Since the European Union would like to phase out traditional fossil fuels for national security and environmental reasons, including in transport, the question naturally arises as to what should be the cleaner future fuel based on renewable energy production.
Although everyone knows the answer, hydrogen, it is also clear that hydrogen is the one whose direct and general-purpose use, for example to drive vehicles, will not spread significantly in the coming decades, as the investments required for this, affecting both vehicles and infrastructure, can only be financed by countries at least approaching Japan’s technological and economic level. Everyone else is left with compromise alternatives.
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| Tokyo at night (Credit: Pixabay) |
This is particularly true for the European Union, where any significant change in energy carriers only makes sense if it can be implemented by all member states after the necessary standards and legislation have been developed, which is completely impossible due to the very different levels of development of the member states.
Fortunately, planning for the future is made easier by the fact that the spread of electric cars is increasingly facilitated by their continuously decreasing production costs, thus it is not necessary to find a perfect replacement for gasoline and diesel fuels, but rather an energy carrier that can serve as a range extender for electrically driven vehicles, at least in the case of passenger cars, while enabling both national security and climate protection goals to be achieved.
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| An oil refinery (Credit: Pixabay) |
Methanol (methyl alcohol) may be the best choice for this purpose because its production can also be achieved from renewable sources and its production and storage are cheap compared to other energy carriers, the latter being key in a transport where cost efficiency per hundred kilometers is no longer calculated in liters but in kilowatt-hours.
The advantages of methanol include that thanks to its combustion characteristics, the cooling of an engine designed for such fuel can be made much simpler, so a methanol engine serving only as a generator can also be retrofitted into an electrically driven car.
To this end, the European Union should create new regulations regarding purely electric cars sold in the Union’s territory, which would oblige manufacturers to prepare their cars for retrofitting with methanol fuel generators.
This should be imagined just like how a car running on gasoline can be converted to use autogas (LPG), for example by installing a cylindrical tank in the trunk, only in this case the large tank installed in the electric car would not only contain methanol itself but also the entire generator, from the fuel tank through the Otto engine to the generator.
So the goal would not be to replace current plug-in hybrids, but to enable those who are worried about charging options to also buy purely electric cars, as vehicle owners could have their purely electric car retrofitted with a range-extending generator at any time if its use proves to be inconvenient in everyday life while still maintaining tax and other benefits received when purchasing the car using climate-neutral methanol fuel.
Although this regulation would apply to all car manufacturers, it would be particularly important in the case of Tesla, as if the company is able to fulfill its commitment to drastically improve the cost efficiency of its production and wants to realize its profits primarily through software services rather than car manufacturing itself in its business model, Tesla could completely dominate the EU market in terms of purely electric cars in the future.
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| Tesla Model X (Credit: Tesla) |
Part of this EU regulation would be the presence of mounting points for installing the generator, accessibility of air intake openings for its operation and cooling, possibility of exhaust gas discharge, and among others, the fuel filler opening for refueling methanol at gas stations.
Since this generator would be a retrofittable accessory device, it must be connectable to the electric car’s onboard computer, enabling automatic control and monitoring by the driver. To do this, electric car onboard computers must either be able to recognize the connected generator or have the ability to update their software.
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| Tesla Model X interior (Credit: Tesla) |
These methanol fuel generators that can be retrofitted into electric cars can vary in terms of their manufacturer, size and performance, but every generator would have a standardized design to ensure that it fits securely to the body of any electric car.
Since maintaining ease of installation also involves size limitations, even the highest performance of the selectable generator would not be sufficient on its own to dynamically move an electric car, but the presence of the generator could drastically increase the range achievable with an electric car, especially in winter when heating the passenger compartment takes a lot of energy that could now be provided by hot air diverted from the generator’s cooling system.
The cylindrical design of the generator would not only facilitate installation but also increase safety, as methanol is toxic even when absorbed through the skin, so placing the generator in a pressure- and impact-resistant closed tank would avoid any contact with methanol, whether it is the car owner or a service technician inspecting and maintaining the electric car.
For safety reasons, refueling at gas stations would not be done with standard filling guns for gasoline and diesel fuels, but with a filling gun specifically developed for use with methanol, where the filling gun seals air-tight to the filler opening before starting refueling to prevent even a single drop of methanol from entering the environment, whether in liquid or gaseous state.
Although displaying a new fuel at gas stations covering the entire European Union also requires significant investment, it is also in favor of methanol that it does not matter how much electric cars with generators use because the amount produced and stored at gas stations never goes to waste as it can be returned to the refinery to become a raw material for petroleum products from ethene to propene or sold simply by mixing it with gasoline.
(I wrote this concept for an article for the Future Factory website, where it was published in Hungarian on May 2, 2023. The English translation for this blog was made with ChatGPT, so apologies for any possible grammatical errors.)