of north Florida. Rail lines were run every ten miles or so with stops also six to ten miles apart. You only had to walk three or four miles at most to get to one. Even in the early 70's a freight train would go by most nights on the line 400 yds from my home.
You are correct in how difficult it will be to wean people off of owning their own homes and being forced to live on top of each other within walking distance of a rail lin
no time to waste (Score:1)
Any links to the actual paper? (Score:2)
I didn't find any in TFA. I might as well try to read what our two intrepid professors actually wrote.
What am I saying, this is Slashdot...
We have 10.5 years (Score:3)
This will still increase actual emissions.
Sure, if you're driving a 12 mpg truck, getting a new hybrid with 40 mpg will be better, but it had to be made first.
Replace more trucks and cars with trains, and convert those to electric/hydrogen hybrids instead. High speed passenger/freight trains and medium-speed efficient trains.
And stop ordering Same Day Service or Amazon Prime, you're killing the planet.
Actually, the planet will survive, you won't.
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Sure, if you're driving a 12 mpg truck, getting a new hybrid with 40 mpg will be better, but it had to be made first.
Hybrid systems don't have good trip mileage, they have good in-town mileage. At low speeds drag doesn't play a sizable part in energy consumption, but regenerative braking does. Hybrids only make sense for making mostly short trips. For making only short trips, EVs make more sense. For making only long trips, diesels are best. Gasoline is useful for motorsport, and string trimmers, but we could use ethanol for that stuff.
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I see you've never had to drive from North of LA to San Diego.
It's all highways. But you won't get there fast.
Elephants in the room? (Score:2)
I'm concerned this focus (not the Ford kind) on cars and trucks ICE regarding pollution sounds more and more like an ideological crusade and/or some kind of misdirection/distraction.
It's like optimising code, you find and go for the hot spot but at some point it's not the hot spot anymore.
Between the lobbyists (farming, container ships, etc), ecological zealots (not the informed reasonable kind), and a bit of a sunny-California tech world somewhat disconnected from the rest of the world (FYI: Solar panels d
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Like I said, it's not even that simple. It's the danger of making quick generalisations.
Small pickups (not large) can consume much less than a sedan, like the VW Rabbit pickup (It's a Golf/Rabbit front with a pickup rear end).
There's a similar issue with recycling: Some things are better NOT being recycled and our obsession with trying to blindly recycle absolutely everything can cause more harm than good. IIRC Paper has reached that point regarding carbon footprint (or close to, it's difficult to find non-
*Viable* (Score:2)
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I find it interesting they are going away from diesel engine instead of embracing its performance and durability and building on tech that is already established.
Same here. Whatever engine they put on the truck, you want lowest cost per mile and lowest emissions per mile. Hopefully those are the same.
I remember hearing about this crazy new idea, hybrid cars, what, 15 years ago? The talk at the time was the same idea. The wheels would always be driven by electric motors. The ICE would recharge the battery and might come on to augment the battery in times of high load. Everyone I talked to assumed there'd be no mechanical linkage from the ICE to the wheels. Turns out