The XReal Air as spatial computing at 1/10 the cost of the Vision Pro; Matthew Klein fears the Fed is doing too little; Barry Ritholtz says PHEV's are the sweet spot for his family; Josh Barro on...
Brad - a PHEV does not need a transmission. The ICE can simply be used to charge the battery. It is actually better that way as the ICE can be set to maximum fuel efficiency as well as minimum emissions by running only in the tuned ON or OFF mode - just as my old Prius hybrid used to turn off the engine when stopped. It gets even better. ICE engines like this are cheap - think of gasoline powered electric generators - as much of the cost of controlling the engine and coupling it to an expensive transmission are gone. Also, the battery can be smaller, therefore reducing one of the currently highest cost parts of an electric vehicle.
Down the tracks, the engines can easily be converted to lower carbon fuels such as CH4 and H2 (preferably green or white). The far higher energy density of fuels removes the range anxiety and will be easier to establish an infrastructure. The oil majors already are fighting tooth and nail to maintain oil production, so why not exploit the infrastructure as the fuel mix changes - pure gasoline, gasoline/ethanol (I dislike ethanol for other reasons), methane, H2, even NH3 (but toxic if leaks). Fuel delivery is certainly going to be cheaper to existing gas stations than adding powerlines to charging stations. Remote charging stations would probably need onsite generators, so why go through the extra step of having a local generator to slowly charge a car battery rather than a quick fill up at the station for the car? [While Tesla demonstrated rapid battery changes, where are these stations and who, if anybody uses them?]
Maintaining ICE is a good idea as it maintains flexibility (what do you do if PG&E has a 24 hour outage?) and allows PHEVs to be used anywhere, not just in the west, thus ensuring better economies of scale than EVs and reducing CO2 emissions from cars and trucks globally.
Have I made a convincing case to change your mind?
"A technology that can make CH4 carbon neutral can run CCS to go carbon negative".
Difficult. Possible in principle, but...
If the CH4 is is created by the equivalent of photosynthesis by combining H20 and CO2 and releasing O2, that reduces the CO2. But then burning the CH4 in the engine realease it again. What you are suggesting is that the emitted CO2 from the tailpipe is somehow captured, e.g. using LiOH, and then put in subterranean capture by the filling station when you replace the CH4.
This might work better for a power station, but why would you want to do that unless the renewable carbon is very cheap and costs less than the energy to create it? Maybe very efficient algae harvesting sunlight directly would be the carbon source to burn? But why not sequester the algae directly?
In re PHEVs: the different between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice...
First is use cases for trips. If one is only commuting up to 30 miles each way per day, then buy a used Nissan Leaf for pennies on the dollar and good to go. However, if one has a typical Midwest family diaspora then one is likely to be doing 92% local commuting and 8% long trips ranging from planned (Thanksgiving) to immediate (unexpected funeral of a high school classmate). The charging infrastructure just isn't there for any vehicle except a Tesla and only the Tesla, Lucid, and Porsche support charge rates that would make an immediate trip Chicago-Kansas City tolerable.
Second, the ICE engine that one is "lugging" around weighs less than the leather back seat assembly on a Ford 250 SUPER DUTY, which a large number of Americans are apparently quite willing to lug in every day commuting, and brings with it possibly the best continuously variable transmissions ever designed. Smooth, quiet, and enables perfectly transparent coasting / regeneration / braking.
Third one must consider the weather. You've lived in DC and KC so you know what happens in the snow and ice belt. EV range is absolutely wrecked by running the defroster to get 1/4" of ice off the windows and then keeping the windows from fogging while driving. Since the pandemic I have probably used my Volt's ICE engine more to ensure adequate heat in icing conditions than to drive to KC. This is something the coastal California EV companies just don't seem to understand - I have asked Lucid about ice storm/defrost testing at open forums three times and when not ignored been pointed to videos of their testing at Mammoth Lake. Yeah, I'm not asking about crisp dry cold which only costs EVs a bit of seat heater juice; I'm talking about 3 inches of slush freezing to ice and bone chilling temps of 28 deg.F with 90% relative humidity.
I'm a big supporter of EVs in general, and I do agree PHEVs are only an interim step, but they make a lot of sense for people not in coastal Cali or similar environments. The again GM cancelled the Volt so what do I know.
To clarify, the planetary gear CVT was a feature of the Volt (somewhat different in Gen1 and Gen2; both excellent). Other PHEVs have different arrangements.
Bond yields: Do not and have not "done the Fed's work". They may show something about the effectiveness of the Fed's past work or expectations about its future work. Perhaps they are melely movements along a reaction function not a movement OF a reaction function.
Brad - a PHEV does not need a transmission. The ICE can simply be used to charge the battery. It is actually better that way as the ICE can be set to maximum fuel efficiency as well as minimum emissions by running only in the tuned ON or OFF mode - just as my old Prius hybrid used to turn off the engine when stopped. It gets even better. ICE engines like this are cheap - think of gasoline powered electric generators - as much of the cost of controlling the engine and coupling it to an expensive transmission are gone. Also, the battery can be smaller, therefore reducing one of the currently highest cost parts of an electric vehicle.
Down the tracks, the engines can easily be converted to lower carbon fuels such as CH4 and H2 (preferably green or white). The far higher energy density of fuels removes the range anxiety and will be easier to establish an infrastructure. The oil majors already are fighting tooth and nail to maintain oil production, so why not exploit the infrastructure as the fuel mix changes - pure gasoline, gasoline/ethanol (I dislike ethanol for other reasons), methane, H2, even NH3 (but toxic if leaks). Fuel delivery is certainly going to be cheaper to existing gas stations than adding powerlines to charging stations. Remote charging stations would probably need onsite generators, so why go through the extra step of having a local generator to slowly charge a car battery rather than a quick fill up at the station for the car? [While Tesla demonstrated rapid battery changes, where are these stations and who, if anybody uses them?]
Maintaining ICE is a good idea as it maintains flexibility (what do you do if PG&E has a 24 hour outage?) and allows PHEVs to be used anywhere, not just in the west, thus ensuring better economies of scale than EVs and reducing CO2 emissions from cars and trucks globally.
Have I made a convincing case to change your mind?
Touché...
A technology that can make CH4 carbon neutral can run CCS to go carbon negative. H2 suffers from the "assume a can opener" problem.
"A technology that can make CH4 carbon neutral can run CCS to go carbon negative".
Difficult. Possible in principle, but...
If the CH4 is is created by the equivalent of photosynthesis by combining H20 and CO2 and releasing O2, that reduces the CO2. But then burning the CH4 in the engine realease it again. What you are suggesting is that the emitted CO2 from the tailpipe is somehow captured, e.g. using LiOH, and then put in subterranean capture by the filling station when you replace the CH4.
This might work better for a power station, but why would you want to do that unless the renewable carbon is very cheap and costs less than the energy to create it? Maybe very efficient algae harvesting sunlight directly would be the carbon source to burn? But why not sequester the algae directly?
In re PHEVs: the different between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice...
First is use cases for trips. If one is only commuting up to 30 miles each way per day, then buy a used Nissan Leaf for pennies on the dollar and good to go. However, if one has a typical Midwest family diaspora then one is likely to be doing 92% local commuting and 8% long trips ranging from planned (Thanksgiving) to immediate (unexpected funeral of a high school classmate). The charging infrastructure just isn't there for any vehicle except a Tesla and only the Tesla, Lucid, and Porsche support charge rates that would make an immediate trip Chicago-Kansas City tolerable.
Second, the ICE engine that one is "lugging" around weighs less than the leather back seat assembly on a Ford 250 SUPER DUTY, which a large number of Americans are apparently quite willing to lug in every day commuting, and brings with it possibly the best continuously variable transmissions ever designed. Smooth, quiet, and enables perfectly transparent coasting / regeneration / braking.
Third one must consider the weather. You've lived in DC and KC so you know what happens in the snow and ice belt. EV range is absolutely wrecked by running the defroster to get 1/4" of ice off the windows and then keeping the windows from fogging while driving. Since the pandemic I have probably used my Volt's ICE engine more to ensure adequate heat in icing conditions than to drive to KC. This is something the coastal California EV companies just don't seem to understand - I have asked Lucid about ice storm/defrost testing at open forums three times and when not ignored been pointed to videos of their testing at Mammoth Lake. Yeah, I'm not asking about crisp dry cold which only costs EVs a bit of seat heater juice; I'm talking about 3 inches of slush freezing to ice and bone chilling temps of 28 deg.F with 90% relative humidity.
I'm a big supporter of EVs in general, and I do agree PHEVs are only an interim step, but they make a lot of sense for people not in coastal Cali or similar environments. The again GM cancelled the Volt so what do I know.
To clarify, the planetary gear CVT was a feature of the Volt (somewhat different in Gen1 and Gen2; both excellent). Other PHEVs have different arrangements.
Bond yields: Do not and have not "done the Fed's work". They may show something about the effectiveness of the Fed's past work or expectations about its future work. Perhaps they are melely movements along a reaction function not a movement OF a reaction function.
Justin Wolfers: Add to the riddle, "relatively easy to find a job."