When it comes to transportation, it's easy for us to feel the advent of the era of electric vehicles, using electricity to drive transportation. It seems to us that electric-powered means of transportation are a new thing, but in fact, the history of electric vehicles is earlier than the internal combustion engine cars we commonly use now. Especially at the beginning of the 19th century, at first it was not able to recharge primary battery-powered vehicles, and even the trains of that time had electric drives, and today the trams on the road are still patented in the Uk in 1840. The first battery electric vehicle appeared in 1881 as a tricycle powered by lead-acid batteries.
Then, with the development of oil and the improvement of internal combustion engine technology, electric vehicles gradually lost their advantages in the 1920s, and their development has since stagnated, and people have almost forgotten that there were electric vehicles in history. So now, the recovery of electric vehicles, there must be a reason. The most important reason for this must also be cheap and an alternative to current fuels.
Before we start our topic, we can also use Bill's two questions to test everyone's understanding.
The correct answer is A and C, that is, both gasoline. This is the advantage of gasoline, inexpensive, high energy density, 130 detonators, to match the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline.
We've said before that gasoline in the U.S. is very cheap. Our question just now also shows that gasoline is cheaper than milk and orange juice. Now, then, in order to achieve the goal of zero emissions, we need to replace gasoline with other products of equal energy density and equally cheap price.
Throughout human history, 99.9% of the time, we travel without fossil fuels, either on foot or on animals, on sailboats. After the First Industrial Revolution, humans began to use machines to expand our capabilities, starting with locomotives and ships powered by coal, trains crossing continents, and ships crossing oceans. At the end of the 19th century, the automobile entered our lives, immediately after the beginning of air travel, which has so far become an important part of the global economy.
The history of the use of fossil fuels in transportation is only about 200 years, but it has made us fundamentally dependent on them.
Currently, goods transported by sea account for 90% of global trade and nearly 3% of total global emissions in terms of carbon emissions.
In the early days, many of the emissions from transport came from rich countries, and now, the growth of carbon emissions related to transport is mainly from developing countries. Even under the current COVID-19 pandemic, this growth is still increasing very rapidly for developing countries.
From this chart, we can see that the United States, China, and the European Union are declining, but other developing economies are almost all increasing. Because with the improvement of people's living standards, this is an inevitable trend.
So how do we achieve net zero emissions for all of these vehicles? Let's look at this picture again. Passenger cars account for nearly 50% of transport-related emissions.
Alternatives to passenger car fuels, fortunately, can indeed be used in another form of energy, although not perfectly, that is, electric vehicles. With the increase in manufacturers, the cost of batteries has also dropped significantly, from 2010 to now 87%. Of course, the price advantage of this does not rule out that some of them are a number of tax relief measures introduced by the government to promote the market.
Bill then compared two Chevrolet models and found that electric cars cost 10 cents more per mile than a petrol car. This is, of course, the case in the United States, because the Price of Oil in the United States is the cheapest. In some parts of Europe, oil prices are relatively high, so the green premium for electric vehicles has fallen.
Therefore, it seems feasible to get more electric vehicles on the road at present. If you feel that the problem of inconvenience in use, it seems that the oil price is cheap, not the biggest problem, people may not like the cost of charging time of electric vehicles. Of course, the most important thing is that it must be electricity from "zero carbon" energy sources for electric vehicles to make sense. Otherwise, it is just replacing one fossil fuel with another.
We have also spoken before about the problem of alternative fuels, of which biomass fuels have historically been used, and burning these fuels does not add extra carbon to the atmosphere, because this is a renewable energy source, the carbon used to make the fuel before, which is actually returned to the atmosphere and is itself balanced.
The problem is, this first generation of biofuels, for example
Ethanol made from corn is not "zero carbon" and is not even low-carbon.
Crop cultivation requires fertilizers, and the process of converting plants into fuel also needs to produce greenhouse gases. Worse still, the cultivation of biomass crops may seize the land that should be grown, and cars and people compete for land and food resources.
So, such alternative fuels don't seem to be of much value, can they switch to non-food crops? That's how second-generation biofuels are considered. Mainly from the residue of crops, as well as papermaking by-products, kitchen waste and garden waste, these things are used to produce. This reduces competition for food crops and does not crowd out land for other uses.
However, I am not particularly optimistic about biofuels because the production cycle is simply too long. I still think that synthetic hydrocarbon fuel is a better solution at present, using "zero carbon" electricity to combine hydrogen in water with carbon in carbon dioxide to synthesize hydrocarbon fuel. But this approach is not particularly cost-effective at the moment.
I was talking about this passenger car, but for large transport vehicles, long-distance buses, electric drive is not a good idea. The battery itself is also very heavy, the energy density itself is limited, the power is not enough, to obtain the same energy, the battery weighs 36 times that of gasoline. With such a heavy battery, how can it be shipped? So it's hard to replace.
Of course, in the city garbage trucks, city buses, electric drive that is a very good way. So everyone should now see that more and more city buses use pure electric cars, as well as taxis, small transport vehicles, but also use pure electricity, this is the truth. At present, China should be at the forefront of the world in the transformation of the public transportation system.
So Bill Gates also thinks:
With the increasing sales of electric buses in China, I think in the next 10 years, the green premium for domestic buses in China will drop to zero, which means that most cities in the world will be able to electrify buses.
So the conclusion here is:
Electric vehicles are a great option for short-haul driving, but for heavy-duty long-haul trucks, using electricity is not a practical solution.
Also because of the weight of the battery, electric drives cannot be used for aviation equipment such as aircraft, nor can they be used mainly for ships that carry goods, at least in long distances, which is very uneconomical.
So, as technology advances, will such a problem be solved? It has not been found yet. For some solutions, Bill describes it like this:
Although the performance of the battery is getting better and better, this gap is still difficult to cross. If you're lucky, the energy density of the battery may be 2 times higher than it is now, but even so, it is only 1/12 of the energy density of gasoline or aviation fuel. For us, the best approach is to replace aviation fuel with electric fuel and advanced biofuels, but this involves a very high green premium.
The conclusion is that none of these options are currently economically viable for aircraft and ships. Bill gives several tables with comparisons of their green premiums.
So in the field of transportation, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Bill recommended 4 methods.
The first is to reduce traffic activities. Examples include driving less, flying less and shipping less. We should encourage more alternative modes of mobility, such as walking, cycling, and carpooling. Some cities are promoting low-carbon mobility through smart city initiatives, which is great.
The second is to use less carbon-intensive materials in the automobile production process, that is, to reduce the carbon footprint. - Although this will not affect the fuel-based emissions described in this chapter. As mentioned in Chapter V, cars made of materials such as steel and plastic inevitably emit greenhouse gases during production. As a result, the less such materials are used in cars, the less carbon footprint there will be.
The third is to use fuel more efficiently. The issue has received widespread attention from lawmakers and the media, at least in passenger cars and trucks. Most of the world's major economies have established fuel efficiency standards for such vehicles. These standards have played an important role in pushing automotive companies to invest more in engineering research and development and to build energy-efficient engines.
The fourth is to switch to electric vehicles and alternative fuels.
That's what we just discussed. There is a need to significantly reduce the green premium, is there any good way to do this? So, it was after this that Bill explored: How to reduce the green premium? He argues that:
The green premium for passenger cars is going all the way down and will eventually fall to zero.
From the perspective of our users, it is very likely that there will be a complete ban on the sale of fuel cars in the near future. Even, when pressure in other areas increases, the government will enforce and phase out fuel vehicles, especially passenger cars. For friends who are still ready to consider buying fuel vehicles, you can count down after you buy them, and when you can't get on the road depends on our carbon neutral pressure. However, from the perspective of various factors, fuel passenger cars are the most likely to be forced out in advance.
So, to make electric vehicles run, a lot of clean electricity depends on the deployment of renewable energy, power production and storage technology breakthroughs.
Such a long-distance cross-sea transport, it seems that the future can only be counted on nuclear-powered container ships. This technology should be there, that is, how to better adopt the problem, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers have long been available, and it should not be difficult to use for ships.
You may notice that although we are only talking about the problem of transportation in this chapter, it is actually a complex issue involving many aspects, which can be summarized as:
Use electricity to power all the vehicles we can drive and power other vehicles with cheap alternative fuels.