So this is 'gasoline' diesel. Or diesel without the NOx. Which, in theory, would give better fuel economy and possibly better torque. And it will ship in cars in the 2019 model year (so possibly as early as late next year).
To me, it sounds like a "Don't pass"[1] bet on electric cars. Which they also are working with Toyota on electric cars so perhaps it is a fall back plan. It will be interesting to see how it fares. There are a lot of products that are built as the other side of an industry change bet. Sun created a workstation on the 68040 in case the SPARCStation didn't meet expectations as an example.
[1] In the dice game Craps, the "Don't Pass" bet is against the current player 'winning.'
I also wonder if the maintainability of these engines will be the same as with diesel. That would be another big benefit.
Washington DC, for whatever reason, gets its electricity from a gasoline power plant. In Washington, the Model S gets 28 MPG.
This happened a while ago so I could be misremembering, but regardless I don't believe that the environmental value of electric vehicles has been realized. In a lot of places, your Tesla is still coal powered. Efficient internal combustion engines are still a worthy cause, and this will continue until more electricity is being produced than is normally consumed.
People don't hold up BMW passenger diesels as the hallmark of maintainability. Heck, even the diesel offerings in American trucks are pretty bad from a reliability standpoint. Both Cummins and Navistar faced multiple CALs over reliability and warranty-related issues.
They also include traditional spark plugs and the engine automatically switches between modes. So, I fear that maintenance wise, it may be the worst of both worlds -- but with less wear and tear on the spark side, perhaps it will be better.
The Toyota/Mazda collaboration is a pure compliance play, just like what Honda has done in California for years (read: Honda Fit EV.) The official announcement had a subtle hint:
From 2019, start introducing electric vehicles and other electric drive
technologies in regions that use a high ratio of clean energy for power
generation or restrict certain vehicles to reduce air pollution
Also the new Toyota/Mazda auto plant is not going to manufacture only EVs but also other ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars.
And yes, without their own EV or the resolve to electrify their model lineups, Mazda might not even survive after 2025 when they plan to use SKYACTIV-X on all of their cars.
For EV, the old saying is true: driving is believing.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/8/16099536/mazda-compression...
Some people enjoy the mechanics of the thing. So they buy a nice mechanical watch. These watches went from being simple utility pieces to works of art.
Similarly I expect that car companies will continue to sell a set of "enthusiasts" models for a long time. They might revert back to manual gearboxes, and become more and more outrageous works of art - turned polished engine bays (Think Perlée, etc).
When all your actual needs can be met by a self driving electric car, why do you own a physical mechanical car? For the enjoyment of it.
- Fuel efficiency gains over 17%
- over 40% thermal efficiency
- over 99% reduction in NOx
- significant reduction in CO2
http://www.mahle-powertrain.com/en/experience/mahle-jet-igni...
- significant reduction in CO2
CO2 production is directly inverse-linearly related to thermal eficiency. It is silly to list both.
NOx is not peculiar to diesel engines. Gasoline engines also generate NOx. All internal engines make NOx. As long as you burn fuel + atmospheric air you get NOx. The atmosphere is 78% nitrogen. Some of it gets oxidized.
My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that off-the-shelf oxygen concentrators aren't efficient enough to make this practical, but I don't know whether there are fundamental thermodynamic limits that would prevent the efficiency from being improved.
We're already seeing companies being interested in making battery-only buses, tractors, semis, and even airplanes. Not all models of those types of vehicles may work with batteries, but it's a sign of what the future could bring.
- In line with this policy, continue efforts to perfect the internal combustion engine, which will help power the majority of cars worldwide for many years to come and can therefore make the greatest contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and combine the results with effective electrification technologies
- From 2019, start introducing electric vehicles and other electric drive technologies in regions that use a high ratio of clean energy for power generation or restrict certain vehicles to reduce air pollution
[1] http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1111876_mazda-exec-engin...
Wow. I already have a 2016 Mazda 3 that gets around 40MPG (even though it's not a hybrid) and it's already pretty peppy.
Probably the best car I've owned, and I've owned several nice sports sedans. Getting 40MPG is too convenient when you make longer commutes, not to mention the thing cost ~20k at 0% APR. Blows any hybrid out of the water for total COO.
Whilst most other manufacturers have persued downsizing and turbos to get efficciency on paper (at the expense of real world emmissions) Mazda have gone another road with their SkyActiv technology and it seems to be paying off for them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-bulb_engine#Advantages
Another big attraction with the hot-bulb engine was its ability to run on a wide range of fuels. Even poorly combustible fuels could be used, since a combination of vaporiser- and compression ignition meant that such fuels could be made to burn. The usual fuel was fuel oil, similar to modern-day diesel fuel, but natural gas, kerosene, crude oil, vegetable oil or creosote could also be used.
Also known as "semidiesels".
There were rumors last year in F1 that one of the manufacturers was doing HCCI for it's engine (the same that Mazda has done here). I don't think any actually did but Ferrari did introduce a jet ignition system[1] that allows them to run much leaner. I wonder if anyone is thinking of adapting that to normal road cars.
[1] http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/opinion/f1/ferraris-formul...
> From 2019, start introducing electric vehicles and other electric drive technologies in regions that use a high ratio of clean energy for power generation or restrict certain vehicles to reduce air pollution
I've been kind of disappointed that Mazda hasn't gotten into the electric car market yet; I'm glad to see they're coming around.
Also, hydrogen was supposed to be the big clean fuel in Japan, but that fell by the wayside when the bigger Chinese market decided it would be electric.
In the industry, the Chevy Bolt is expected to be the first electric car to end up being profitable. Next year's Audi Q6 e-tron quattro (what a name...) is expected to be the second. They are the first specimen of a new generate of electric cars that are for-profit mass production products from the ground up. By 2025 virtually every car manufacturer will be competing seriously in the electric market.
This generational change is happening because as batteries and fuel cells are getting cheaper rapidly. We are coming up on the cross-over point where an electric car can be made profitably right now. But this also means that there was no point for the likes of Mazda to even work on electric cars before now.
SKYACTIV-X is the world's first commercial gasoline engine to use compression ignition, in which the fuel-air mixture ignites spontaneously when compressed by the piston.
blahblah-notelectric-blahblah.blogspot.com ?
Then you can just collect all of these late stage ICE optimization press releases in one place.
And we can ignore them.
And mostly I don't get it. This is just a convenience factor. If you want a high-efficiency diesel right now you can buy one already. Low-volatility fuels are already more energy-dense (i.e. fewer losses carrying the stuff around in the tank) and require less energy to refine. This gives you the advantage of being able to pull into a gas station without diesel available, but otherwise doesn't seem to add much.
Acceleration is very zippy indeed, and the manual whilst not inviting the most efficient driving is an easy changing, short throw type. Tech level in the car is amazing: Radar cruise, AEB, blind spot monitoring, rear cross alert, Adaptive Front Lights (inside lights looks into the corner), etc etc.
It's very exciting to see normal petrol engines becoming so much efficient. Kudos to Mazda here. I'm hoping they'll have a hybrid or even all electric out by the time it's time for me to upgrade the current one.
[edit] I agree, by the way, that the cars are incredibly fun to drive, for being "fuel efficient."
I'd check under the hood just to make sure :) then fill up the tires, reset the average fuel economy, and baby it on the highway to see if you can get around the expected 40 mpg.
Not so sure about this. I have a 2014 3i GT and my wife has a 2014 Prius. Hers was cheaper to buy, gets way better mileage (29 v. 44) and needs less frequent oil changes (which are free), and is worth about $1200 more now.
It's a little faster, nicer inside, and much more fun to drive. But cheaper, nah.
"Compared to the current lineup of SkyActiv-G engines, the SkyActiv-X line should use between 20 and 30 percent less fuel."
http://newatlas.com/mazda-skyactiv-x-compression-ignition/50...
So I think your opinions are a little bit overcooked.
But I don't want to overdo mine in turn. The fuel consumption is excessive by modern standards (but comparable to other vehicles of similar performance). The engine consumes oil by design and needs to be topped up every few weeks. The whole car is in a high state of tuning, and has given me a few large service/repair bills - but never stranded me at the roadside. My garage once admitted incomprehension and sent me to the main dealer for diagnostics before they could begin repairs.
All in all I think Mazda pitched the RX-8 well as a sporty car for enthusiasts, whose reliability might have come in under par in the market for, say, small family cars. I just want to fight the impression that having a rotary-engined car is a drastically different, worse, experience than one with a piston engine. Generally you just get in and drive.
Wankel engines are just one of (surprisingly many) technologies that were more-or-less viable but just not able to become dominant. Like, we would all still manage to drive around if the only technologies developed happened to be opposed-piston engines, or two-stroke diesels, or axial-cylinder engines with a swashplate. We might even see a few of them come back if the market moves towards series-hybrid vehicle setups. A light little rotary always running at its peak-efficiency speed might be a reasonable choice for a range-extender/series hybrid.
Practicality was pretty low, though, as you rightly point out.
I also could probably connect you with a good rotary mechanic (or several) in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico (hell, especially Puerto Rico)
The biggest issue with the FCs isn't the engine, it's the reliability of the electric systems and heat (as a distant second). With the FDs it pretty much the twin turbos. And with early RX-8s (04-early09) it's a lack of proper engine lubrication due to a design flaw.
Lots of torque, lots of pep, though from what I heard, the US version (mine) had substantial increases in pollution controls which hobbled the car. Always first off the line when I wanted to be.
Yes, it burned oil by design. I'd add a half-quart of non synthetic 5W-20 maybe every 1000 miles. The rear bumper required additional car washes, as it'd get a black film, no doubt from cold starts. That wasn't much of a problem.
The big issue it had was flooding the engine. To trigger the condition, turn on engine, let it run for less than 1 minute, and turn it off (like pulling it in or out of a garage). Unless you floored it in neutral before shutting it off, the car would end up near-bricked.
The fix was to have it towed to the dealer where they'd clean out the engine for a few hundred dollars. Later I learned you could tow-start it if you could get it up past 20mph. It'd put all kinds of foul smoke out the back when you did that but in terms of hassle, it was much better.
The car had a POS OEM fuel pump under the rear seat. On hot days you'd get a vapor lock. Not the rotary's fault. Took years to find that problem, and didn't get very long with the fixed version before the stork came and the rotary had to leave.
Then it was licensed to many manufacturers, among which there was Mercedes-Benz, which was the manufacturer who got solved first the apex seal problem, and in the late 70s with the C111 prototype car, the first manufacturer to create a side port wankel engine (which mazda would only show on the RX8 decades later) and a 4-rotor engine (which mazda would only show on the 787 racing car in 1991.
Then MB ditched the wankel engine because of low fuel efficience, something that ultimately led to mazda doing the same... in the 2000s.
Skyactiv exists in the first place because Mazda does not have the money or engineering resources to build a hybrid or electric car by themselves. I suspect that in a decade or two, Mazda's decision not to start building hybrids and electric cars when the other major brands were doing so will be regarded as a serious mistake.
Also, the engine is capable of running in HCCI mode under light-ish load. It still has spark plugs, and can run as a normal gasoline engine (HCSI) when high power is demanded.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogeneous_charge_compression...
> Its fuel economy potentially matches that of a diesel engine without high emissions of nitrogen oxides or sooty particulates.
My understanding is that because gasoline is refined to a higher degree it burns a fair bit cleaner in similar environments(and also makes it a PITA to store for more than a few months).
[edit]
We've got a pair of tractors around the house here, '81 diesel(pre-emissions), and '47 gasser.
I can tell you which one I prefer to run from an exhaust perspective, the diesel may have torque and is a dead-simple engine but you don't want to be downwind of it when cutting heavy brush.
The same condensation process would also trap all the carbon particulates.
http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom...
Its authors badly underestimated how much new American nuclear reactors would cost.
We performed economic analyses on a partially optimized baseline concept based on a single Gen III PWR to provide power for the process. The analyses estimated a capital cost of $5.0 billion for an 18,400 bbl/day synthetic-gasoline plant and $4.6 billion for a 5,000 tonne/day methanol plant. Nuclear power accounts for more than 50% of the total plant capital investment.
If just over 50% of that cost is supposed to be nuclear plant, it would be $2.5 billion for a Gen III pressurized water reactor. ($2.9 billion now, accounting for a decade of inflation.) The just-abandoned VC Summer project was supposed to build two new Gen III PWRs in South Carolina. They pulled the plug because estimated cost of completion had spiraled up to $25 billion ($12.5 billion per reactor).
https://neutronbytes.com/2017/07/31/utilities-pull-the-plug-...
I'd like to have it with a larger lithium-ion that can remote start only my AC for a few minutes while I walk to the car in the summer.
http://www.carfolio.com/specifications/models/car/?car=26732...
If it does make a difference then I would expect they would design for the higher octane rating gas to prevent user-error.
Modern small cars with small engines can be quite fuel efficient in highway driving, though, and there 40 mpg isn't quite the very top. A month ago or so I did a trip in a 2016 Seat Toledo (petrol, non-hybrid), and the drive computer reported the consumption as 3.9 L/100 km after 150 km of driving at speeds from 60 to 100 km/h, averaging IIRC 78 km/h.
A 80 km strip at 120 km/h increased the average to 4.2 L/100 km.
On a 50%-50% split, I would be in the mid 30s, usually 36MPG or 37MPG.
When I was 80% city, I would be around 32MPG on average.
That car does not have much low-end torque, so if you accelerate aggressively from stops you can definitely tank the MPG. I didn't see much impact from aggressive acceleration at highway speeds (e.g. going from 30MPH to 70MPH on an on-ramp, or pulling around a slow group of cars going from 45MPH-70+MPH). I did see a lot of impact from flooring it 0-30.
Hope this context is helpful.
Every time you touch your brakes you're throwing away the energy it took to get to that speed. Coasting through off ramps at highway speed is good for the environment.
(I ended up with a 2015 S GT for $20k - only 8k miles on the odometer :)!)
Also - that's an i (2.0L) which gets 30/40 mpg (about 34-35 overall) so not quite the stark difference in fuel economy compared to a Prius that the 2.5L has.
(gallons per 100 mile difference between 35 mpg and 44 mpg is 2.86 vs 2.27)
Backstory: Ford came out the gate with a new spark plug design for the 2004 F-150 3V Triton 5.4L V8 engine (after their previous spark plug design failure in the 2V Triton where the plugs would shoot out) and told everyone that the spark plugs would last 100k miles. Turns out if you let them go that long, they would get stuck in the cylinder head and break off when you tried to remove them, leaving stuck broken pieces of spark plug behind. Conveniently, 100k miles happens to be when most people's warranty expires, leaving people with a best case a few-hundred-dollars-extra tune-up bill, if not thousands of dollars if the heads had to be removed. Ford faced a class-action lawsuit over this debacle, and there are still companies selling special broken spark plug removal kits designed solely for this engine to this day. Of course the root cause of the problem is faulty design, but it would have been mostly avoided had they not claimed a 100k mile service interval for the plugs. So yes, Ford went from an engine where the spark plugs would shoot out of the cylinder head, to one where they would get stuck so hard they would break.
I know all of this not because I am an engine geek, but because it happened to me. Two spark plugs broke off while being removed and I came this close to needing to have the heads removed and machined. Fortunately those special removal kits I mentioned earlier really do work. Given how relatively cheap spark plugs are, you can bet it will be a while before I trust that 100k mile number :-)
This is the one with a "permanent air filter" so they were thinking about eliminating maintenance. Boy this is going to suck when it is clogged.
But that never overcame their mediocre gas mileage (lack of compression/poor combustion chamber shape), oil burning (oil-lubricated apex seals), and need for frequent rebuilds.
Oh and an RPM of N is equivalent to angular velocity ω = N·π/30.
The argument in the linked wikipedia entry is that combustion temperatures are lower in this cycle because the better fuel/air mixing means it can burn much leaner and thus at a lower temperature. But a leaner mixture means lower power for a given displacement too, which means lower efficiency than a comparable traditional diesel (which are already hard-pressed to see gains like the 40% claimed against well-tuned gas engines).
Honestly the whole thing sounds very snake oily to me. I don't deny that it's possible such a thing could be tuned to operate as well as a traditional engine, but... it sounds awfully fiddly. I'd want to see numbers from a production engine in a real car before placing any bets. Electric continues to look like a much better bet to my eyes.
Throwing f/a into the mix, the HCCI mode is apparently only active during low-power cruise, so the lean mixture is fine. The Mazda innovation is controlling the changeover from HCCI to SI when more power is demanded.
(To be more specific, the terms are often used interchangeably. Thermal efficiency has an exact definition in an ideal heat engine and even ways of calculating the theoretical maximum for given conditions – but CO2 or chemical reactions have nothing to do with an ideal heat engine to start with. I'd personally perhaps prefer to talk about just the efficiency in an actual ICE – even if just to be clear none of the losses are conveniently left outside the calculation.)
Winters are pretty mild throughout more populated parts of Norway and Sweden.
I have an 07 Mazdaspeed3 that is getting long-in-the-tooth, and it gets terrible mileage (19 in town, high 20s on the freeway). The best I can say about the shifter is that you get used to it.
I don't think I need quite as much pep as my current car (plus all current hatchbacks that are comparable performance are north of $30k), and the 2.5L engine in the Mazda3 is nice.
I like the Mazda3 better than the Focus, but if I had to get a car today it would probably be the Focus ST.
I was thinking of the seals, which by about 50K seemed to be a common failure point. But, yes, they did burn a bit by design; no argument there. OTOH, a lot of Wankel defenders in this thread mention RX-8s. I'm remembering RX-7s, and the economy cars that used the Wankels. Those economy cars of the 70s are where the Wankel reputation for poor fuel mileage comes from. Cute TV commercials ("piston engine goes 'boing, boing, boing', Mazda engine goes 'hmmmmm'"), not really the best engine choice to go up against Honda and Toyota at the time.
"The Model 3 is so unexpected scalpel-like, I’m sputtering for adjectives. The steering ratio is quick, the effort is light (for me), but there’s enough light tremble against your fingers to hear the cornering negotiations between Stunt Road and these 235/40R19 tires (Continental ProContact RX m+s’s). And to mention body roll is to have already said too much about it."
http://www.motortrend.com/cars/tesla/model-3/2018/exclusive-...
"Promises only bind those who believe them."
Wow, was that ever effective.
You don't need to do all that. You can just pull the EGI INJ & EGI COMP fuse, crank it for a few seconds, replace and start it up. Many folks put a bypass switch inside the car so they don't have to get out and do it. Works great.
First off, I agree that the backseat was exceptionally roomy for a 4-door coupe. For adults.
Once you have your first, you realize very quickly that babies come with a LOT of stuff. The first carrier for newborns sticks out a LOT from the back of the seat. The sorcerers at Mazda Engineering made it comfortable for tall people in the backseat by compensating for limited front-back space by using up-down space. This made it impossible for use for an infant unless the front seat was scooted all the way up.
But then there's the stroller. Good luck with that in the comically small trunk opening. Bags of stuff, boxes of stuff, yes, these things are non-optional, and they don't fit in that car, especially all at once.
The final nail was the fact that it's kinda hard to insert a child plus carrier into the backseat with your hands full. Having it back there would've been easy. Getting it back there wouldn't have been. Retrieving it, even more difficult.
After you make your peace with the above, and still manage to cram everything in, bear in mind you still need two adults, not just the driver, to fit in the car at the same time.
We could've done it, somehow, but it was smarter to sell it and buy a cheap used SUV, with plenty of room for everything. It also bears mention that I had used that car as a daily driver for 10 years.
Also, yeah, I had my RX-8 tow started once. The recovery guy actually suggested I drive his truck while he sat in the car and tried to start it. So there I was with the new experience of driving an enormous full-size recovery vehicle, getting quite concerned as I looked in the mirror and saw clouds of white smoke pouring out of my car's exhaust! But, once properly wary of flooding, the car didn't give me any trouble before or since.
One of my friends had an rx-8, the backseats were useless for adults, but glorious for car seats.
Someone once told me battery technology has 2-3 more doubling left and then we hit chemical limits and cannot get more out of them. If this is correct batteries can never do the longer distances, but I don't know if it is correct.
We still have energy cells which are essentially bateries that you charge by pouring in some fluids just like in a regular car. However the tech is not mature enough yet.
A have Toyota Auris with hybrid synergy drive and even though it has really small battery (so it costs less than $25000 including tax), I am able to ride through small town using EV mode only and then use ICE between towns. My mileage is 4.4 l/100 km which is ~53.5 miles per gallon and I'm driving in city most of the time.
YMMV, but my E46 BMW has been very reliable compared to an RX-8 bought at the same time. Audi was still in the process of applying the lessons of the RS4 to their everyday cars, but I still wouldn't call the RX-8 reliable compared to its peers. As you hinted, there are a couple of problems that lead to full rebuilds before 150k miles.
* Underspec'd the ignition coils
* Didn't do enough on-road reliability testing
* Lowered the oil pressure and removed OMP ports
* Designed the oil filler breather in a way that allowed oil into the intake
In '04, the first wave of RX8s were coming in to the dealerships after 30k with severe misfire from the coils going bad. Mazda didn't have this failure mode in their factory service manual, so the cars got replacement engines (poorly reman'd in Mexico, not made on the Mazda Japan line). These didn't last because of poor manufacturing. Once the coil issue was figured out, the 8 became much more predictable and reliable.
As noted by Busterarm, they fully got their act together with the series 2 update.
[I own an '04 RX8 with ~130k miles)
Pull and rebuild is pretty easy though.
http://www.allpar.com/mopar/turbine.html
It was not, in the end, a production car, but there was a lot of data gathered as to performance and reliability in real-world settings.
Not too long ago, Jaguar had a concept CX-75, which was a hybrid mid-engined supercar where the piston engine was replaced with two Bladon Jets micro gas turbines. After 2008, they didn't want to commit to an expensive limited production vehicle, too bad.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/issues/18-october-2010/jet-pow...
The irony being that most don't. For example, hybrid synergy drive is basically an alternate transmission design that replaces the complex clutch packs used to control Ravigneaux planetary gears with electric motors. The result is a more simple overall design.
Other systems are literally just beefed up starters.
I think it's more of a political thing -- if you've made the argument that "ICE = pollution = bad" then it's hard to turn around and say "but a little bit of ICE to extend range is good."
The battery + electric motor adds so much good -- regenerative braking, electric torque, good city driving experience, it really feels like every car that is now an ICE should be a hybrid, even if just a "soft" hybrid with no plug, like a Prius.
I would imagine most the complaints are for when the ICE actually powers a drivetrain. If it's essentially a generator to keep the batteries from depleting too far, that's not much extra complexity it all. Have a problem with the generator? Just swap it out with a new or rebuilt one from some vendor (if designed well such that you can do so). I'm seeing that a Tesla uses about 300 Watts a mile @ 55 Mph.[1] Honda seems to have generators much more than capable of supplying that need for under $1000.[2] I'm not familiar enough with electric systems to know how accurate that assessment is (whether the voltage requirements complicate it, for example), but that seems promising. Then again, I imagine if it was really that easy, Tesla would have put a generator charge hookup and exhaust ventilation capabilities in the trunk already.
Edit: Hmm, I'm definitely missing something, since the $1000 generator says it can go 8.1 hours on a gallon of gas, and it doesn't seem likely for that to translate into powering a Tesla for 8 hours of travel.
1: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/average-wattage-for-...
2: https://powerequipment.honda.com/generators/selecting-a-gene...
This is nonsense. The dimensions are wrong. Watts are instantaneous power. To be meaningful, you would have to give either kWh/h or kWh per mile or km.
Besides that 300 W is only 0.4 hp. Sorry, but that is just not credible.
The time component being on the mph allows the conversion.
The most powerful generator I see on Honda's site is 10 kW for $5400.
Western U. S.: whatever I think I can get away with. IOW, if I can see for multiple miles with few cross roads and driveways, then it's whatever I feel comfortable with. Though with western speed limits of 70mph and up, one can comfortably get away with 85mph, which is fast enough for me. Much beyond that, on the bike or in the car, and it gets tiring and the difference in fuel efficiency is huge (28mpg or less at "spirited" speeds on a bike that normally gets 42-45mpg). And the last thing one needs in a vehicle with a 5 gallon tank, and an area with few gas stations, is poor fuel efficiency. With increased fuel stops, I'm not convinced that one saves a minute of time after a point.
In this instance, think of the U. S. more like the EU. We have Montana and Nevada, they have Germany. We have Ohio, they have (for lack of a better example) the U. K. with speed cameras everywhere (yeah, yeah, Brexit; bear with me for this example).
Here not only do I rarely see cops, I've read in the local papers that cops can't pull people over for speeding if EVERYONE is speeding. You have to be speeding far above average. So everyone is actually incentivized to speed together.
When I first got here I saw comically low speed limit signs - as low as 55mph on freeways! And averages of 65! That's INSANELY slow for how big these freeways are! But apparently it doesn't matter in California, here everyone just speeds and is protected as a group.
I don't doubt that I'll pay my dues eventually. You don't get away with 95mph on a sportbike forever. We make targets of ourselves. That's fine, in Houston I got ticketed ~200USD every three years or so, that's a fair price to get to go above the speed limit for me.
On the other hand, using the correct units (300Wh/mile):
300 Watt * hour / mile * 55 mile / hour = 16500 Watts [a sensible unit] (or about 22 horsepower which is reasonable for a steady 55mph cruise).
Do that for an hour, and you get 16.5kWh of energy consumption and cover 55 miles, for an energy efficiency of 3.33 miles/kWh, which is in the ballpark (albeit low) for what my LEAF delivers (averaging a bit over 4 miles/kWh at average speeds somewhat lower than 55 mph)
So it doesn't matter about any of the arguments about whether an electric car is more efficient or not when the electricity comes from coal.
What matters is that having electric cars enables us to move to a future of solar and wind and not notice the difference.
Plus having electric cars that don't pollute in cities where there are lots of people and generating the electricity with coal fired powerstations outside of cities where there are less people has immediate benefits.
While this is true, much as the rest of your comment, this sentence has made me think that pushing pollution away from the eyes of people is a really negative effect of electric cars. If pollution is not in my backyard, I'll certainly be less aware of it, and hence I'll certainly pressure less for reduction.
Also once people have electric cars the incentive to have solar panels on your roof becomes bigger. Then once enough electricity is generated through that the coal power stations just get turned off because they're not needed.
Plus there will still be the issue of CO2 generation, just that drivers won't be responsible any so like ex-smokers (who in my experience seem to be more anti-smoking than most) they'll probably be even more offended by the polluting power stations.
EVs pollute less, but they pollute too, and in cities as well. They emit dust (including the most harmful particles: PM10 and PM2.5) from break discs and tires. Difference between CO2 in power plants and in city centers matters, but not that much. Once it's in the atmosphere the damage is done. As for NOx, the biggest offender in the dieselgate, Mazda's engines should not emit these.
Add a fact that in the current grid setup most of the energy is coming from coal, and that it's very unlikely it is going to change in a near future (mainly due to political reasons). Also, the waste from batteries is really ugly.
Given all that factors a 30% less polluting combustion engine is almost too good to be true. From a macro perspective the gain for environment is on par, if not better, than from electric cars.
My biggest problem is to believe in the numbers Mazda provides. Have to wait and see.
I shouldn't have made the point about city pollution as it just diluted the main point.
Nevertheless, the brake discs won't be any worse in electric cars, so it is an absolute reduction in pollution in cities. I've also only heard such things getting raise ever since we started talking about electric cars. When everyone is worring about NOx we forget about all the other polluting steps.
Coal power stations are the worst case scenario for electric cars and even with this things are on a par. But back on my main point with electric cars we can switch to Gas fired power stations and then to our own solar powered roof. With a Mazda ICE you're stuck on petrol.
Plus petrol in the long term can only get more expensive and solar can only get cheaper. Petrol is eventually going to run out and before that happens it's going to get very expensive. Solar panels and batteries will only get more efficient and cheaper to produce.
Battery recycling is definitely an issue and Elon Musk has quoted at the gigafactory opening that they can take all Tesla batteries back an recycle them fairly efficiently as their robots can strip the batteries apart as they have the schemas. Whether other car manufacturers follow suit is open to question.
As far as political reasons go, if everyone is driving electric cars I'm sure there will be much more political pressure to remove the polluting power stations because now CO2 is primarily the fault of the power stations rather than people driving around in their cars.
Citation needed. It seems obvious to me that a huge power plant is going to be less polluting per kWh than a tiny little engine in a car. Otherwise, we'd use tiny little car engines to power everything - which only happens at the moment in places where they cannot get electricity by other means (building sites etc).
Coal represents less than a third of North American power generation, and less than a quarter of generation in Europe. In Brazil (another major car owning country) coal only represents ~1% of their generation sources.
Really the only place your statement is true is mainland Asia, and even there the market share of coal is falling (and the number of cars there is dwarfed by the number in NA/Europe/Brazil).
The biggest nail in the coffin of the long tailpipe fallacy is that you can drive an EV farther on the power needed to refine a gallon of gas than you can drive a ICE car on that same gallon. So, even if you built a gasoline engine that had absolutely no emissions, and oil bubbled up into crude lakes right next to every refinery, EVs would still be more efficient.
Energy density of gasoline is 34.2 MJ/L: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
This means there was 4.8 MJ of energy spent to create 1L of gasoline. The 70kWh(250MJ) tesla is reported to have 390KM range. 4.8 MJ would be 1.92% of the range, or about 7.5km. The Mazda 3 has a combined fuel economy rating of 33 MPG, which is about 14KPL.
As far s I can tell, your statement that an EV can go further on the power needed to refine a gallon of gas, than an ICE car can drive is off by a factor of almost two.
That said, arguing an electric car can go a certain distance based on inefficiencies of another unrelated process is not a very meaningful argument. You need to look at the efficiencies and CO2 produced for drilling/transporting/refining/burning gas vs producing/transmitting/storing/using electric power, and probably the costs of dealing with peak loads vs non-peak loads, and even then the argument is heavily weighted on where your power comes from.
Indeed.
However, look at it this way: which is easier to replace, the entire fleet, or centralized power plants?
Every time a new windmill or solar panel is added, your Tesla gets that much cleaner. And that's something you can do yourself if you want to. Electricity is fungible and your car could not care less where it came from.
Oil changes have a non-negligible impact for the environment as well. And then there are all those components that have to be replaced from time to time and end up in landfills (spark plugs/cables, timing belts, etc).
So I believe electric cars today are already a net gain. And, even if they polluted more, the pollution is centralized in the power plants, which is easier to do something about. There are problem health benefits from moving pollution away from population centers.
I make a point of going to parks with my EV. I know it's a token gesture, but I like to think I'm not blowing dirty fumes next to animal habitats. It helps that California is reasonably clean.
The entire fleet I'd think. It's certainly much more likely to happen first.
(Cars have a much shorter average lifespan than power plants; the natural gas power plants we're building right now have a designed lifespan of up to 50 years. Very few cars coming of the production line today will be on the road in 50 years.)
The reality is that anyone in the US, east of the rockies and not in texas will have the same 'mpg equivalent' for their Tesla.
Now in winter gasoline/diesel cars have the issue of nearly always running rich on very short commutes as they strive to get to an optimal operating temperature. The EV just loses a serious chunk of range. Both of course can be preconditioned but the EV is more efficient there.
As for Mazda. None of the electrification upcoming laws exclude fuel powered vehicles, range extenders and hybrids all seem to meet many requirements.
older article about range/ev/winter http://www.teslarati.com/effects-winter-tesla-battery-range/ I hope they have corrected how regenerative braking works since then
However, I have to agree that my previous comment _wrongly_ implied that burning coal at the plants to power the electric cars is the main issue we have to deal with.
I don't think it follows that just because we have historically centralized power generation, this was obviously due to efficiency. For example, centralization of management, investment, pollution control, logistical (fuel delivery), safety (nuclear) and reliability concerns seem far more obvious to me, although I don't doubt there could be an efficiency benefit to large-scale generation, I've just never heard of it.
Simple rectification has not so much loss, I think you are thinking about low voltage DC power supplies, and I think that chargers for large, high voltage battery piles are likely to be happy with rectified (maybe doubled) mains supply.
The low voltage supply is first rectifying the input, then using an inverter to generate high frequency AC, then rectifying and filtering this to give a DC output.
The simple "diode" rectification is no longer acceptable due to harmonics put on the AC side causing grid stability problems and emitted radio interference.