Some of the problems with biofuel are: land use; fertiliser use; pesticide and herbicide use; and water use. Similar problems to beef production.
It may be a part of the solution, AIUI Brazil has been using E80 fuel (80% ethanol, 20% gasoline) for spark-ignition engines for decades (I was a development engineer for such an engine at Lotus in 1991). Ethanol in road petrol in Europe has been around since at least then but only, IIRC, up to E20. Care is needed with flexible seals. We had one test bed fire when the ethanol rotted a fuel pressure regulator seal.
Another interesting snippet. On a commercial flight back from an electric aviation symposium in Koln recently, I happened to sit next to someone from one of the various power-train design consultancies in the UK and they said that nearly all of the contracts on which that company is working are for electric not internal combustion systems.
I would expect all development grants to go into electric stuff. Getting a grant for IC, in the current media climate, is only slightly more likely than a pervert trying to develop a better trenchcoat 
On that I do not know but certainly our motor programme has some development aid:
https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/news-and-media/overview/news/e-hav1/
More background here:
Peter, I think that this does not count as advertising but if you don’t want it on the site feel free to remove.
It is completely fine for people here to promote their business, if they participate generally / usefully on the forum. This has always been the case – Guidelines.
We want to encourage businesses to participate – because a lot of the time they are the only ones who might have answers. The only conditions are that it is done under the company’s full name and that the poster does genuinely participate in the forum generally. Conversely we do not allow people to promote their company’s products or services while appearing to be mere users; this is misleading and undermines the integrity of the forum.
Microorganism production of biofuel, using desert sunshine, and avoiding evaporative water loss, recycling the nutrients and water, would only be competing with solar panel farms producing electricity.
Thread drift: Flying into Turweston, I wondered if the solar panel farm was more efficient than photosynthesis by the plants it had replaced, in the long term.
Joe-fbs wrote:
Some of the problems with biofuel are: land use; fertiliser use; pesticide and herbicide use; and water use. Similar problems to beef production.
Wood! An ancient industry. No need for fertilizer (although the waste product certainly can be used as such), no need for pesticide, no need for herbicide, no need for water. No similarities with beef production whatsoever. North America, Northern Eurasia is all wood, endless pine forests. But, it requires processing. To produce fuel from it requires the same size processing as oil, but is a very different process. 2.5 kg of normal wood has the same energy content as 1 liter of gasoline approximately. Wood gas has been used for ages, both as gas for stoves and to fuel vehicles. The processing consists of liquefying wood gas, or directly breaking down the plant material using enzymes.
Posts on long range electric moved to this existing “electric” thread
Maoraigh wrote:
Biofuel production competes with food production.Depending on fuel not necessarily initially. Up here diesel fuel replacement can be done from forest residues, from places where not much else but forest would grow, so no competition with foodstock. This though cannot be extrapolated to replace all Jet-A, forests would not regrow fast enough, even if we made no paper at all.
alioth wrote:
Why is it seen as “socialist” to want to drive an efficient car with low running costs with much lower mess/maintenance/need to go to petrol stations? … I’d never have to visit a petrol station ever again (my absolute least favorite retail experience).100% with you on this one.
LeSving wrote:
there is NO battery powered alternative for longer transportationIt’s only a problem if you don’t ever stop for human activities like food, toilet or rest. For normal people, you sync these stops with charging stops. What you need is actual route planning before driving off, which should not be too much of an effort for us pilots.
LeSving wrote:
modern gasoline engines are insanely efficient over a huge power bandModern gas engine are still incredibly inefficient over most of the useful band, even the super downsized ones. A 2.2t Tesla model S moves about with the energy equivalent of 1.6-1.7l / 100km, when a VW Polo with a 1.2 liter engine needs 4.8-4.9l / 100km. Please don’t call that “efficient”.
I once made a calculation similar to Adam’s, including climb, cruise and descent (no regen though, unlike the Pipistrel). I started from the rather efficient aero of a mid-bodied Mooney (in cruise it consume about the same as the e-tron brick). I can make it climb to FL100, cruise at 140KTAS and cover 400NM, but it’s a 2 seater.
IC engines are much less efficient than electric motors, but against that one has to weigh up the power generation efficiency. All power stations which produce steam to drive generators (nuclear, coal fired boiler, but not usually gas turbine ones) are limited by the steam cycle which is only ~47% efficient, at best.
If nuclear fusion was developed then one would have tons of heat to play with and would not have to worry about chucking away that ~53%
Some of the most basic issues were explored right at the start of this thread. These have not really changed and aren’t going to change in the foreseable future. Even if “near-perfect” batteries (storing vast energy and weighing very little) were developed, you are still stuck with the other stuff…
Ultimately countries cannot afford to lose petroleum tax revenues so if electric propulsion became really big they would have to stick a whacking big tax on electricity. That would in turn create massive social problems (“poor” people who heat houses with it, etc).
