There's multiple kinds of complexity. Mechanically, an ICE is more complex. But materially, its arguably less complex, since it doesn't rely on rare earths or lithium, and the knowledge base for construction and maintenance of ICE is already established.
There's another important thing to consider - the energy density of the fuel or battery. Petrol is nothing short of miraculous. We can literally poor energy into a tank. We can transport it with zero energy loss, over any distance and any time. Conversely, any use of batteries faces massive losses in efficiency due to conversion losses.
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On the topic of losses, internal combustion is less efficient than burning the same fuel on a generator, charging a battery and discharging through an electric motor.
This is even true not only for big generators but also for series hybrids because the engine can be optimized to work in a narrow RPM range.
Still have to pay to transport petrol. And all cars require large batteries. Some just have even larger ones.
"It doesn't rely on rare earths"
It relies on petrochemicals of which there are limited amounts, and certainly the amount you can burn is very limited if you don't want big environmental problems later.
There are solutions. Hydrogen fuel cells have great energy density, although operating needs care. Better for buses, trucks and taxis where the driver can be properly trained to deal with the dangers of leaks.
You can use sodium batteries which are extremely cheap, extremely safe, operate in environments you can't use petrol in let alone lithium. The only drawback is they have about half the energy density of lithium batteries. But for something so cheap who cares if you can only get half the range? Plenty of people will buy that
I agree. Current stuff uses rare earths, and it shouldn't.
Mmm, also, funnily enough, I just bought an electric scooter 5 minutes ago. Paid less than the parking fee for a place, and can use it for more. I feel like I just won
"Half the range" is simply untrue. You need to expend energy to transport your energy, range has a negative exponent.
