Re:Electric Vehicles for Everyone? The Impossible Dream
by damnesian on Friday July 14, 2023 @09:42AM
(#36723904)
Thank you. Bicycles and public transport have become the alternatives of which we may not speak. Maybe it's embarassment. Countries like Colombia have made great strides in improving the lives of average citizens by investing heavily in public transportation infrastucture. It's a road we could have gone down, but embraced the primrose path we were led to by car and oil companies. Massively inefficient compared to the alternative of offloading as much traffic as possible in a national electric train system and local subway/cablecar/bicycle commuter highway systems.
> Combustion engines have already been built and are commercially viable that can cut fuel use by 50%.
This is sourced by an article titled "Nissan Says It's Working on an Engine With 50-Percent Thermal Efficiency", whose first paragraph notes that production engines from Toyota already have a 41% thermal efficiency. Turning a hypothetical 9 point increase in thermal efficiency into "can cut fuel use by 50%" is malpractice and you shouldn't trust a single word they say elsewhere.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a35646974/nissan-50-percen...