Internal Combustion Engines are about to become a lot greener!
Like Carbon Neutral Green.
Bet you weren’t thinking of reading this today. With all the noise and euphoria around electric cars, it’s easy to think there’s no innovation going on elsewhere in the industry. But that’s undoubtedly not the case. What if I told you innovation in Internal Combustion Engine Regime is even greener than what current Battery powered Electric Vehicles are promising.
Get on the ride!
First let’s talk about Electric Cars. They’re ready to take on the roads. The long days of combustion engines that have been ruling the World can be seen to come to an end. And why not! The World is in dire need of gaining interdependence from the petroleum era and at first glance, EV seems like a step in the right direction.
Some of the Governments around the World have even started to bring scrap policies for old ‘dirty’ cars to make people embrace the electric revolution faster. Does that mean decades of innovation we have witnessed in this class of machines was for nothing? Think about the amount of scrap it would produce! And most importantly, think of the great Automobile Culture that people are part of. Let’s not forget that most of the innovations in the domain came because of people’s love with these machines, their desire to work on something which they see as their own living extension.
And some of us just love the sounds they make on the open road. But I certainly don’t want to hurt the planet while enjoying that!
So what options do we have now? Should we start working on simulating the original sounds in the Electric Vehicles. Is this what technology has in store for us?
Before we outright ban everything gasoline, let’s revisit what makes ICE such a bad tool for our planet to begin with. Then we’ll focus on what can be done about it.
The current scenario with gasoline engines has 2-fold problems:
- The petroleum refineries to get the fuel to run machines is unsustainable. That’s something we’ve known for quite some time now.
- The combustion engines produce greenhouse gases and further increase CO2 concentration in our atmosphere.
That’s basically the case with all fossil fuel powered machines. And that’s what has drawn persons like Elon Musk to venture out into the next big thing: the battery powered vehicles that produce zero carbon. But there’s another way which is much more authentic and apparently more environmental friendly too.
Yes, Greener than your battery powered EVs! Let’s talk about this alternative innovation for a moment, the one that you aren’t hearing elsewhere at the moment:
E-Fuels: The petroleum-less petrol
E-Fuels are the liquids that can replace petrol, diesel and other petroleum products and have the same chemical properties as the original. One thing that’s great about them is that they can be synthetically produced from (green) electricity, water and CO2.
In other words: E-fuels have the advantages of the fuels we have been using since decades — but are not distilled from petroleum! Rather it extracts CO2 from our atmosphere.
E-fuels’ adoption will let you enjoy your V8 engine the way you want, and you will be helping our planet by doing so. The mere production of e-fuel will help cut down CO2 concentration in our atmosphere!
Okay but we’ve already started to invested heavily in the ‘EV future’. Why bother giving the dying industry another chance?
There are quite a few things people usually ignore while talking about Battery-Powered EVs as the only future. Let me list some of them here:
- EVs are all powered by lithium ion batteries. And that’s not something we have unlimited access of. Check out this Forbes’ article detailing how big of a concern lithium’s shortage is going to play in coming years.
- What about the ICE powered cars already roaming the roads? Are we okay with the deliberate creation of junkyard in our planet?
- Battery powered Transportation hasn’t given anything for the Aviation or Shipping Industries. This proves that our lithium powered answer to sustainability is incomplete, to say the least.
- Last but not the least: Killing off ICE engines means killing off the common passion of millions of people, and the whole Automobile Culture that has long helped in the R&D process helping industries across the domains.
No one questioned how sustainable Petroleum Refineries were back when we started using it. And as of now, no one is highlighting this question about lithium either.
The artificially generated E-fuels takes care of all these concerns and many more. Wow! Awesome….
Wait! Why aren’t we using it right away?
For a business that wants to capitalize on this opportunity, there are a tiny little few things that need attention at the moment.
What‘s the resistance and how to overcome?
- The primary concern is with the production cost of the new fuel. As was the case with all renewable energy production a few years back, e-fuels currently face the similar problem.
One way to take care of this is by ramping up production. But that needs demand. It’s the same reason why no one was producing battery powered cars before Tesla. And Tesla overcame it by focusing on supply side to start things off! - The fastest way to achieve economies of scale is by involving Governments in this quest. Currently, Governments around the World are on frenzy banning ICE engines and are bracing for the Electric Future. Getting Governments onboard would be a task to look out for.
The root cause analysis for sustainability of IC engines points to the dirty fuels they’re using. Disregarding the innovation in the field without correcting the root cause should not be the answer. And lithium in our batteries is telling us that the problem is still not solved!
It’s not to say batteries will not see any innovation in the future to rectify this core problem with itself. It will, just like ICE engines have found their solution today!
Maybe the future is for both of them to co-exist, and I’m all up for it.
