Miracle cure eFuels comes to the rescue of the German car industry! That is what I understand from the recent reactions in German politics. E.g. from @_FriedrichMerz (@CDU) as discussed by @Stefan_Hajek in @wiwo.

Unfortunately,
reality is

You see, it IS eminently possible to power the trusted combustion engine with fuels that are produced using low carbon electricity. That's not the problem.

The problem is that you need A LOT MORE ENERGY while propping up an engine whose only advantage is that it can burn stuff.
Let's look at that engine first. Don't get me wrong: Germany should be proud at the heights to which it has taken this extremely complex marvel of engineering. The electric motor is simple by comparison. But also better on all fronts.
Actually, the higher the overcapacity of the combustion engine in normal use (e.g. for a car that can accelerate quickly) the the bigger the disadvantage of the combustion vehicle. Here the relatively slow and small Porsche already uses six time as much energy.
Then there's the losses when producing fuel from electricity. When you add that up you end up with around 87% energy losses versus 73% losses for the electric vehicle. So eFuels need over five times (73/13=5.6) more energy.
https://t.co/8iGbwQiIOY
I think eFuels might be perfect for hard to electrify mobility like aviation. But building five times more windmills in order to protect an engine that is simply less efficient seems like a bad idea to me.

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Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.