597 private links
For the individual owning the car, It is very high. When we take the societal costs into consideration, it is even higher.
- This paper by Gössling et al. in Ecological Economics, 2022 was really eye-opening. Over 50 years, the total lifetime cost of ownership of a "cheap" car will reach 600,000 EUR, out of which almost a third is effectively a subsidy from society to the car's owner. If you are considering owning your own car, I strongly recommend to at least skim this paper (CC license, HTML and PDF freely available).
- Another paper (Mattioli et al., Energy Research & Social Science, 2020), this is one is a review that considers our car dependence from a systems of provision approach. Quite interesting if you want to learn more about the of the political-economic underpinnings of car dependence (CC license, HTML and PDF freely available).
The Gössling paper generated some news items across the web, for example
- Kea Wilson, StreetsBlog USA, 2022. Takes an American perspective, which mainly means that everything gets worse.
- Carlton Reid, Forbes, 2022. Again, puts an American perspective on the numbers, but correctly states that "cars suck more cash than most people imagine".
I also remember a Youtuber doing a nice video on the Gössling paper, but I cannot recall enough about it to find it at the moment. Maybe I will find it later.
A pilot-scale demonstrator producing hydrogen gas (H2) using concentrated photovoltaics is currently making the rounds in the technical press. Exciting!
- https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/solar-hydrogen-production-scaled-up-in-real-world-test/4017291.article
- https://engineeringcommunity.nature.com/posts/harnessing-the-power-of-the-sun-to-produce-hydrogen-oxygen-and-heat
- https://hackaday.com/2023/04/27/making-hydrogen-with-solar-energy-with-oxygen-and-heat-a-bonus/
The paper from the Haussener lab was published April 10, 2023: Holmes-Gentle, I., Tembhurne, S., Suter, C. et al. Kilowatt-scale solar hydrogen production system using a concentrated integrated photoelectrochemical device. Nat Energy (2023).
Pretty neat. Also
the band gap in ordinary water is about 7 eV
Good to know!