[CARDEEP]

A ‘major discrepancy’ between official petrol car CO2 emissions and real-life on-road testing has led an independent emissions testing agency to warn of an emerging ‘petrolgate’ scandal.

Emissions Analytics has discovered ‘unusual discrepancies’ during testing of petrol cars, which could suggest some firms are already manipulating strict new WLTP emissions and economy tests.

Official CO2 figures for petrol cars tested by the firm are ‘significantly underestimating the real-world emissions’. It suggests a 24 percent difference between official CO2 figures and real-world tests.

More details here:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/...dal/ar-AACwSH7

[jailbird_fynix]

Shows why we need to completely shift to EV as soon as possible. But no successful business is free from conspiracies, we can expect "Electrogate" as well. Profits are everything.

[CARDEEP]

There are more than few issues here:

First & foremost, these findings simply indicate that policymakers are far from reality in fixing automobile pollution norms. The norms are bit off from being realistic.
Second, the monitoring is also not free from biases. They assured for long that diesel is devil, & ignored petrol pollution. One is black mamba bite & other one is viper IMO. But diesel engines have been unduly demonized & penalised.
With Petroleum resources expected to exhaust in few decades, no priory is being set for use, alternatives (more than handful) & that too being short run measures are envisaged.

Even EVs are not clean. For Lithium ion is radioactive material. It has long term harmful effects.
Second if the batteries are not secure (recall Samsung's Batterygate) we can be sitting on pyres. It's happening with Tesla as well (mind you Tesla is better than Japanese in quality).
Third, the range is short & charging too slow. I understand there's solution for batteries & range but that's at least half a decade away. Then charging infrastructure would need a generation change. One cannot imagine a situation where one sleeps in queues to superchargers &/ or get safe charging (without using extension chords exposed to elements) at home.
Next, the real cost of EV also includes power generation by Coal & Petroleum fuel run power stations. This creates a vicious circle of pollution, that we are trying to avoid.
Further, the EV race is driven primarily by China which has 80% Lithium reserves. I would hesitate to fund China just for a shortcut to travelling woes.

The best bet seems to be fuel cells, where Toyota, Hyundai & Audi are working seriously in background. This will be clean (water is the waste from exhaust outlet). I feel it's matter of time (a decade or so) before we have big news from auto majors.

I believe there's more that what meets the eye here...

[Ironhide]

Originally Posted by CARDEEP

There are more than few issues here ----snip----

Even EVs are not clean. For Lithium ion is radioactive material. It has long term harmful effects.
Second if the batteries are not secure (recall Samsung's Batterygate) we can be sitting on pyres. It's happening with Tesla as well (mind you Tesla is better than Japanese in quality).
Third, the range is short & charging too slow. I understand there's solution for batteries & range but that's at least half a decade away. Then charging infrastructure would need a generation change. One cannot imagine a situation where one sleeps in queues to superchargers &/ or get safe charging (without using extension chords exposed to elements) at home.
Next, the real cost of EV also includes power generation by Coal & Petroleum fuel run power stations. This creates a vicious circle of pollution, that we are trying to avoid.
Further, the EV race is driven primarily by China which has 80% Lithium reserves. I would hesitate to fund China just for a shortcut to travelling woes.

The best bet seems to be fuel cells, where Toyota, Hyundai & Audi are working seriously in background. This will be clean (water is the waste from exhaust outlet). I feel it's matter of time (a decade or so) before we have big news from auto majors.

I believe there's more that what meets the eye here...

My thoughts exactly. While EVs would seem generally clean, the factors of unclean electricity to charge them, battery safety/reliability, lithium monopoly & radioactivity, safe disposal of used batteries, unrealistically long charging times and inadequate range is something that governments the world over ought to have looked at. Hydrogen seems like a safe (no pun intended) bet in meeting the requirements of a clean, widely available alternative fuel. And with the behemoths of automotive world furthering their research on hydrogen storage and utilisation as an environmentally friendly source of energy, maybe we ought to see its adaptation as a mainstream fuel in none too distant future.

Cheers!

[LiCoO2]

Originally Posted by Ironhide

Hydrogen seems like a safe (no pun intended) bet in meeting the requirements of a clean, widely available alternative fuel. And with the behemoths of automotive world furthering their research on hydrogen storage and utilisation as an environmentally friendly source of energy, maybe we ought to see its adaptation as a mainstream fuel in none too distant future.

This and other posts in this thread are wildly inaccurate about hydrogen. Hydrogen is not found naturally in the pure form. The best method for large scale production of hydrogen is steam reforming which requires methane. So the production of hydrogen itself produces carbon emissions which defeats the purpose of this alternative fuel.
I would highly recommend reading this Wikipedia entry on hydrogen production:

There are four main sources for the commercial production of hydrogen: natural gas, oil, coal, and electrolysis; which account for 48%, 30%, 18% and 4% of the world’s hydrogen production respectively.[6] Fossil fuels are the dominant source of industrial hydrogen.[7] Carbon dioxide can be separated from natural gas with a 70-85% efficiency for hydrogen production and from other hydrocarbons to varying degrees of efficiency.[8] Specifically, bulk hydrogen is usually produced by the steam reforming of methane or natural gas.[9] The production of hydrogen from natural gas is the cheapest source of hydrogen currently. ..... one ton of hydrogen produced will also produce 9 to 12 tons of CO2.[10]

Hydrogen Production

The other "clean" way to produce hydrogen is electrolysis of water which itself is inefficient and uses electricity.

Electrolysis consists of using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Electrolysis of water is 70-80% efficient (a 20-30% conversion loss)[22][23] while steam reforming of natural gas has a thermal efficiency between 70-85%.[24] The (electrical) efficiency of electrolysis is expected to reach 82-86%[25] before 2030, while also maintaining durability as progress in this area continues at a pace.[26] Water electrolysis can operate between 50-80 °C, while steam methane reforming requires temperatures between 700-1100 °C

Now coming to fuel cells vehicles. First of all, fuel cell vehicles themselves carry battery packs.. But even if you ignore that, fuel cells are very inefficient in turning hydrogen into electricity:

In a fuel-cell vehicle the tank-to-wheel efficiency is greater than 45% at low loads[66] and shows average values of about 36% when a driving cycle like the NEDC (New European Driving Cycle) is used as test procedure.[67] .....

It is also important to take losses due to fuel production, transportation, and storage into account. Fuel cell vehicles running on compressed hydrogen may have a power-plant-to-wheel efficiency of 22% if the hydrogen is stored as high-pressure gas, and 17% if it is stored as liquid hydrogen.[69] .... Most hydrogen is used for oil refining, chemicals and fertilizer production and therefore produced by steam methane reforming, which emits carbon dioxide.[71] The overall efficiency (electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity) of such plants (known as round-trip efficiency), using pure hydrogen and pure oxygen can be "from 35 up to 50 percent", depending on gas density and other conditions.[72] The electrolyzer/fuel cell system can store indefinite quantities of hydrogen, and is therefore suited for long-term storage.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell

If you have clean electricity, why use it to produce hydrogen? Batteries are extremely efficient at storing electricity and converting it into power at the wheel.

All the arguments that are being made against EVs can easily be made against hydrogen.

This is why I don't see the future in hydrogen. It might be useful for large ships or trucks but it's still way worse than electric vehicles.