Coupling

A programmers brain

I am a Software Engineer.

(It's not my primary job, but an important secondary capability which massively enhances my ability to do my normal primary role)

One of the things about Software Engineers, Developers, "coders", is the way they think, the way they analyse things. To me, this is one of the primary reasons why everyone aught to learn how to code: not because everyone needs to be able to code, but because it teaches analytical thinking. And much of the analysis that applies to Software Engineering also applies to real life too.

Fuel supply: tight and loose coupling

Since owning an EV, I've been analysing many of the aspects of EV ownership and long term strategy. I've also had many discussions and debates with people who are for, and against EVs. Many of these discussions end up focussing on fuel consumption, and the fact that EV's are not completely "clean".

It is, of course, completely true that most EVs, including mine, consume electricity generated from fossil fuel. In one discussion I had someone said "so the argument for EVs over ICE cars is about which is consuming fossil fuels more efficiently?"

He has a point. However, that view is focussing on just one aspect of EVs, and this is where my developer brain kicks in.

In Software Engineering, there is a concept of "coupling" which, basically, describes how closely dependent different parts of a system are with each other. If a system is highly dependent on other parts then it is "tightly-coupled" with them. If it is not so dependent on them then it is "loosely-coupled".

Writing software where subsystems are tightly-coupled with other subsystems is almost always considered to be bad practice. Software like that tends to be difficult and expensive to maintain and to change. Good software should be written to be loosely-coupled with other systems as much as possible.

This applies with hardware too: it's much better to have every phone use a common charging connector standard than for every phone to have their own proprietary connectors. Of course, what is good for the consumer and the environment isn't always in the best interests of companies, and some companies will deliberately make their software and hardware proprietary to lock consumers into their ecosystem. Microsoft and Apple are prime examples of this.

There is a strong analogy here with cars and how we fuel them. The status quo is that we have an ecosystem that has been developed over almost a century which drills for oil, delivers it to refineries, processes it into petroleum and other fuels, distributes it to filling stations, and then dispenses it to customers. Every stage of that ecosystem is highly dependent on all other stages, and when we use a petrol or diesel car we are highly dependent on it.

It is a very tightly-coupled ecosystem. Of course this whole ecosystem has evolved out of necessity more than design.

EVs still, mostly burn fossil fuels. The big advantage with electricity as a fuel is that electricity is loosely-coupled to the fuel supply. Electricity can be generated from burning oil, but also from coal, gas, nuclear, hydrogen, wind, solar and wave power, as well as who-knows-what in the future. And that is a very important factor because no-one knows yet what the long-term future of our fuel supplies will be.

And the other advantage plug-in EVs have over every other type of fuel system is that they are totally de-coupled from traditional suppliers: you can charge your EV from solar panels on your roof if you want.

(Of course, I realise that no everyone can install solar panels, but the point is valid even if it doesn't apply universally).

Put another way:
A petrol engine uses 100% fossil fuel and always will always use 100% fossil fuel, because it is tightly coupled to that specific fuel and to the supply chain that provides it.

An electric car may use 100% fossil fuel in the very worse case (and even then it uses less fossil fuel per mile than most ICE cars), but more normally significantly less than 100% of an EV's fuel consumption comes from fossil fuel (currently in the UK more than 10% is from renewable sources) and the percentage of fossil fuel used by EVs is decreasing all the time.

But it also gives us a choice: if we are prepared to invest in it, individually we can increase that percentage dramatically through the choice of electricity supplier, or the use of local (e.g. solar) generation to the point where 0% of the power from our EV comes from fossil fuels. And the more we do this as individuals, the more the power companies will move away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources.

What about biofuels

There was a lot of excitement about biofuels a while back, and they still have their place today. I know of people who use vegetable oil in their diesel engined cars, for instance.

Where we are today, we are not in a position where mass production of biofuels to the levels needed to supply a significant percentage of cars on the road is practical. That may change in the future.

Of course, being renewable is only one part of the eco-equation. Biofuel vehicles still produce a significant amount of CO2, and also create a significant pollutant health hazard on our streets.

And, if the problems of biofuel production are solved, there's still the option of using biofuel to generate electricity, which is possibly more efficient and less polluting.

The hydrogen argument

And what about hydrogen? The view put forward by Top Gear and the rest of the petrochemical industry is that hydrogen is our saviour. They envision a world where we fill up our hydrogen fuel-celled cars from hydrogen pumps on the forecourts of filling stations, which are supplied, in turn, by huge tankers delivering hydrogen from production facilities.

In other words, they want to maintain the same crappy, tightly-coupled, monopoly/cartel controlled supply chain that currently has a stranglehold over us.

But, in actual fact, hydrogen isn't currently a very green fuel; the majority of hydrogen production today is part of the petrochemical process. It consumes non-renewable, fossil fuel just like petrol.

Isn't that convenient? For them!

The fact is the petrochemical industry is running scared over plug-in EVs just as certain monopolistic, proprietary software vendors have been running scared over open source software. The push for pumped hydrogen fuelled cars is a distraction designed to turn people away from EVs.

Of course, there are some potential ways to generate hydrogen which aren't from fossil fuels. But the thing to remember is that hydrogen fuel cells are, fundamentally, a way to generate electricity to power an EV. So why on earth do people think that an EV which is limited to only one source of electricity generation technology, sourced by a historic cartel, and delivered through a legacy supply-chain, is a good thing?

The future, if we want it...

Battery technology has a way to go, but it's advancing rapidly. In the next 5 years, cost effective plug-in EVs with a range of 300 miles could be common. Combine this with a network of rapid chargers, home charging points with smart-metering, and street charging posts (if you can power a lamp-post or a parking meter you can power a charging point) then we could move to a much more flexible, cost-effective, and convenient vehicle fuelling ecosystem.

And hydrogen may have a future in this. If renewable, cost-effective ways to generate hydrogen are developed then why not. But I see no reason why hydrogen generation has to be trapped in the current supply chain. If, for instance, we develop a way to harness algae to produce hydrogen, it actually makes most sense to do this locally. Perhaps we even do it in our own homes and use the hydrogen to drive a home fuel-cell unit which provides our home with heat and power, and also charges our EV battery.