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A comment on Toyota Chief Says ‘Silent Majority’ Has Doubts About Pursuing Only EVs. Parent comment

Re:Toyota Chief Says ‘Silent Majority’ Has Doubts About Purs... by kube-system on Sunday December 18, 2022 @08:53PM (#34047270)
Even if your local power is 100% fossil fuels, there is a significant per-mile benefit to utility scale efficiency. Natural gas power plants are about double the efficiency of a very good internal combustion engine.
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Re:Toyota Chief Says ‘Silent Majority’ Has Doubts About Purs... by epolanski on Sunday December 18, 2022 @09:04PM (#34047364)
That doesn't make any sense to me as the car can just run on natural gas itself without having to disperse so much in the conversions leading to charge a battery:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_vehicle

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Re:Toyota Chief Says ‘Silent Majority’ Has Doubts About Purs... by kube-system on Sunday December 18, 2022 @09:29PM (#34047595)
ICE engines mostly generate waste heat, even when natural gas is the fuel.

Generating the power across town with the same fuel (in a turbine instead of ICE), transmitting it, converting it to DC to charge a battery, converting that back to AC and spinning an electric motor is usually more efficient. Yes there are more steps, but none of them are anywhere near as awful as ICE efficiency.

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Re:Toyota Chief Says ‘Silent Majority’ Has Doubts About Purs... by epolanski on Monday December 19, 2022 @04:10AM (#34050040)
That still makes no sense, you can use the engine to generate electricity directly like the Honda Jazz does.

https://insideevs.com/reviews/443380/2020-honda-jazz-fit-hyb...

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Re:Toyota Chief Says ‘Silent Majority’ Has Doubts About Purs... by kube-system on Monday December 19, 2022 @09:36AM (#34052496)
Internal combustion engines are approximately 30% efficient. It doesn’t matter what you strap on to the back of the engine, the shaft only spins with 30% of the energy that you put into it.

Combined cycle turbines are about 60% efficient.

Does this make sense?

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Re:Toyota Chief Says ‘Silent Majority’ Has Doubts About Purs... by SkyPuncher on Sunday December 18, 2022 @09:26PM (#34047564)
Essentially benefits of scale. Larger engines run more efficiently.
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Re:Toyota Chief Says ‘Silent Majority’ Has Doubts About Purs... by bryanlarsen on Sunday December 18, 2022 @10:36PM (#34048129)
A combined cycle gas turbine is about 60% efficient, and you lose about 20% in transmission, converting to DC, charging, and converting to AC to run the motor.

A natural gas combustion engine is 40% efficient and loses 5-15% of that in the transmission.

60% * 80% > 40% * 95%.

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