Ethanol is not a good fuel source for something like a personal vehicle. Corn and rice based ethanol are barely energy positive and can be slightly carbon positive.

Sugarcane-based ethanol does have a strongly negative carbon footprint and positive energy but ICE engines are notably less efficient overall that large utility scale cogen plants, even after you factor in transmission and distribution losses.

Making sugarcane into ethanol is good. It's less clear that distributing that chemical feedstock to a zillion people is a net benefit. Just send the electrons and keep the fuel at the plant.

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SkeuomorphicBee 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Ethanol is not a good fuel source for something like a personal vehicle.

It is about as good as gasoline (or better), Brazil has been running a good chunk of its personal car fleet on sugarcane alcohol for decades. Yes, EVs are better than ICVs, but there is nothing uniquely bad about ethanol that makes it worse as a fuel source for a personal vehicle than any other combustive fuel.

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washingupliquid a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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	▲	idiotsecant a day ago \| parent [-]
		A low cost 120v charged EV is a wildly practical thing for everything other than very long distance travel. They are simple to maintain, require fewer spare parts, and have fewer parts to fail in general. Don't think Tesla, think golf cart and trailer. There may be places where grid access is impractical, in which case chemical fuels are a decent alternative, but as africa has shown solar microgrids are also quite effective and enable a ton of additional economic activity. EV utility vehicles match quite well to the second and third world, when they benefit from sufficient economy of scale. I don't know if we're there yet but we're very close. These things are getting quite cheap.