If Doc Brown (Christopher Allen Lloyd) had to choose a power source for his DeLorean today, which one would he choose?
In 1885 (see Back to the Future 3), Doc Brown and Marty Mcfly are forced to use a steam train to return to their present. At that point in history, there were no cars comparable to a DeLorean, despite the fact that rudimentary forerunner models of the automotive industry had been presented since the 18th century.
It was only after 1885 when in Germany Karl Benz and then the group led by Daimmler, Maybach and Jellinek (Mercedes was the name of his daughter) developed the first cars comparable to the current ones. Shortly afterwards, one of the most important modern industries was launched in France and in the US under the leadership of Henry Ford.
Those pioneering cars ran on alcohol, and there were even electric or steam-powered cars, but a petroleum derivative known as gasoline soon took over.
Indeed, the commercial history of the automobile cannot be understood without the early development of the oil industry a few decades earlier. For example, in 1859, shortly before the start of the American Civil War, Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well worthy of the name in Pennsylvania.
The world’s first oil company, Standard Oil Co. Inc., has been committed to manufacturing petroleum oil for lamps since 1870. It was on the brink of bankruptcy when soon after the ill-fated Tesla-Edison couple developed electric lighting in cities, but the auto industry came to the rescue. These were the very same years that Marty and Doc used a coal-powered steam locomotive. Coal, gasoline, electricity and natural wood coexisted already at the end of the 19th century. This suggests that energy transitions are processes of superposition and not of immediate replacement. Without going any further, in 1989 the last steam train in Western Europe was still running in Spain, in the province of León.
Many years later, in 1955, Marty is forced to hide his fantastic DeLorean so as not to attract attention. His nemesis, Biff Bannon, was driving a Ford Super De Luxe at the time, which ended up covered in manure after a chase. It was clearly a petrol car, much like the sleek Packard Custom Eight Victoria Marty drives to take his mother to the prom.
In an era of cheap fuels, more than 10 million cars were produced worldwide (currently more than 80 million per year) and the car was already a symbol of the middle class.
In gasoline, a product called tetraethyllead (tetraethyllead, TEL) was widely used. This allowed to improve the octane number, that is, the anti-knock ability of the gasoline and, as a result, the performance of the engine.
Thirty years later, on October 26, 1985, at the beginning of Marty’s epic, TEL gasoline was still the dominant fuel. That heavy metal gasoline would be used for decades to come, despite the fact that tetraethyl lead was dangerous and was associated with the presence of anthropogenic lead in the blood of civilians.
The discovery of this problem was accidental. It corresponds to the American scientist Clair C. Patterson, in an adventure that would deserve a good movie script.
Basically, Patterson worked to calculate the age of the Earth and the chemistry of the oceans by measuring ratios between several stable isotopes of lead. In it, he found that the massive use of tetraethyl lead had dramatically increased the proportions of unnatural lead in the atmosphere.
In the mid-1960s, the geochemist made this situation public, defending in several forums the need to reduce or eliminate the use of lead in gasoline. A true time traveler, Patterson went on to show that very old human bones contained hundreds of times less lead than those of his contemporaries.
As often happens in these cases, his research was not well received by the industry and it took many years to remove tetraethyllead from the formulation of commercial gasoline, something that happened in most countries in the 1990s. in aviation, motorsport and motorsport, and it was still served in some countries until 2021.
The truth is that Patterson’s studies laid the foundation for using lead isotopes as reliable tracers in the environment. By extension, the elimination of the use of TEL in gasoline has recently been shown to lower atmospheric levels of lead.
The history of tetraethyl lead shows us how science and technology have been able to gradually improve the quality of emissions and the resulting environmental impact of the automotive industry. However, to improve the octane rating, TEL was replaced by other additives, including MTBE and ETBE (methyl and ethyl tert-butyl ether), highly volatile compounds that cause serious problems in groundwater when fuel is spilled. Especially MTBE, the use of which was banned in the 2000s.
At the same time, diesel-powered vehicles took over a large part of the market. For example, the famous turbo diesel or TDI popularized a variant of diesel, when originally it was an engine designed more for trucks and other heavy transport, including submarines.
For more than a decade, these TDI engines were Europe’s best-selling engines, thanks in part to pollutant emissions figures that were later found to be falsified in an apparent collusion between manufacturers and governments asking for reflection.
The fraud was uncovered in 2013 by Professor Gregory Thompson and his colleagues at West Virginia University when they proved that one of the major European car brands (it was later shown that there were many more) had software that reduced nitrogen emissions only when the vehicle was running. was on a test bench, and not during normal driving.
The fact that a scam of this magnitude went undetected for years suggests caution in the current situation. Today, when we are shown again and again what environmental benefits electric or hydrogen-powered motors will have for the environment, a little critical evaluation wouldn’t hurt, especially given that, although we produce and use renewable energy, the necessary materials to make it not to make.
The automotive industry is a capital industry for our economy, and in a world as complex as today’s there is no doubt the temptation to repeat the history of the TEL or that of the TDI engines. Other notorious failures, such as that of biodiesel, or the doubts created by vehicles with flexible gas engines should not be forgotten.
On the other hand, in the past, present and future, Marty’s car not only needs a conventional engine, but to jump back and forth in time, it takes an extra boost of energy to activate the “flux condenser”. The energy of a lightning bolt in 1955, a few grams of plutonium in 1985 and a homemade nuclear fusion reactor in a future movie of flying cars are used for this.
However, in the current reality, it would not be easy to find a politically correct option, despite the variety of energy sources available. Any possibility (except maybe lightning) would have its drawbacks in a context where even electricity generated from renewable sources is increasingly being countered because of the environmental effects some point to.
In any case, let’s not forget that a powerful reason for improving energy technology, especially in transport, perhaps beyond climate concerns, is to reduce the effects of air pollution, which is responsible for the premature death of millions of people each year. .
Limited production in the early 1980s near Belfast, the DMC DeLorean had a nearly 3 liter V6 engine and used leaded petrol. When Back to the Future was released in 1985, the factory was already closed and from then on it became a cult vehicle.
So a Marty McFly in 2022 couldn’t buy a new DeLorean; It is not manufactured, there are not even spare parts to fix an old one. If he ever found a way to get another one from a collector, he’d be in trouble because it doesn’t use legal unleaded fuel and would require special additives. You also wouldn’t be able to drive through downtown Hill Valley or any of our towns without an ECO label.
Maybe Doc could convert it into an electric vehicle, but it still wouldn’t charge in most of our garages. Another option would be to run it on hydrogen, but then the cost would exceed the profits from many years of rigged sports betting.
If Marty and Doc, already desperate, decided to search the Internet for information to choose a new car, they would spend hours reading advice and recommendations of questionable objectivity. Ultimately, they may not know whether to commit to a vehicle with an internal combustion engine or rather something ostensibly more sustainable. To know what the right decision is, they have to go back to the future…
This article was published in ‘Het Gesprek’.
Source: La Verdad
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
