@dave, agreed. PHEVs can be sized to average daily use, rather than maximum daily use, and hence can be (say) 10 KwH, rather than 60 which seems to be the new BEV minimum. Even ordinary hybrids can save a lot of fuel and NOx + particulate pollution. Pity about the cost and complexity of PHEVs, though.

Glad to see a new Fiat 500 out, the engine was getting a bit long in the tooth. We had (have) one and it is a lovely car to drive and use in town and around. I wonder how much extra the Hybrid will cost above the old 1.2. The market is very price sensitive at this level.

That has to be the most TLA dense title I have seen in a long time.

If this is real, it is quite a boon to all land and sea transport. It sounds too large for cars and medium trucks, but if you could do buses and large trucks, it would be really good. Also boats. Then, you have the problem of tons and tons of liquid CO2 to dispose of, but it certainly is progress. Smaller trucks and cars could go electric. I would not worry about the 10% CO2 you cannot get, 90% is plenty. Main thing is to really test it and build a CO2 disposal network.

It should be possible to electrify nearly all land transport. You could have catenaries over motorways for trucks and wired / battery transport for cities. You could mix in chemical fuels (chemical or fossil) as required. Aircraft will be the big problem, but as TP says priority should be given to long distance flights. You could also use planes differently; for instance, pack more people into them and increase the number of passengers at the expense of range. Consider the A350-1000. It has a range of 8700 nmi, and can hold 370 passengers in 3 classes. Current state of the art. Now imagine, you build a double decker version (same wing, same engines) that can hold 5-600 passengers and fly 5500 nmi (and less cargo). That is enough for London to Tokyo or London to LA. The problem will be filling it; but you could get airlines to share flights (code sharing) as they do now, especially if there was a high tax on aviation fuel.

Note, this is per capita, not per household, or per over 16. So that is a lot of miles per car in some states. Or else they have very few children in Alabama and Wyoming.

Cheaper carbon fibre - sounds good to me, Especially for aerospace.

a: It is not as bad as it looks: 10.3 - 12.3 b: Pity they didn't overlay the results from 1994 - 2006 c: No explanations for the differences are given. such as (his suggestions): the proportion of rural to urban driving consumption of alcohol, age distribution of drivers on the road, proportional amount of leisure driving, duration of darkness, and inclement weather. curious!

These vehicles are fine until you get kids. In the meantime, they are much easier to park than 4 or 5 seat cars. The styling is also OK - hard to do with a small short vehicle like this. I wouldn't have thought wind resistance is a big deal for NEVs as they are not designed to go very fast. (and don't need to). + what is "a full sense of technology" ? It's a bit zen for me.

@Dave, The high cost of HVDC transmission is presumably due to electrical loses in the transmission. However, you have to balance this against the loses in creating and using the H2, which are much higher than the HVDC transmission loses. Try this document, it is only 74 pages - yours is > 1000 pages - phew. https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/electricity/hvdctransmission/pdf/transmission.pdf

Why don't the Germans restart their reactors and stop burning lignite. You'd save a lot more co2 that way.

Anyone know how they measure miles driven per person ? Who counts as per person: Everyone in the USA. Everyone eligible to drive (by age) in the USA ? All license holders in the USA ?

So they have a big solar farm and some storage ~= 1/2 the full solar output. I assume you keep the old generator for nighttime / rainy days and use as much solar as possible. Sounds reasonable and pragmatic to me. IMO, this is how you will have to use renewables in general, keep the old fossil for dull / still days and use the renewables when possible. Question: how do you keep the solar panels clean - is it desert or rainy ? OK: "Mali has overall a hot, sunny and dry climate dominated by the subtropical ridge." I assume this is a problem for all desert solar installations - how do you get the dust/sand off them without scratching the surface?

@sd: Algal fuel just doesn't seem to be working out. Look at the wiki article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel In particular, they are up against the farmers corn lobby in the USA, which doesn't help. They've been at it for 30 years, in particular after the oil price spike in 2005 - 2014. I think fracking + palm oil killed it. + it was just very expensive, especially capital intensive (compared to open field farming).

OK @EP, suppose you relax the requirements to storing energy from 30 mph to zero. Now you are down to 135 kj and 14 3200F units. Not so bad. You are more likely to use this in urban stop/start driving than hard braking all the way to zero on a motorway. 14 of them would cost about $1000 (before you add all the packaging and controls etc.)

It would be nice to see how much of this can filter down into the rest of the VW group's electrification over the next 2-4 years. Nice to see the range increased; I hope this is by really increasing the range, rather than just getting better at the WLTP test (would VW do a thing like that ?) However, it is still way too expensive, e30-40 K would be more like it, VW Golf - Passat pricing please - I am sure most people could get by with a 50-60 kWh battery and 2 wheel drive.

OK, imagine it works and works well. Should we put it in the exhaust outflow from a gas fired power station (or cement plant) or work directly from the atmosphere ?

@SJC, what do you mean, I do not understand your comment.

Could be interesting for the aviation people as electrifying most journeys over 500 miles is going to be difficult.

How do you make large amounts of cement at the top of a solar tower ? OK, so you can align about 300 mirrors, impressive, but it looks like a lot of fuss to replace a natural gas (or whatever) furnace. + it can't run continuously, i.e. at night. You certainly won't get 1000 degrees C heat from an overnight storage system. Be great in a James Bond movie, though. "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to fry".

@Peter, Impressive reply!

OK - how would it work as a catalyst: you run the exhaust through it and every so often you regenerate it - any ideas on how often? Do you have to bring it to the garage ? I am not sure they would want to collect up nitric acid. Also, they don't say what the metal is - lest hope it is not platinium or rhodium or something expensive. Still, interesting work.

Sounds like they got their time travel coordinates mixed up and brought something from a previous future - one where they didn't have 3d CAD. But why the armour - just how many dictators and drug lords are there* ? *ed: "quite a few"

Good progress. Question: How can Hyundai get so many miles per kWh ? Is it the aerodynamics of the car, or electrical system efficiency or are they fudging it ? [ I am assuming they are not fudging it, as it is EPA miles, (not NEDC, for instance) ]

It's never easy, is it.