this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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What about sustainable fuels for ICEs? I know little about them but isn't that a more reasonable option due to it being able to be used on current cars?
The problem with sustainable fuels is that they also cost a lot of resources. Those resources can come from farm land that could be put to better use instead. The energy required to create these alternative fuels also has to come from somewhere, which usually isn't mostly renewable either.
Furthermore the biofuels and efuels may be better for CO2 emissions, but still dump a lot of pollution in the air.
Until people start to rely less on their cars, the uptick of EV's will lessen fossil fuel usage. For many people car sharing would also be a good option for when they need a car. That cuts down on resource usage.
The best EV's in my opinion are human/electric hybrids, aka electric bicycles. They help people choose a bicycle over another motorized form of transportation, because it's often just a convenient and cheap option that gets you from where you are to where you want to go, when you want to go there... Something public transport isn't very good at outside cities, unless combined with (e)bikes or scooters for example for the last miles.
It is not in any way a more reasonable option. Mass-produced energy is always going to be cleaner and more efficient than "alternative fuels" - which don't actually exist at present.
Not sure how someone can think they have a leg to stand on being opposed to EVs
If we had an infinite supply of sustainable fuels that might make sense, but we don't. So we will have to use them wherever they are most efficient or where we do not have good alternatives.
Electric cars today are already a viable alternative to those with ICEs. So there is no need to use our limited supply there. In the same way it wouldn't make sense to use them for something like heating, as the production of those fuels wastes energy and we have viable solutions like heat pumps that do not require them.
There are on the other hand areas that have different requirements. For example in the airline industry energy densitiy is way more important, so until we have batteries that can match fossil/sustainable fuels those are much better used there. Another example are industries that actually use them as resources beyond just as a source of energy, like steel or fertilizer production.