Imagine a lossless conversion from electricity to making hydrocarbons from atmospheric co2. Car engines are very very inefficient (about 35% of chemical energy converted to mechanical, out of a theoretical max of 46% or so iiuc.) comparatively, electric motors are like 80% efficient.
Now itβs true that bev have transmission and battery losses, but synthetic gasoline is going to have inefficiencies and cost to transport, too.
The case wher e it makes sense is where the weight of batteries matter, ie: jet packs and airplanes.
If internal combustion cars powered by renewable synthetic fuel could be anywhere near half as efficient as BEVs, wouldn't that be a great problem to have?
"Imagine a lossless conversion" is obviously doing a lot of work here, but even if they're only 1% as efficient end-to-end as BEVs, that would still be fine in a world where we had more renewable power than we needed without the capacity to store it all. BEVs would eventually be pushed to dominance by market forces, while in the meantime we would accelerate our transition to net-zero emissions.
I mean, if it were up to me then right now. Whenever the technology is sufficiently mature that it's only a matter of giving companies like Prometheus the capital they need to scale up production (if it isn't already), I would do that.
Now itβs true that bev have transmission and battery losses, but synthetic gasoline is going to have inefficiencies and cost to transport, too.
The case wher e it makes sense is where the weight of batteries matter, ie: jet packs and airplanes.