Motor Trend - USA (2020-04)

Frank Markus

NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF

Technologue

26 MOTORTREND.COM APRIL 2020

W

ith the rest of this issue focused on the auto

industry’s small but significant next steps

toward reducing the transportation sector’s

carbon footprint, I figured I’d zoom out for a

big-picture view of the end game: zero-carbon

transportation. The concept may sound like the lunatic

ravings of a bearded Vermonter in a Rabbit diesel

trailing french fry fumes, but it’s a long-term planetary

imperative that wise and wealthy visionary venture

capitalists are investing heavily in right now.

Light/Personal Vehicles Battery-electric drive will

handle the lightest-duty ground-vehicle and short-

distance air-taxi service. Engineering advances underway

will greatly increase the volumetric

and gravimetric energy density and the

inherent safety of the batteries them-

selves while reducing the time required

to recharge them until users find them

as convenient to live with as today’s

combustion powertrains. IBM very

recently announced the discovery

of a battery that uses a nickel- and

cobalt-free cathode and a high-

flash-point liquid electrolyte that helps

resist formation of the lithium dendrites

(spikes) that can form on the cathode during

fast charging and cause a short circuit. The

three promising new undisclosed materials

it uses can reportedly be extracted from seawater.

Research is also ongoing into solid-state

batteries, and companies like GBatteries are

developing ways such as pulse-charging to

reduce charging times for all batteries.

Larger Ground Transit/Hauling Carrying

heavy loads over long distances presents

significant challenges to battery power, so fuel

cells can take on these tasks. We’ve covered

Nikola’s ambitious plans to sell fuel cell–powered semis

and to build a network of 700 nationwide refueling

stations by 2028. The Toyota Project Portal and Hyundai

HDC-6 Neptune are both fuel cell semis, and all are

counting on economies of scale to bring down the cost

of manufacturing the fuel cells and building out of the

infrastructure.

For now Nikola is planning to ask $375,000 for its

tractor—roughly triple the cost of a comparable diesel

rig. All such plans rely on implementation of the H70HF

(70 MPa/10,000-psi high-flow) refueling standard due

for release this year. Such pumps will dispense fuel at

a rate of roughly 310 miles in 5 minutes.

Ships and Planes Electric power just doesn’t make sense

for shipping and air travel, so biofueled combustion will

be the best carbon-neutral option. That means biodiesel

and derivatives like biojet-A. The U.S. leads the world in

annual biodiesel production, at 1.8 billion gallons, most of

which comes from chemically reacting a lipid (vegetable

oil or animal fat) with an alcohol. Its well-to-wheels (or

wings) carbon content doesn’t net to zero yet, however,

and even devoting 100 percent of our arable land to its

production wouldn’t replace our petro demand. But

using algal biodiesel cultivated in tubes might reduce

the required land use to the size of Maryland, according

to estimates by the Department of Energy. Sadly, the

energy required to separate the lipids from these algal

cells today can be greater than the energy they

contain. But researchers at the Univer-

sity of Utah recently demonstrated a

“mixing extractor” that shoots reus-

able solvent at algae sludge, causing

the lipids to attach to the solvent,

from which they can easily and

quickly be separated. Research

is ongoing, so these hurdles will

surely prove surmountable.

Carbon Neutral Energy In a post-

Fukushima nuclear-averse world, some

will fret about where the carbon-free

energy will come from to make any of these

advances possible. Hydrogen boosters advocate

using surplus wind and solar power (after

vastly ramping up the capacity of each) to

hydrolyze water into oxygen and hydrogen.

Meanwhile, the Bill Gates–backed Heliogen

startup has just set up a solar mirror farm

in the Mojave Desert; it features computer-

aligned movable mirrors the company says

can concentrate enough solar energy to

generate up to 2,700-degree heat. (Water

dissociates into hydrogen and oxygen without electricity

at 2,500.) That’s well above the 1,000-degree tempera-

tures generated by typical solar mirror farms, and it’s

hot enough to produce steel.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Let’s hope we muster

enough will to utilize our vast engineering know-how. Q

Science Will Find a Way

to Zero-Carbon Transportation

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