Carbon Neutral fuels already exist & they’re a direct petrol replacement.
So in theory, combustion cars could keep going on that indefinitely. They’re just 3-4x the price compared to current petrol due to small scale productions.
We also don’t have anything like the production or distribution infrastructure for these, and given the huge switch car manufacturers are making to electric I don’t see a switch to alternative fuels before the inevitable switch to electric.
Distribution would be 100% same as existing fuels. Production is the problem.
However it’s already being used exclusively in WRC next (this?) year, and so it’s a proven thing.
It’ll probably be that it’s out before the end of petrol cars are sold & they’ll be allowed to carry on.
Don’t forget. The switch to electric cars doesn’t take all ICE cars off the road. They still need to run
This is fuel that works 100% like existing petrol. So wouldn’t require any new car investment etc
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I’m holding out for the Asia / Australia areas. Asia is more interested in hydrogen and is planning to work around having that as a fuel for transport including cars. Electric battery will still be a part of the plans, but they are putting in place hydrogen infrastructure, which also means they continue to develop the car technology.
Australia have a lot of decent universities and other parts of industry working on making hydrogen cheaper and quicker to produce.
If those lot combined can come up with a decent plan, the technology can easily be used by other countries.
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A lot of ‘Apple Car’ development was done (is kind of being done) in Australia.
So I’m told.
The investment is already happening is my point. General Motors, Mercedes, Audi etc going all electric by 2030, and the other manufacturers pretty much all investing heavily in electric and nothing in new ice development
We are many years away from being able to produce carbon neutral fuels in the quantities we need, if it’s even possible at all given the space and investment it would need. It looks certain to me that Europe at least will largely switch to electric before that happens, I would think ICE will be a rarity by 2040.
The problem with electric isn’t so much passenger cars but larger vehicles where weight is already an issue. Carbon neutral fuels could help solve that but as you say, it’s unlikely at this stage
I’m telling you it’s happening. It’s possible. It’s being used in car rally racing.
Yes some manufacturers are investing in electric, but I don’t see that as being the final solution that we all stick with long term.
Carbon neutral solves (with little to no adaptation of existing engines) the current issue with other ICE vehicles - planes, boats, lorries etc.
But also. There’s long term car ownership. A lot of people rely on second hand cars, which will be ICE for 10-15 years after we stop the sale of new cars.
We need to realise electric isn’t the silver bullet everyone thinks it is.
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That doesn’t in any way mean it’s possible to produce it at the volumes needed for general transport. It’s very land and labour intensive. You’d need vast swathes of land and resources to produce what the world needs of this fuel - these things aren’t necessarily available.
Electric cars may not be the final solution but I think it’s clear we’ll switch to those before any other far-off technology.
Eventually I think maybe hydrogen will be the solution but I see it as probably 15 years before that’s even used for aircraft, maybe 20-30 before hydrogen looks ready for everyday vehicle use.
Carbon neutral fuels. Honestly for me just forget it, too expensive and intensive to produce, will never become mainstream.
And F1 cars will have to run on 100% sustainable fuel from 2026. Development may seem slow at the moment, but clearly the hope is that it will increase exponentially.
Not to mention that a lot of things in modern day cars filtered down from F1.
I have a lot more hope in carbon neutral vs hydrogen.
But carbon neutral is important to replace our existing fuel options for cars and reduce increasing emissions
I remember when KERS debuted in F1 - charge up a battery and then let rip with extra power for a short time. I genuinely thought ‘what’s the point of that?’
Now I drive a car that puts energy back into the battery when decelerating/braking. And I love it.
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Hydrogen for transport has no future. It’s just being peddled by the existing fossil fuel industry to try and delay the actual commitments needed for EV transport solutions.
Here’s an interesting conference talk given at the World Hydrogen Conference last month which put it all pretty clearly where the future of hydrogen is.
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The new formula e cars are incredible machines. 95% fuel efficiency, 600W charging, 800HP. There’s a huge amount that could make its way into consumer electric vehicles at some point.
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I think it may have some future transport uses actually, particularly shipping and long haul flights. For personal vehicle use I agree. Maybe in some possible future but no time soon.
The biggest thing about EVs is their efficiency, from electricity generation to movement the efficiency can be very high - a little is lost in the national grid and a little more is lost in conversion, but as they run up to 80% efficient not a lot (and they are getting more and more efficient - in ten years 90%+ will likely be the norm).
ICEs are not efficient enough to have a future, you need to expend at least four times more energy to power them, which means they aren’t viable unless you can dig that fuel out of the ground.
Hydrogen fuel cells I can see being a thing, possibly integrated into EVs as a backup power source in some distant future. Who knows it may provide enough power to produce flying cars 
. But it’s not immediate, right now it’s a dirty fuel with big issues and few interested parties. The real goal of the hydrogen-worship by Jacob Rees Mogg and others is to try and delay or confuse the switch to EVs, which is the only real solution we have and with a bit of infrastructure investment is ready to go
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This was shared over on fintech forum, and thought I’d share it in this thread too.
Nice little at a glance way to see if the money you deposit with banks is funding the climate crisis or not.
Not surprising to see Algbra, co op, and Triodos at the top of the list, but Monzo rate very highly too.
Researching and keeping on top of this stuff yourself, for every bank, is hard work. So this is a useful tool to have. Bookmarked it alongside the others I have for various other industries.
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I’ll check that out later to see what it shows.
In other news a certain PM is off to COP27, hopefully he’ll come back showing a renewed interest.
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Slight bit of irony in the companies which have signed off on the report though, some of the world’s biggest corporate polluters going 
The report is signed by Bayer, Mars, McCain Foods, McDonald’s, Mondelez, Olam, PepsiCo, Waitrose and others.
Let’s see if those signatories can actually change their own practices.
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It’s business as usual. Whilst they can blame farming, plastic bags, straws, anything but themselves, they will do.
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