Modern Vespa

Five minutes behind the wheel, and you'll be a believer.

Oh, dear!

I wonder if that, in an ironic turn, makes our 6-speed manual MX-5 a fake electric 'manual shift' car?

EVs here today gone tomorrow🙄, here in the UK the infrastructure for installing charging points have slowed and cant even come up with a one plug fits all , and with synthetic carbon neutral fuel now being developed and produced the internal combustion engine is not dead yet .

Long live suck, squeeze, bang, blow😀.

Given the required energy and resources, all of which come with some kind of carbon cost, calling this process "carbon-neutral" is simply marketing speak. "Carbon-cycling" would be more accurate. If more carbon was being captured by synthetic fuel programs than was going back into creating the fuel and subsequently being released into the atmosphere, it would be easier to justify. But there's still a bit of finger-crossing going on here.

It's easy to think one's way into believing that efficiencies can rapidly improve. They might, but synthetic fuel is unlikely to ever require as little energy as the current method of sucking oil out of the ground and distilling it into gasoline. Combustion's low thermal efficiency—few engines exceed 40 percent—means that even a perfectly efficient process to make the fuel (also not something afforded by the reality of physics) would mean an ultimate majority loss.

The fuel is just gasoline when it gets to a vehicle's fuel tank, not magic. It's poorly understood, and there's not much effort being made to change that. Getting into the details is where the case for synthetic fuel's promises start to fall apart.

No, but the idea of carbon neutral fuel has a lot of math issues.

Synthetic gasoline promises neutral emissions—but the math doesn't work




EVs have been criticized by asking the question "where do you get your energy" and this is no different. Even IF - which we can't - you could produce this fuel and get the same energy out as you put in, you are still relying on the same energy sources to create it, ship it and put it into ICE vehicles that convert 70% of that energy into heat. And what are those energy sources? If the claim is "green energy" we would still be better off just using it to produce electricity.

Right up there with Vegan hamburger. (No offense, Vegans)

Either eat a burger or don't ... stop pretending.

Also the EV market is struggling with the safety aspect as people are loosing their lives in EV fires in crashes worldwide.

Watch this space 😉👍

EVs are the new kid on the block, so any incident makes headlines. EV fires in particular were making a lot of headlines a couple of years back, but the statistics are now in. A recent study of US vehicle fires by the US insurance company AutoinsuranceEZ.com found the following:

Hybrid vehicles: 3,474 fires per 100K sales
Petrol vehicles: 1,529 fires per 100K sales
Electric vehicles: 25 fires per 100K sales
In fact, if you are buying a car based on fire risk alone – the stats suggest you should buy an EV!

Myth #2: Electric vehicles are worse for the climate than gasoline cars because of battery manufacturing.

FACT: The greenhouse gas emissions associated with an electric vehicle over its lifetime are typically lower than those from an average gasoline-powered vehicle, even when accounting for manufacturing.
Some studies have shown that making a typical EV can create more carbon pollution than making a gasoline car. This is because of the additional energy required to manufacture an EV's battery. Still, over the lifetime of the vehicle, total GHG emissions associated with manufacturing, charging, and driving an EV are typically lower than the total GHGs associated with a gasoline car. That's because EVs have zero tailpipe emissions and are typically responsible for significantly fewer GHGs during operation (see Myth 1 above).

For example, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory estimated emissions for both a gasoline car and an EV with a 300-mile electric range. In their estimates, while GHG emissions from EV manufacturing and end-of-life are higher (shown in orange below), total GHGs for the EV are still lower than those for the gasoline car.

I'm no evangelist for either EVs or ICE vehicles. I like them and drive them both. But I hate it when misinformation is spread.

I'm not here to argue, but when you make inflammatory statements like that that are unfounded (pun intended), I'm tapping out. This from Motortrend :

You're Wrong About EV Fires

And another article with numbers

EVs, by percentage, are orders of magnitude safer where fires are concerned.



The math doesn't work with green fuels. It's chemistry. And it's still gas. And ICEs still convert more than half - at their very best - of that energy to heat.

Here are five myths about EVs circulating online debunked by the EPA, one of which is the carbon footprint myth.

Electric Vehicle Myths



For comparison, I drive a FIAT 500e and a 2023 Toyota Corolla Cross. C02 g/mile in the FIAT are estimated at 92.4838. That's at 3.34 m/KWh. If you factor in energy generation for my zip code it's 181. I've been hitting 5 m/KWh regularly. So better. The Corolla - a brand new ICE - is 275 g/mile. Average new ICEs for my zip code are 400 g/mile.

And those used batteries are being and will be recycled.

I'm no evangelist for either EVs or ICE vehicles. I like them and drive them both. But I hate it when misinformation is spread.

I'm a level 4 Vehicle Tech and a level 3 EV tech, we get Bulletins from the IMI and news letters from an Industry provider the latest being the electric coach in Venice 04/10 that crashed killing 21 passengers and even though the fire department was on scene within minutes they couldn't get near to put it out, and could only watch them perish as Lithium burns with ferocity, water only aggravates it and needs a chemical extinguishant like Pyromet, and no I am not arguing, I am basing it on the Information I've seen, belive me synthetic fuel is on its way, on the flip side of the coin to date this year EV sales are up😉👍.

Battery technology in the crashed Venice bus made it less prone to catastrophic fires, experts say

The city-owned, fully electric bus was traveling on a central raised thoroughfare when it drove against the guardrail for some 50 meters (yards) before breaking through both the guardrail and a rusted handrail and plunging 10 meters. It landed upside down, its front completely crushed. When rescuers arrived it was on fire, and some survivors, including a young Ukrainian girl, were being treated for severe burns.

Chief Prosecutor Bruno Cherchi said Thursday there was no evidence the fire started before the bus hit the ground.

The bus maker, Yutong Group of China, uses lithium-iron-phosphate batteries in nearly all its models. Experts say that mix is generally less prone to extra-hot, fast-spreading blazes than other chemistries, including nickel-manganese-cobalt oxides, which is used in many electric passenger cars.

"They're generally safer for fire safety," said Adam Barowy, an engineer at the Fire Safety Research Institute, the nonprofit arm of Underwriters Laboratories based in Columbia, Maryland. "There's not as much energy released from a cell of an LFP chemistry as pretty much any of the other chemistries."

Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro told AP that the accident did not provoke any rethink of the city's plan to expand its fleet of electric-powered buses. The bus that crashed was just one year old.

That the bus drove off an overpass "has nothing to do with the fact that it is electric," the mayor said.

Salvini, who heads the right-wing Lega party, was criticized for focusing on electric vehicle technology when one of the elements under investigation is the guardrail that gave way, which falls under his purview as infrastructure and transport minister.

"Speculating on the 21 deaths … to revive his battle against electric vehicles is indecent and cruel,'' said Democratic Party lawmaker Alessandro Zan.

Also the EV market is struggling with the safety aspect as people are loosing their lives in EV fires in crashes worldwide.

You mean THIS one?



But to use that as your basis for stating :



Is at best hyperbole, at worst misinformation and dangerous.

Just think forward, when available on PCP how the younger generation will treat them avge EV 0-60 in less than 5 seconds, they put their foot down and spool it up, how the fatality risk will escalate, at this point in time any accident near the chassis even if its a crease or dent the vehicle is scrapped as heat cant be applied in that area.

Independent of battery chemistry or EV safety, could I please ask for some quoting etiquette here?

Buggsy, you are top-posting. However, this is not email — this is a forum, where the conversation flows downward with later statements below earlier statements. You are quite noticeably doing it backwards.

Thanks.

Right up there with Vegan hamburger. (No offense, Vegans)

Either eat a burger or don't ... stop pretending.

Even more off-topic, but I don't eat meat for ethical reasons. Vegan burgers make it easier for me to do what I believe is the right thing. On the other hand, I don't think electrical cars are a net benefit to the environment, so I would argue that shifters on electric cars are actually less logical than vegan burgers.

You've managed to pack a lot of baggage into one short paragraph.

Yes, I already regret the post.

LFP batteries are far less flammable than NMC ones - they aren't self-sustaining in a fire either.

Buggsy, it's NMC batteries that are the dangerous ones - they are only used in EV cars because their energy density is about 1.8 times better than LFP. That isn't such a consideration in much larger vehicles like buses - which are ideal for EV technology.

Apples and Oranges...

Thank you we did this at level 2, NMC are the most common ones used in EV cars at present (well in the UK that is).

Vegan burgers make it easier for me to do what I believe is the right thing.

A Vespa forum probably isn't going to give you reliable information.

EVs are like anything else. If you want to know what they are like ask someone who owns one.

A Vespa forum probably isn't going to give you reliable information.