“When will Chinese-made cars come to the U.S.?” is one of the biggest questions in the business right now. At the moment, this new crop of newcomers is kept out by stiff 27.5% import tariffs, even when you know automakers like BYD would love a shot at stealing sales from General Motors and Toyota and Tesla and the rest. But in some ways, Chinese cars are already here.
That leads us off on this fine (but warm) July Monday morning. Also on today’s docket: China’s automakers back off on their “socialist values” pledge not to price-gouge each other into oblivion, a look at who’s winning and where now that the year’s halfway over and a gut check on e-fuels. Let’s dive in.
BYD May Come Someday But Geely’s Cars Are Already Here
As we all take bets on when Chinese cars will show up in America, the Wall Street Journal has the smart take. It starts thusly:
Chinese automotive tycoon Eric Li is letting more people into his $30 billion-plus private garage. It is full of old brands, new tech and potential conflicts of interest.
First off, great lede, 10/10, no notes. But while Geely’s not as visible a parent company as, say, General Motors, it has its hands in a lot these days: Volvo, Polestar, Lotus, now, plus some slightly lesser-known brands here like Lynk & Co, Proton, Zeekr and Geely itself in China.
Generally speaking, Geely’s actually been a great steward of these brands. It’s hard to argue the current era of Volvo isn’t the best one ever. Polestar has been putting out some really excellent products, the Lynk & Co vehicles I’ve seen in Europe seem impressive and Lotus may finally get the stability that has eluded it since… um, always, I guess. While Geely is a Chinese conglomerate, it keeps local engineering, development and production in place and gives those brands the resources they need to succeed.
But the empire goes deeper than that for Eric Li, or Li Shufu, as he’s also called:
Yet his portfolio also includes opportunistically acquired stakes in Mercedes-Benz and Aston Martin Lagonda, as well as dominant interests in electric-vehicle startups such as Polestar, Zeekr and Lotus Technology. Li borrowed the Lotus name from the venerable British sports-car maker, in which he bought a majority stake in 2017.
More of the companies he has held privately have started to seek public capital lately. The process started with the 2021 minority initial public offering of Volvo Car. Then came last year’s merger of Polestar, previously a Volvo subbrand, with a U.S. special-purpose acquisition company. In January, Lotus Technology agreed to go public via another SPAC deal at a $5.4 billion valuation. In February, Zeekr, which was only founded in 2021 but has grown rapidly in China, raised $750 million at a $13 billion valuation ahead of a potential U.S. IPO.
Others could follow in time, such as London Electric Vehicle Company, the maker of London’s famous black cabs. Li bought the company out of distress a decade ago, rebranded it and is now considering raising capital from private investors, Bloomberg reported last month.
That story says Li’s Geely bet big on EVs earlier than many international rivals, and while he’s raising capital with SPACs and selling shares to pay for it, so far it’s paying off. And they’re eager to start building cars here too, though positioning is not without its challenges:
Having made a splash with a Super Bowl ad, Polestar sold almost 10,000 Chinese-made cars in the U.S. last year, despite a 27.5% import duty. Starting next year, Polestars will be produced at Volvo’s Charleston factory to avoid the tariff. Lotus Tech and Zeekr also want to launch Chinese-built vehicles stateside. They too might find ways within the group to localize assembly.
[…] One concrete example of the tension between brand and group interests is the competition between different Geely premium EVs. New products from Volvo, Polestar, Zeekr and Lotus, some of them built on common vehicle platforms, will be fighting for many of the same customers.
I have often wondered where Polestar begins and where Volvo ends, especially since the latter says it’s also going all-electric by the start of the next decade. But one thing’s becoming clear: Geely may be the secret Chinese automaker success in America that flies completely under the radar if it keeps doing what it’s been doing.
Chinese Automakers’ ‘Socialist’ Gentlemen’s Agreement Goes Out The Window
Yes, we all got a good laugh at Elon Musk’s Tesla having to sign a pledge in China committing to “core socialist values” and promising not to enter a price war with other EV manufacturers. I know I did! But now that’s gone out the window after just a couple of days. Here’s Reuters:
The group representing China’s auto manufacturers has retracted a pledge to avoid “abnormal pricing” that it had brokered between 16 automakers, including Tesla, breaking off a truce in a brutal price war over electric vehicles.
The China Association of Auto Manufacturers (CAAM) said in a statement on Saturday it recognised the agreement had violated China’s antitrust law and would retract it.
Oops!
To recap, Tesla started slashing prices in China at the start of this year, just like it did in America. But unlike in the U.S., about two dozen Chinese domestic and Western automakers followed suit, leading to a kind of race to the bottom that would cut into profit margins and hammer all but the biggest EV manufacturers.
So this group CAAM brokered a kind of truce, apparently supported by government officials and worded in a CCP-friendly way to make them happy. It was retracted mere days later after Tesla just tried another tactic and Volkswagen said the hell with it, plus it didn’t seem legally binding anyway:
It appeared in doubt just a day later when Tesla said it was offering a referral payout equal to about $500 on its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, including in China. Volkswagen’s (VOWG_p.DE) joint ventures with SAIC and FAW also announced price cuts in China on their ID-series EVs on Friday.
On Saturday, CAAM retracted the pricing pledge.
Liu Xu, a researcher at the National Strategy Institute of Tsinghua University, said enforcement of antitrust law in China’s auto industry had been selective and that the language of the pricing pledge was so vague it would be hard to determine if it constituted a price monopoly.
While steady price cuts by companies should be allowed, subsidies from local authorities should be removed as they distort the pricing system, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association, said on Monday.
Why does this matter to you, a presumably Western reader of this website? Because this kind of thing has profound impacts on the profitability of brands that sell in North America and Europe and so on. And more importantly, this is the whittling-down period of the Chinese brands that could move into our market later:
AlixPartners said while China’s EV market will continue to grow rapidly, intensifying competition and excess capacity will also drive a shakeout. Only 25 to 30 out of the 167 companies registered to produce EVs or plug-in hybrids in China will survive by 2030, it forecast.
Yeah, that’s the thing about capitalism. There are winners and losers. Womp-womp.
The American Auto Industry Is Basically Back And Trucks Are Really Back
The worst of the supply chain issues that have dogged the car industry these past few years does seem to be over and Q2’s sales figures reflect that. Here’s the scorecard from Automotive News:
General Motors outsold Toyota at the halfway point for a second consecutive year, and Ford was on pace to be the top brand for the first time in three years. Hyundai-Kia leapfrogged Stellantis to become the No. 4 automaker, as Tesla — based on estimates since it doesn’t report U.S. results — climbed to No. 8. Tesla still had three of the four most popular electric vehicles, though others are grabbing more market share every quarter.
It’s a tight race for pickup sales supremacy between Ford Motor Co., which was No. 1 in the second quarter, and GM, which had a slight lead year to date. GM’s highly profitable large SUVs easily outsold the competition from Stellantis and Ford combined.
The top-sellers are the usual suspects: the Ford F-Series trucks (up 28% just this quarter), compact crossovers, GM’s pickups and large SUVs, the Tesla Model Y and the Ford Mustang over its two direct competitors.
Interesting developments, all of it, especially when you consider that interest rates aren’t doing buyers any favors these days. But this data tells me we’re tracking to get a lot more “normal” into the rest of this year.
E-Fuels: A Useful Stopgap Or The Future?
The auto industry is making some big promises around going “all-electric,” but I get the growing sense that deep down it would just… rather not. After all, it’s spent a century making internal combustion engines, cars and parts to support them and that’s awfully hard to walk back in just a decade. Maybe gasoline is the problem! Maybe there’s a magic-bullet way to keep doing what they’ve always done, while reducing carbon in the process. Right?
That’s the unlikely promise of synthetic e-fuels, or carbon neutral fuels that can still support internal combustion with far fewer emissions. Here’s Automotive News with the latest on what’s happening there:
Porsche, Stellantis, Ferrari, BMW and other automakers are taking a hard look at e-fuel, a replacement for gasoline and diesel. E-fuel combines carbon dioxide taken from the atmosphere — or captured at the source, such as at a refinery — and hydrogen obtained from water through electrolysis.
[…] “We will take the approach that it’s e-fuels for engines, not engines for e-fuels, meaning that we are not going to change the hardware to accommodate them,” said Micky Bly, Stellantis’ head of global propulsion systems, at a panel discussion in April at the SAE International conference. Stellantis tested and is validating e-fuel in 28 gasoline and diesel engine families dating back nearly a decade.
Sounds great. But!
“We will take the approach that it’s e-fuels for engines, not engines for e-fuels, meaning that we are not going to change the hardware to accommodate them,” said Micky Bly, Stellantis’ head of global propulsion systems, at a panel discussion in April at the SAE International conference. Stellantis tested and is validating e-fuel in 28 gasoline and diesel engine families dating back nearly a decade.
That’s a lot. It’s also worth noting that investments and R&D into e-fuels are still in their infancy, vs. tons and tons of both happening for decades with batteries. But you get why automakers want to at least try this out. Companies like Porsche and Ferrari are worried about losing their souls if they go all-electric, the jury’s out on whether EVs can do pickup-truck duty the way buyers want and it’s probably smart to have options going into the future.
But it’s incredibly tough to make this stuff in the first place, to the point where it’ll almost not matter from an emissions perspective:
Speakers at the SAE International panel in Detroit agreed that an internal combustion vehicle running e-fuel could be nearly as clean as a battery-electric vehicle.
But that doesn’t mean pure air — with no CO2, nitrogen oxides and other greenhouse gases — comes out of the exhaust pipes of vehicles burning e-fuel. Far from it, and this where things get complicated. E-fuel is intended to be a carbon neutral fuel, meaning that the CO2 it produces must equal the CO2 required to make and transport it.
To do that, the electricity required to separate hydrogen from water must come from a renewable source, such as a wind turbine, solar panel or a hydroelectric dam.
Using e-fuel in a gasoline or diesel car requires about five times more renewable electricity than running a battery-electric vehicle, according to a 2021 paper in the Nature Climate Change journal, Reuters reported.
Ouch.
Your Turn
Reducing carbon emissions is the factor that’s guiding where the car business is going next—that and profits, as always. Should automakers even bother with e-fuels or just commit to longer-term, guaranteed zero-emission strategies?
USA auto builders should be union at $100 an hour they should compete against chinese slave labor of build it or we we kill you. Yet writers here cant figure out how the Chinese can build it cheaper. I wish i could insert a gif of stupid people.
That Chinese crap is most likely like their parts. They advertise quality but it is junk. But for some reason authors here think the Chinese can build a better car with stolen technology built with slave labor. It is hilarious that the writers here supporting stolen tech and slave labor would be the slaves building the cars if they were in China. Hey if the Chinese do end up discovering anything or building anything better it should be available to be stolen and used by anyone in the free world. I am pretty sure Chinese car manufacturing conditions are better than DT is used to, and they provide better meals but the free world should refuse chinese slave labor vehicles.
There are Chinese-built vehicles on the road in the USA right now. Geely’s Polestar 2 is totally Chinese and I know at least some of the Volvo XC60s are, especially early in their current generation. I also recall some GM vehicles, particularly the Buick Envision is China-built. This is only going to increase over time.
And we’ve had electrified Haifei Saibaos before, albeit in small numbers, along with various crash test-skirting 3-wheelers in both electric (Zap) and non-electric (Wildfire & Snyder) forms, plus Canada got Chinese-built Honda Fits for a time. The waters have been tested, Americans are as fine with Chinese built cars as they are with Chinese built cell phones, tablets, and computers. The only remaining question is whether we’re fine with Chinese brand names on the cars, and I think the answer to that is a qualified yes – if they’re substantially cheaper than established brands.
I read the study about e-fuels mentioned (Ueckerdt et al, 2021). E-fuels take 5x as much energy per mile… in circumstances the study describes as “optimistic.” Among other things, it assumes EVs have a plug-to-wheel efficiency of 50%. Going by the more common estimate of 27kWh/L in a 25mpg car, e-fuels take about 10x as much energy per mile as EVs.
For the US passenger fleet to swap to EVs, we need to expand power production by 29% over the next 30 years. Doable. To convert entirely to e-fuels would require over 300% growth in the same timeframe. Not doable.
I think e-fuels are pretty cool and mostly benign, but I fear that if e-fuels get overhyped, people will count on them to save the day, and then get rug-pulled when they find out how much e-fuels cost to operate that brand new truck (even by this optimistic study, $13.33/gal before tax). And voila! We’ve manufactured an energy crisis to which the only solution is — you’ll never guess — drill, baby drill.
So I’m optimistic about e-fuels, but only in the context that it’s a niche alternative meant more for keeping prized vintage cars alive than for making your daily commute.
Thank you for writing this so I didn’t have to. 🙂
It’s entirely possible that big trucks and other relatively niche applications need e-fuels long-term, but this sure feels like another way to distract from the hard work that needs to be done in the short to medium term to decarbonize the economy
100% agreed. E-fuels are likely to be useful in niche applications- think keeping old classics on the road, and in industry where the energy density is important such as long-haul trucking. Things like the trucking will depend on whether or not it’s financially worth paying for cost of the fuel, or paying the cost of huge batteries or swapping stations or whatever.
I think aviation is most likely to be a big user of e-fuels, as energy density is probably more important there than any other application.
Just got back from Colombia. The BYD EV’s that are sold there look like they’re ready to compete here at least based on appearance.
I’m kind of surprised that it’s only 5x more electricity for e-fuels than BEV, there’s no data shown, but maybe that is assuming CO2 from an industrial stream, and not direct air capture? I haven’t seen good numbers for DAC of CO2, but hints that it would be 3-7x the electricity just for that step, although it would hopefully improve.
Porsche and other low volume, high price makes pursuing limited quantities of e-fuels makes sense, but for volume manufacturers it just seems silly. Certifying a bunch of engine families for e-fuels is likely just running some standard tests with the fuel, and the hardest part is probably just getting the e-fuels in quantities for the tests. Might as well do it, but it’s a pretty minor step. E-fuels should be superior fuels to the chemical soups of fossil gasoline and diesel, as they are more pure fuels, so certifying engines shouldn’t be an issue. The issue is producing the fuel in any sort of quantity. This is sort of like an OEM saying they have certified their power electronics and electric motors in their BEVs to run off electrons from solid state or some other advanced battery that isn’t yet in mass production.
The problem with e-fuels, or organic fuels in general, is a device designed to be powered by them can only be powered by them. One of the strengths of EVs, and electric trains and electric bicycles is they are power source agnostic, whatever the electric power is generated from, the vehicle doesn’t care, maybe that’s coal now, but can be solar/nuclear tomorrow. Really more modern nuclear reactors could help solve a lot of this, and also generate cheap hydrogen as a byproduct but for whatever reason nobody wants that.
Nuclear is unlikely to be the answer for as long as the private sector has to pay for its building. Too expensive, too many promises broken
This “nuclear is too expensive” meme needs to die. Nuclear is too expensive if you look at reactors designed in the 50’s and 60’s, built in the 70’s, and subject to modern nuclear regulations. They mostly very large, custom built plants subject to an enormous amount of regulatory scrutiny that takes years or decades to resolve, because each one involves not only the actual reactor design but additional civil engineering considerations on-par with the fucking Hoover Dam. Our buerecrats like it, because it ensures job security and power, as well as plenty of opportunity for a little graft and corruption.
This is a completely idiotic way to go about nuclear power.
A much better way, that is far, far cheaper and will have a far, far greater impact is to certify small modular reactors of a common design around 100 MWe (this number is important), and mass produce them. And then you go and shut off each and every coal-fired plant in the country (which happen to average around 100 MWe apiece) and slot in a modular reactor in it’s place. Because you are building a common design, you only have to go through the reactor certification once, rather than for each separate location. And because you are simply replacing the coal plant with a nuclear reactor, you can use the already in-place distribution infrastructure, and even the steam turbines, which conserves resources and saves a shitload of money. The bonus is eliminating the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in one swoop.
Nuclear power has advanced in 50 years, but the reneweable energy crowd still treats it as if it’s the 1970’s- this is a mistake.
Having consulted for power-gen utilities, I support Wuffles comment wholly.
Sorry to say this here, but if we are serious about not burning down the planet, then we shouldn’t be wasting our time on ‘entertainment vehicles’. Let’s switch the conversation to transportation for a moment. To keep an economy operating, we need to transport goods and people still need to go places.
So, what are the best strategies? Personal vehicles for every trip? Flying for long trips? Ships and trains for heavy goods and commodities? A certain amount of this is settled debate, so let’s work on choosing the most appropriate energy source for each.
Battery powered personal vehicles make a lot of sense, but we need to back off a bit on the crazy range arms race to bring costs (including environmental costs of mining) under control. A solid charging infrastructure and improved public transport are needed in the mix. Aircraft are not going to be served by battery technology in the near future. This is where e-fuels or biofuels have a place owing to their energy density. Heavy shipping is a critical point needing to transition from fossil fuel, Hydrogen might be the solution here, depending on the source of the hydrogen. But really, anything to get off bunker oil and diesel would be a step in the right direction.
I guess my point is, different applications will require different strategies, and yes there will need to be some lifestyle changes like using more public transport. It’s a better compromise than a lifestyle of fleeing floods and fires and rebuilding your home or even starving. I bristle at the Porsche/Ferrari argument that e-fuels are needed for their toys. It’s just dumb, especially in this era of EV hypercars with performance numbers those customers find desirable. But even EV toys are problematic. Tire pollution is not trivial and not necessary just becase someone wants to joy ride or drive a billboard around in circles.
Yeah, I’m fun at parties. Or at least the ones I get invited to.
Absolutely correct that we need to be more efficient in ways other than just switching to EVs. Better public transit would be great, and we should cut down on the next-day delivery and other wasteful things that become the new norm.
And we should change what we eat, sadly. Less beef, less imported food, and more strategic local farming.
Of course, the biggest changes should come from the biggest polluters. Massive yachts, private jets, and massive corporations are all much larger offenders than pretty much anyone on this site. Reducing their emissions via regulation, voluntary reductions, and orca attacks will have a much larger impact than getting NSane to trade the N for an EV or even V10omous to switch to a bicycle would.
This is exactly why the whole discourse is so frustrating to me. I accept the ribbing in good humor, but the fact is some forms of consumption/emissions are are visible (Vipers and F350 trucks) and some aren’t.
I commute to the office two days a month or less. My wife doesn’t commute at all. I keep my thermostat at 74 in the summer and 67 in the winter (and have a smart thermostat to save beyond that). I eat beef once a week or so at most. I fly a couple times a year or less.
I don’t say those things to brag because I’m particularly green, I do them because they save me money and in some cases they’re just the right thing to do. I don’t expect credit for them, but I do get frustrated when it’s Vipers driven 1-2000 miles a year under the microscope/ban hammer and hardly any of the myriad other ways energy gets wasted by the same people who tell me to shut up and just accept an EV because its costless to them.
The people in charge of making the policy decisions are not the people that will be impacted by them. The middle class are being expected to live like the poor, so that the rich can continue squandering the planet’s limited resources.
The hate is commonly directed to someone who drives their prized sports car 1,000-2,000 miles a year, or at the upper-middle-class McMansion dweller, and not the people who consume more fuel taking their yacht for a weekend joyride than that McMansion dweller’s wasteful Escalade will consume in an entire year of driving. Some old money folks think nothing about heating the outdoor pool in their mansion using more electricity than a McMansion dweller will consume in an entire year. The working class trailer park dweller gets criticized for eating a hamburger once in a while or driving an old pickup truck for their job, when some rich person will take their private jet across the world on a whim to see a family member for the weekend using more fuel than that trailer park dweller will use all year.
Most of the greenhouse gas emissions are directly emitted by the major corporations. Shifting the blame to the consumers of the products is nothing more than mere gaslighting, because these same corporations have shaped public policy to their advantage and determine the products that get produced that we can buy, and determine what we can afford through our wages.
https://www.activesustainability.com/climate-change/100-companies-responsible-71-ghg-emissions/
McMansion dweller here (if a 2,600 sq ft house can be considered a mansion) – the thing is that McMansions are a modern invention and mine at least is super energy efficient due to modern building techniques – total heat/cool energy consumption is about half of the post-war 1,800 sq ft house I grew up in. And my McMansion is 15 years old, so it doesn’t have the latest energy efficiency tricks (built with 2×4’s not 2×6 – less room for insulation). The one issue is the house is super air-tight which makes things like bathroom and kitchen fans not work all that well. Every few years I do survey the new building-science products to see if I can fix these problems (running any space at negative pressure is bad – it pulls in all kinds of allergens and other undesirable stuff.) I really want someone to come up with an ERV bathroom fan system that pulls in outside air with a heat-transfer system and the ability to have the inlet in one corner and the outlet in the other so that the room will have a flow-path that sweeps the room and sucks out the shower humidity.
I get it. I just picked a couple people whose screen names I could remember and associate with a vehicle (you two are pretty easy targets for that). I didn’t mean to call you out as conspicuous consumers, just say that converting you does little to address the real issue. Sorry if it felt like a call-out. We’re facing another instance of massive polluters shifting the blame, just like the “give a hoot, don’t pollute” and anti-littering campaigns that both ignored the impact of the actual decisionmakers.
Big corporations, politicians, and the obscenely wealthy so thoroughly eclipse the individual consumer and even whole demographic swaths it isn’t even funny. And moving a bunch of individuals to new EVs is still far more wasteful than getting more people onto public transit, even if those EVs are far more efficient than the Hummer and whatever else we cram batteries into right now.
No no, I was extremely serious when I said I accept the good-natured comment as it was clearly intended.
The frustration is with policy makers, not fellow enthusiasts. No one on this website is trying to ban my cars (that I know of).
[beers emoji]
I do get frustrated when it’s Vipers driven 1-2000 miles a year under the microscope/ban hammer and hardly any of the myriad other ways energy gets wasted by the same people who tell me to shut up and just accept an EV because its costless to them
This won’t win me any friends in the “green” movement but I actually do strongly agree with you here. The occasional jaunts in your Viper aren’t the problem. Massive, daily gridlock commuter traffic is the problem. So are private jets, cruises, powerplants… I do get very annoyed when policy targets tiny use cases like enthusiast cars just because they’re an easily visible target.
A fuel/carbon tax in place of mandates solves this problem easily, but the right will never go for a tax, and the left doesn’t like it because it doesn’t punish people like me sufficiently for the sin of enjoying cars and especially trucks.
So we’ll muddle along solving very little while pissing off many.
What passes for left in this country has tried to push a carbon tax in a few states (Washington being the one I know), but they have been stymied. It’s sort of ironic that it can be easier to regulate things than tax them (you can set limits, mandate efficiency, etc. via regulatory agencies, but a tax requires voting and is often easier to challenge).
In the end, the government, not the free market is going to determine what we get, based on carrots or the sticks that they decide to throw out there. I’d prefer a variety of solutions so that people can pick what works best for them. I’m on the PHEV bandwagon. Even with a paltry 20 mile electric range, we are doing nearly 90% of our driving on electric on our PHEV and we’ve used under 10 gallons of gas in 3 months. When I had my Volt, I used less than 200 gallons of gas in 5 years. I was still able to take a 600 mile road trip with these cars and just stop for gas. If we used the battery resources from 1 full EV to make 5 PHEV’s we’d probably save 3-4 times as much gas usage. PHEV’s can still play a huge role in reducing fuel usage and it’s a lot easier transition for the large portion of the population who is not going to be comfortable going straight to a full EV.
E-fuels need to be developed because as EVs become more and more common, the economy of scale the gasoline industry has will start to erode away. It may take 25+ years, but it will happen.
I think the very very long term future is gas stations that only need electricity and water as inputs. They generate their own hydrogen and pull carbon from the air to make gasoline or diesel. They will cater to those who have ICE vehicles as a hobby or a use case EVs haven’t solved yet.
e-fuels and hybrids….
A bad, temporary solution, to the transition towards full electric. I mean, I get it, intellectually, but not emotionally. Neither of these solutions is long term, and hence why I can’t get behind either one.
We are gas until we are NOT gas. Let there be two systems, so we don’t have to pay for the waste associated with the transition. Cause, all those e-fuel and hybrid investments will be a waste of money at some point. Kinda like buying Twitter is.
Why do personal cars, which make up a small fraction of the transportation emissions, and represent possibly the worst use case for it, need to be full electric? Virtually every automotive sector such as municipal transport, trucking, or fleet vehicles have much better use cases for electrification than consumer automobiles. Building shit ton of heavy, long-range, full electric consumermobiles is a waste of limited resources that would be much better spent on the bigger sections of the emissions pie. PHEVs are a much better alternative for the use case of private individuals.
Based on the last few Rock Auto orders I’ve gotten, we’ll all be driving Chinese-made cars eventually. One replacement part at a time.
As for E-fuels, if it’s a way to keep cars for entertainment powered by internal combustion while cars for transportation shift to electric, then I think it’s a great idea, and well worth pursuing.
It’s the Ship of Theseus part 2 — International Customs and Trade edition.
Can confirm. Last RA order had parts from Turkey, Germany and China. When given the opportunity to purchase parts made by a Turkish company or Chinese company, it was a no brainer to purchase parts from a NATO ally.
Erdogan may be a bigger ally to Putin than Xi.
And Xi may be a bigger enemy to the US than Putin. So the friend of our (US) second worse enemy is better than our worse enemy being better friends to our (US) second worse enemy? Or something?
Since Turkey is a member of NATO at least there are probably some checks on their ability to destabilize things too much.
Plus my sister in law is Turkish and she’s great and her family are also great so the Turks get a pass from me.
No I wouldn’t be a good diplomat. Or maybe I would. I’m not so I don’t know.
Yep, I wore my shirt to the Detroit meetup that says, “the parts falling off of my car are of the finest British Heritage”, but in truth, most of the MGB replacement parts are coming from China at this point, and there’s quite a few of those parts on it.
I can’t wait for e-fuels to be corn ethanol 2: non-electric boogaloo
There is no reason to force pure EVs on everyone at this point, other than political. Yes, we should be pushing (not forcing) Hybrids for now. Until we can come up with better battery solutions, I think it’s better to have a ton of hybrids than a lower number of EVs. Also, we have a ton of pipelines crisscrossing the US, we could utilized them for Hydrogen.
Hydrogen leaks out of everything. It leaks through everything. You really don’t want it in long pipes.
Hence e-fuels to use your hydrogen combined with atmospheric CO2 and the existing infrastructure.
Lucky for Texas they have their own grid for electric. Wait, what’s that? They can neither export excess electricity when things are going good but can’t import electricity when things get tight. Like when it got below freezing for a week and the grid couldn’t handle it?
Yeah, the Texas grid is it’s own *special* issue.
“Using e-fuel in a gasoline or diesel car requires about five times more renewable electricity than running a battery-electric vehicle”
Yes, but they don’t require that anyone makes or buys an entire new car. E-fuels are energy intensive, but you can use them right now, with the car you already have.
The research on this is decades old. I have a drawing on my wall at home from a research engine in 2007.
There are also many ways to improve the efficiency of ICE powered cars that we’re barely even toyed with yet, if the market for truly economic cars becomes big enough for some investment (which it currently won’t be, because of all the politics lead ICE bans rather than a science lead approach to reducing emissions).
If you don’t have to buy a new car to go carbon neutral everybody wins.
Except those who make most of their money selling fossil fuels. They should all be rich enough to cope, and most have been frantically investing in green energy anyway.
You aren’t kidding about improving the efficiency of gas cars in ways we’ve barely played with. Toecutter is right when he says so many cars could be so much lower aerodynamic drag, and so much lighter. Just yesterday I watched a video about using water injection to prevent detonation with obscenely high (>15:1) compression ratios, enabling very good efficiency. And then you get down the rabbit hole of six stroke engines with considerably higher efficiency.
But many of the cars that are on the road today won’t be by the time this has any sort of scale, so im not sure that’s a compelling argument
My cars are 11 and 16 years old. No market is banning the sale of ICE until 2030, so that’s 23 years until the last of them is as old as my daily driver.
23 years seems doable for the scaling up of existing technology.
E-fuel is a good way to opportunistically use otherwise curtailed renewable energy. Bright 65*F day in the Northeast US where solar is maximum output but minimal load? That energy is going to waste otherwise so may as well spin up the e-fuel plant during peak hours. This also involves grid upgrades since the logical place for e-fuel plants at tank farms or refineries don’t necessarily have the electrical capacity.
Last I checked there’s going to be an empty plant in Lordstown and a bankrupt company having a fire sale on their assets. It may even be set up to handle battery modules. That would skip the tariff, especially if parts could be sourced from North America. Which we all know that a lot of components in those parts aren’t made in North America anyhow. Just saying…
Let the Chinese export sedans and coupes only (maybe a few ragtops if they’ve got them) to the US without a tariff – or a lower one – provided they also knock down tariffs on American goods. American car companies don’t even bother to compete in the sedan/coupe segments anymore. No Chinese trucks, SUVs or crossovers, for now.
As for E-Fools, we’ll have cold fusion, or cheap, green hydrogen, and maybe even Cybertrucks before they’re practical. It’s fine for the folks that want to keep running their “classics” and are willing to pony up big bucks to do it.
Classic cars shouldn’t be only for the rich. My MG uses maybe 4 tanks of gas a summer. Its contribution is negligible
And the obvious solution here is to raise fuel taxes. A lot. Enough to actually cover the entire cost of building, maintaining, enforcing all the roads & streets, and dealing with the pollution they create. Your MG won’t be much affected. Brodozers will be affected a lot. Should be a win with the “individual responsibility, everybody pays their own way” crowd. But instead it would produce a political firestorm. Better to let climate change make real firestorms.
Higher fuel taxes aren’t tenable, period. They have a greater negative impact on lower-income people, ones that don’t have the luxury of a WFH job. You can say it’s about “brodozers” all day long, the average car on the road isn’t one of those.
How about an annual tax on cars who’s purchase price was over 75k?
The discussion around e-fuels needs to include some sort of prospect for using less energy to create the fuels. That 5x number is probably not some sort of intrinsic hard limit to how efficiently we can make them, but we also need to be realistic in assessing how much progress we can make from that starting point. and how quickly we can get there.
Jasonia’s swappable batteries for vehicles designed around giant currency seems just about as likely (and more convenient) as a lot of the solutions we see bandied about, because we’re still looking at a lot of technologies that aren’t going to be realistic to scale (or aren’t going to ever attain carbon neutrality). By pretending all the problems will be easily solved, we throw money at solutions that aren’t very likely to work.
Are e-fuels one of those? I don’t know, and I hope not, but I have yet to see someone realistically offer up a timeframe for the reduction in energy use to make them. It seems like people just want to assume we’ll either find a way to make a lot more energy (convince people to accept nuclear power?) or be able to make the fuel far more efficiently, but there’s no real plan. It reminds me of selling every unit at a loss and hoping to make it up in volume. Let’s just scale up the e-fuels and hope that something catches up enough to make it work.
They’d be great if someone can make them efficiently. Especially if the supply chain fully converted and delivery can be carbon neutral, too. And maybe they don’t have to be as efficient as a full BEV, especially if the e-fuels can work in cars that might otherwise be scrapped. There’s definitely something to be said for reducing waste, which doesn’t seem to be as much of a thought for some reason (the reason is capitalism–replacing old cars means more manufacturing, sales, and money).
Isn’t it true though that no matter how we make the vehicle fleet greener we are going to need a lot more power plants? If that energy can be provided by wind, solar, and nuclear, so much the better. But even a 100% EV revolution is going to need a lot more energy.
Basically, any green energy future that I’ve seen supposes nearly limitless cheap power as a prerequisite. The most encouraging graphs of climate progress are the ones that show renewable electricity growth.
E-fuels made with clean electricity are basically a more space efficient (but less energy efficient) battery. I think that barring an order of magnitude improvement in batteries or hydrogen, they will be needed for heavy vehicles at minimum.
There is another way. Make more efficient vehicles that use less energy in their manufacture and consume less energy for operation. But that never seems to be on the table as an option…
We don’t need to downgrade to cramped penalty boxes, either, as a long-wheelbased sedan the size of an old Mercedes W123 can lend itself well to 2-3x the efficiency of what is currently the norm with proper aerodynamic streamlining. This allows a smaller battery pack for a given amount of range if EV, or greatly reduces consumption of gasoline or e-fuels if ICE. A sub-0.150 kWh/mile EV, 40+ mpg highway V8 luxury sedan is not rocket science.
Sure, we’ll need more power plants, but there’s a massive difference between enough power to charge EVs and 5 times that amount. The nice thing about EVs is that they are fairly efficient at converting electricity into power. Making them more aerodynamic and therefore more efficient is fairly simple, though the real way to reduce the impact is with a significant push for more efficient methods of transporting humans (mass transit and e-bikes, wherever practical).
Unfortunately, America has developed in a way that makes the car central to a lot of societal participation, so this isn’t an easy solution. And, of course, that runs the risk of reducing consumer spending, so the people with the money and influence are going to fight it.
Instead, we’ll see energy production grow and stop-gap measures that try to ensure charging times are distributed and don’t tax the grid too much all at once. I suspect that we’ll see neighborhoods with specific electric plans that incentivize them to charge at different times.
I’ve built a 1-seater EV that consumes around 0.008-0.010 kWh/mile at 30-35 mph. It is far from optimized and I’m working on something much more aerodynamically slippery. I used it as one would use a car. Albeit, it is not a car, but legally a “bicycle”, weighing in at 91 lbs. It serves as a proof of concept for what is possible. My suspicion is that the next iteration will only need about 0.020-0.030 kWh/mile at 70 mph.
Midsized sedans that consume 0.12-0.15 kWh/mile at 70 mph and crossovers/SUVs that consume 0.18-0.2 kWh/mile at 70 mph are very much doable with better aerodynamics. Pickup trucks aren’t going to be able to get as efficient unless you design a special bed cover and keep it closed, but when you have to actually use it as a truck or tow anything, efficiency will drop off a cliff. Trucks are not a good application for this tech, IMO.
Aptera has a drag coefficient of 0.13, and its efficiency explains itself. Need a hatchback, crossover or SUV? The 2005 Mercedes Bionic hatchback had a 0.19 Cd, and its shape is appropriate for either of those types of vehicles. Sedan? 2000 GM Precept had a 0.16 Cd, 2020 GAC Eno 146 had a 0.146 Cd, the Mercedes Vision EQXX had a 0.17 Cd, among others. Sports car? The 1967 Panhard Cd Peugeot 66C had a 0.13 Cd value, and the 1954 Fiat Turbina had a 0.14 Cd.
There’s a lot of wiggle room for vehicle efficiency still. The average new car, crossover, or SUV has about 2x the amount of drag as that listed above for its category, and we haven’t even considered frontal area reduction or slightly downsizing the vehicles. The average new car’s drag coefficient has only recently caught up with the 1921 Rumpler Tropfenwagen with a Cd value of 0.28, nearly 100 years later.
You are absolutely correct, but we would still be much more efficient with fewer vehicles moving the same number of people. Mass transit improvements could mean fewer vehicles on the road and fewer vehicles built.
Wow, I didn’t know they even had that many. Hopefully the list of 28 includes one very specific 10 cylinder “family” that shares basically nothing with any other engine.
Mostly the “testing” will be checking the fuel system components don’t melt, and that the calibration still has good drivability. Absolute worst case is new tank, pump, injectors, pipes and a reflash.
Sure, that’s 10 new injectors, but it’s not as bad as not having a V10 any more. Plus it might just be ok anyway.
The full scale switch to BEVs that governments are forcing is very clearly not going to work out as intended. There’s just no way the goals are going to be met as of right now and EVs are already in a somewhat precarious position in the market. They’re too expensive for most people, they’re disposable products, and the amount of resources that it’s going to take to make charging widespread is staggering…and as this article mentions, BEVs have yet to show they can be adapted for every application.
They just don’t work as trucks yet and they’re not really viable in remote areas. If you live in a city and want a commuter then they’re great, and if you’re on the coasts there’s definitely a fair amount of infrastructure. But they aren’t ready for prime time just yet and governments have put the cart before the horse in a major way…but that’s by design. EVs serve as a dog and pony show to keep voters distracted and they’re red meat for the absurd culture wars.
At the end of the day there will have to be other solutions, point blank. E Fuels are not there yet, but we’ll see what happens over the next few years. Finding a way to make vehicles that are already on the road pollute less could make a huge difference, and I’m once again saying that traditional hybrids and PHEVs are excellent solutions for right now. Frankly I think not standardizing hybrids more over the last 10 years was a huge miss, but again…manufacturers’ hands are tied by pie in the sky mandates and goals.
First gen EVs are also going to depreciate badly. It’s already happening to a significant degree. The technology will be dated within a year or two of purchase. They’re a terrible investment and once we have piles of older ones that no one wants sitting around we’re going to have a different environmental problem on our hands. The products are basically $60,000 smartphones.
Anyway…none of this is to say I’m anti EV. I’m not. I think stopping the world from burning should be humanity’s biggest focus right now and reducing emissions will have to come in many different forms. I just don’t think BEVs are the magic bullet type solution that the media wants us to think they are.
We aren’t at the point where we can stop researching *anything* IMO.
Nor should we be banning anything.
Maybe solid-state batteries come along and provide a magic bullet. I’d prefer to actually see it demonstrated before we shove all our chips into the middle.
Modern EVs were deliberately designed to be disposable, instead of repairable. That’s on the automakers. They did this on purpose. Modern EVs didn’t start coming onto market by the major automakers until it was figured out how to lock mechanics out of repairing them. They’re also doing the same with most modern ICE vehicles.
A properly designed EV should be able to last a 7-digit amount of miles, with the exception of the battery. The battery should last a mid-6-digit amount of miles if cared for properly, and it should be designed in such a way that bad sections of the battery can be quickly located and replaced. The only company that has at least partially considered this thus far is Tesla. Lots of 3rd parties have sprung up to try to figure this out though, and there could soon be a burgeoning EV battery repair market.
There are plenty of Teslas on the road that have 300-500k+ miles on their original battery, as difficult as it will be to repair or replace that battery when the time comes(and it will). There are also hobbyist conversions using “dumb” large-format prismatic LiFePO4 battery packs that are getting the same mileage as the Tesla packs, except those hobbyist conversions are repairable with hand tools and basic electronics equipment(soldering iron, multimeter, ect) and repairing their battery packs is as simple as finding the bad cell(s) and swapping in a replacement.
Sadly I think that so much of the focus now is making everything zero emission rather than looking for improvements. I get that a lot of people think we are in crisis mode but we are literally throwing out good ideas because they aren’t perfect ideas.
What was the old saying? Don’t let the pursuit of perfection get in the way of progress or something like that.
We’ve also been collectively poisoned by social media…where everyone has to have a strong opinion about absolutely everything and these magical things called compromises aren’t allowed to exist.
All of what you say is true. It’s obvious that big corporations (driven by Wall St.) and rich people (Musk commutes daily between Texas and California by private jet, but commercial air is a problem too) are where the real difference can be made. But they’ve got more money than you and I. They own most of Congress, and the same thing applies in most other countries. They’re able to crank out propaganda that fools a lot of people, most of them are not going to save the world if it means a dollar less profit. Eh, I’m 74, I’ll be dead before the bill comes due.
E-fuels have a place. Everyday transportation vehicles are probably not that place because e-fuel production cannot be scaled up at anywhere near enough scale. At this point they are basically a fig leaf for expensive, inefficient, European automakers.
E-Fuels seem to be what the rich people will use in 2100 to drive their classic ICE powered exotic car when you can’t easily get dino-juice anymore. So it makes sense that Ferrari and Porsche are in on this.
Tesla has 3 of the 4 best selling EVs? What is the 4th? I am guessing the Chevy Bolt, but I’m not sure, the F-150 Lightning? Mach E maybe? I definitely see more Bolts than either of those, but it might just be my area.
According to Electrek,
Model Y, Model 3, Mach E, Model S are the top 4 in that order.
Interesting. Thanks
I think the wrong text was pasted after the “But!” in the e-fuel section. It’s a copy of the previous paragraph.
Geely and BYD need to start offering cheap cars here. They can sell new cars starting under 10k and a few more models priced 10-20k since everybody else abandoned the segment, China will conquer it.
We already have an E-fuel: ethanol. Alcohol. The corn shit isn’t as good as sugar-based ethanol, but we can do that as there is plenty of sugar in places like Texas, Florida, and MN. Also, Brazil already has a robust sugar ethanol operation.
obligatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaSrtFa9fdA
Neither Geely nor BYD could sell road legal cars here for under $10K, even under $20K would be a stretch.
Especially with a 27.5% tariff!
even with that, they can still be proftiable
True. It’s easy when you don’t really pay your people, and you’re so oversubsidized by the gov
The Chinese can undercut ANYBODY
People still have the pipe dream EV’s will become cheaper someday. I bet when the Polestar is made here, not subject to the 27% import tax, it will become…. more expensive…
I think what you meant was: become . . . more expensive . . . and not, become…. more expensive… Not that it really matters to anyone who isn’t an English major!
wtf are you on about?
I think Opa is upset that Brian did not use the proper number of periods and spaces in his ellipses.