Big oil will die when it becomes cheaper to hail an electric self-driving car
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Musk tweeted earlier this year "Tesla Semi truck unveil set for September. Team has done an amazing job. Seriously next level."
I am involved in a logistics startup that leverages Class 8 trucks and the specs are brutal.
Our trucks need a 500+ mile range and have to haul 40,000 - 50,000 pounds, and do it 5 - 6 days a week reliably.
It's hard to conceive how an electric drive train & battery array could manage to deliver on those basic specs.
But since 2000 heavy trucks have accounted for 40% of the TOTAL growth in oil demand, and similar gains are projected over the next few decades.(2)
And capital on the fleet side is very organized and effecient.
EG if lifetime operating costs of electric are significantly lower w/a longer useful equipment lifetime adoption will be rapid.
(1) https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/852580027178696704
(2) http://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2017/july/iea-study-unveils...
I kept trying to parse this (and then got shocked and was like "no, that can't be true...") before going on and realizing I was reading a garden path sentence.
It doesn't look like a misleading statement to me. Unless you mean it's missing a comma after '2000'?
"Since 2000 heavy trucks have" tells me "2000 heavy trucks" did something and I'm going to read what that something caused.
It's only when I get to "and similar gains are projected over the next few decades." that it's clear the author meant "Since the year 2000, heavy trucks have".
It's a garden path sentence because the initial interpretation while you're reading it is incorrect and you only realise this when you get to the end and reprocess the start.
If the author put a comma there, it would be clear on first read: "Since 2000, heavy trucks have".
If the semi is also made with "commodity" components like seems to be the idea (for instance using Model 3 motors[1]), then the cost of ownership equation becomes very appealing. This kind of modularity is yet another inherent advantage over ICE technology.
Also in this case I imagine multiple motors are more efficient than a single large motor for long-distance travel because of better thermal control for the motors themselves.
[1] https://electrek.co/2017/05/03/tesla-semi-model-3-electric-m...
Electric motors should be fine for torque, and great for efficiency (with regenerative braking). Range is obviously the main issue.
But is range really such a problem? Imagine you can just swap the battery pack at recharge stations. That would be a pain for cars (different batteries, batteries built into the chassis, consumers being worried about the new battery being OK, consumers not knowing how to swap them, consumers not planning routes properly), but for trucks you can standardize.
100 battery swap stations across the US could cover a lot of high volume truck routes. Tesla cars are low volume, and the battery can't be swapped (because they're built into the bottom of the chassis), and Tesla can still afford those power charging stations. Trucks seem a little more "blocky" than cars though, so perhaps a swappable battery is possible?
It doesn't need to cover every edge case, in the first rollout, just enough to steal business away on high volume routes.
From Tesla: "a Supercharger provides up to 170 miles of range in as little as 30 minutes".
Yes, there is certainly a need for swapping batteries if you drive 500 miles a day, and are being paid to deliver on a tight schedule - you don't want to spend an extra hour and a half charging. But if you're spending 6 minutes swapping those batteries out (2 minutes per change), it's a lot more viable (especially if an EV can go up hills faster).
People don't drive a Tesla 500 miles a day, and even if they do they don't mind a few 30 minute breaks. Trucks are a bit different.
Electric drive trains are excellent at heavy loads; many huge haul trucks, trains, etc. use diesel electric where the diesel is just a fuel source to generate electricity for the real workhorse, the electric motor.
So it's really just the battery that's the hard part here.
Most EVs get ~3.3 mi/kWh. If the increased air resistance means only a third of that efficiency, a 450 kWh battery would be sufficient for 500 mile range. That's about 3 tons of weight, which is a lot, and take up about 2 feet of space behind the cab, perhaps. But since a diesel engine itself is going to weigh about 1 ton more than the electric motors and inverters, it's not a completely outrageous amount of overage.
Of course, the battery alone for this would be about $100,000k, as much typical tractor cabs these days. So clearly there would be some sort of swap program, and battery usage would be charged.
This all becomes a ton easier if designed for just, say, 250 miles before swapping batteries. But napkin math suggests that 500 miles isn't completely implausible, if you can get over the up front capital costs, and the slightly lower hauling capacity.
Though my intent was mostly so that the capital cost could be amortized over many uses by independent truckers, rather than them having to take out an upfront loan for the massive cost of the battery. But it also makes the timeliness of charging a non-issue.
I don't want to buy a new truck and have my new battery swapped for a 5 years old battery, then have a break down somewhere and pay for it.
Not if they're hauling around 40,000 - 50,000 lbs of freight.
That's based on the drag, which is most of the energy spent on hauling.
Though another benefit of electric is that the kinetic energy of accelerating 50,000 lbs to 55mph can be regenerated, instead of lost entirely. And it's not an insignificant amount of potential energy, at really close to 2kWh.
Not even close. BMW runs electric trucks between production facilities and our 169kWh trucks (Terberg YT202-EV) which haul up to 34,000kg get at most 100km out of that, often less. So you're looking at about 0.6km/kWh or 0.37mi/kWh. It will be more with less stopping (although there isn't a lot of stopping on our routes) but nowhere near your estimate.
My spitball of 1.1 mi/kWh was clearly way too high still.
Before I had a baby, ride sharing was fantastic. Now it's basically useless. To transport my baby, I need a car seat of the appropriate size. It's really handy if I can leave a stash of diapers and wipes in the car. A portable high chair is nice, too. Sure, ride sharing is more convenient, but the car seat issue is a show stopper, at least until the ride sharing services catch up or autonomous car safety improves significantly and legislation catches up.
All that being said, the car seat and diaper cache in question live in an EV, and I'm quite happy that I am basically done with the gas station phase of my life.
I don't have kids, so I'm definitely coming from a place of ignorance. On planes and trains I never see car seats used, which I assume is because crashes are so unlikely on those modes of transit.
If self driving cars are as safe as, or safer than, a trip on a train, would it still be a concern?
https://www.faa.gov/passengers/fly_children/
It's a PITA to use due to the huge variety of seat dimensions and car seat sizes and no standardized latching system for plane seats.
Not sure about trains.
I assume that if/when cars are as safe as a plane/train, adults wouldn't even need seat belts but you'd still need a carseat for an infant/toddler because it also stabilizes the child's position. Kids <6mo have no neck control. Kids <10mo can't reliably sit up for long durations. An autodriving car might be safe, but it'd probably still need to make emergency stops / turns. That'd be real bad if there were no carseats.
There's also this thing that even if you don't have kids (I personally don't) you don't want to sit on a car chair which has had other people's bodily fluids on it. Public transport like buses or trams is for the moment safe-ish when it comes to that, at least where I live, because not a lot of people masturbate in public or have sex on the chairs of a bus because people will call them out, but I don't see what would stop 2 people having sex in a car which they don't own (they only share it) and where nobody can see them.
There's also the non-politically correct question of what we should do with homeless people riding these vehicles? This is a real problem when it comes to public transport in my city, as the trams and buses are used as a de-facto day shelter against cold when winter comes. You really do not want to sit close to many of these homeless people in those cases, as the smell is very hard on the senses (I mean, real hard), often times you can tell a homeless people has been riding that tram half an hour ago only by the smell alone (even though he's not still on the tram). If said homeless people were to use this car-sharing thingie I can guarantee you that nobody else will use said cars after them.
There's also the thing of how do you protect these vehicles against destruction and negligence by its users, a problem encountered by many who have shared their car in the existing car-sharing projects.
That said it's a solvable problem with some thought, engineering, and standardization, but you are correct in saying it won't be solved until ride sharing EV's are out of the early adopter stage/commuter stage.
It does. But then the simple EVs aren't a that much cheaper than those complicated ICE cars. Where is the $9k efficiency basic model that someone in a lower income bracket could afford? Mention the government incentives and credits and talk about the cheap recharge cost compared to a tank of gas, less maintenance costs, and all of the sudden a lot of people will start listening. Most EV cars start at $20k and up from what I remember. That's more than the MSRP of a new Honda Civic. Few American consumers will choose a more expensive model, with less range, and long recharge cycle. There'd have to be some serious tax incentives/penalties or a huge jump in gas prices for people to start seriously considering EVs as their next car.
I get the point of electric taxis about maintenance, but there are only so many taxis around. Some are even regulated based on a medallion system. So I am afraid just taxis might not be enough to revolutionize the car industry.
It happened with vinyl and film already, most famously. They were announced to have met their end and were doomed to be but a mark in history books, yet they've found their place. A fine-tuned masterpiece of mid-20th century automotive engineering is a thing of beauty, but it's not sustainable on a vast scale anymore -- and that's what we need for transportation now. We need transport on a vast scale -- a worldwide, ubiquitous, affordable scale. Everyone needs access without harming the planet that we so happily live upon.
If it combustion engine vehicles become about beauty, they will last in some form. I hope they do.
People thought that vinyl manufacturing would never exist again, but new "boutique" pressing plants have emerged over time with people dedicated and passionate about the design of the machines and the quality control process.
I imagine you could see something similar with gas, though of course the scale is very different.
My father was a pipe fitter in an oil refinery for ~30 years, and he started doing it because he loved the craft. Over the years the large companies' treatment of their employees made him a bit jaded, but if it's a smaller operation I imagine you could see passions emerge again.
In spite of the obvious benefits of automated vehicles, especially for long trips, I can see some people still enjoying the feeling of driving on the open road. And even if automated vehicles are the prominent mode for long trips, there will still exist a need for rest stops, truck stops, etc. They just might be a little different.
There could probably be boutique gas/fuel stores. Maybe someplace that offered charging stations, new fully-charged batteries, and various brands of artisan gasoline. And of course, they'd have a fridge full of Coca Cola and a shelf of chips and Oh Henry bars.
Dammit, I'm seeing the makings of a fun fictional world here...
Too bad they can't get their seat belts to work..
http://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN19R08Y-OCA...
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/6ljmed/tesla_m...
I've driven it, and I've driven other high end cars of it offers very little that you can't find in other high end cars.
The novelty of instant acceleration is fine, but the insulation from wind noise and road noise are still not on par with high end brands even though there's no ICE (and it's not because there's no ICE noise to cover up, in a modern S Class the cabin is almost whisper quiet), and if performance is you goal.
You don't (knowledgeably) get a Tesla because you want the best car, you get one because you want a Tesla. To me cars like the S Class shame the Model S for trying to call itself a "luxury car", and cars like C63 AMGs shame it for calling itself a "performance sedan"
Its not like going to office/supermarket/school/college/home is a race.
Instantaneous acceleration is nice for stop and go traffic and city driving, but that's inherent to all EVs (A base model Volt as fast from 0 to 30 as a Model S 85)
The Model S also has two trunks and can carry six passengers (okay two have to be kids). This thing is as practical as a minivan and has the performance of a 911 turbo. I find that pretty amazing.
[0] http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/news/a30536/tesla-model...
Something tells me that this could be an ecological disaster even greater than coal.
The article may be correct on the rationale, but the timing seems fast given everyone's concern about the planet.
Also consider that oil comes from a small hole in the ground, and already has refineries in place to turn it into gasoline, while last year the whole world only produced about 650,000 tons of lithium. Each Tesla uses about 65Kg of it.
ICEs aren't going anywhere for a very long time. Their market share will certainly be reduced for ground transportation but electric power isn't making nearly as much progress in marine or aviation applications. Liquid field are simply too convenient, especially in remote areas. I know city folk sometimes like to forget that everyone else exists but gas/diesel off highway vehicles aren't getting replaced very soon. The service life of a big piece of equipment (e.g. a front end loader) is measured in decades. Even if a silver bullet comes along it will take a long time for everything else to age out. Secondly, standby generators are everywhere. Those aren't being replaced with batteries anytime soon for obvious reasons. Oil is refined for use in plastics, lubricants and a laundry list of other things that are indefensible to modern civilization. Sure, transportation is a big slice of the market for oil and it's going to get smaller but it's not the only slice. Finally, while the first world may adopt electric power soon, other nations will be slower. If the Keystone pipeline isn't carrying crude that will be refined and sold in the US it will be carrying crude that will be refined and sold elsewhere.
This is wishful thinking, nothing more.
I don't have stock in an oil company or anything, the author's claims are just a little too ridiculous for me to ignore.
And that alone will be enough.
You're right that gas/diesel will never be completely replaced, but it seems that it doesn't need to be in order to suffer a serious decline in usage that radically transforms the energy landscape.
Looking at this graphic [1], ground transportation is the biggest single use case of oil in the United States.
67% of oil consumption in the U.S. goes to the transportation sector, and ~80% of the transportation industry's oil use is for ground travel. A serious decline in that could really hurt the industry and cause the kind of disruption the author was talking about. (Granted, the graphic's from 2004 but I don't have a reason to believe the proportions have fundamentally changed).
[1] http://afstrinity.com/images/data/oil-transportation.jpg
It's not the change that hurts, it's how fast the change happens. Think about the kinds of things that have hurt the industry in the past. They've all been very quick.
So China will stick with gasoline even though it will be more expensive, has to be imported, and the country has terrible air pollution problems?
[0]https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_use
Agreed. The fact that countries need to establish laws to prohibit ICE vehicles suggests that "the market" isn't going to kill ICEs for economical reasons.
Actually it's nearly to that point for me already. I moved to LA from Hawai'i. In most places in Hawai'i having a car is essential if you want to go anywhere (not so much in Honolulu) - on my island the bus only ran every 2 hours until 4pm on the weekends, and some of the stops were over 5 miles apart.
But now that I live in LA, so any of my needs to go out can be met with Sprouts Amazon Prime Now, Uber and when I really need something coordinated I'll rent a Turo car. And all this costs me less than a monthly car payment would.
So already a bus pass is on point with owning a car and that's just for insurance. Add to the cost of operating a vehicle: gasoline, oil changes, repairs, annual inspections/registration, etc.
Busing for my commute and then using Uber/Lyft/Zipcar for abnormal trips is cheaper than owning and operating a personal vehicle, today. Forget about 2025.
In general, it see oil prices falling and sovereign oil selling the most since they can undercut competition for a diminishing pie (basically a fire sale). The private oil companies get super screwed, with something like 80%+ stranded assets.
Source: http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/fuels.aspx https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_transpor...
I can't find a good source for what percentage of global oil consumption is burned up in cars, but supposing that was ~20% as well--that would be really something, to take away ~20% of Big Oil's revenues.
- Pretty much every point the author makes about the rapid takeover of EVs, from being cheaper to hail one instead of owning a gasoline powered car, to the ones relating to owning cars at all, could (and should) be prefixed by "In a city..." because speaking as someone who lives far from an urban sprawl, a lot of this stuff just would not work. Sure EV's work ok out here, though the self driving tech might need more help than most often, but who is buying all of these self driving EV cabs and operating them, and why? The volume just isn't here, you'd get tons of passengers clamoring for a ride between 7am and 9am, then again at 3pm to 5pm, and then it would be near dead the rest of the time.
- There are no EV technologies (to my knowledge) ready to replace anything beyond a city runabout vehicle. The act of, for example, plowing snow would be insanely taxing on an EV truck (running an electric motor under strain is the best way to wear down the battery), and sure, the mechanical element is definitely true but you'd need some sort of fast-charge system to make it viable, otherwise your trucks are spending hours charging for every hour plowing. And then that's a fairly easy one, electric combines, construction equipment, cranes, tow trucks, I haven't heard of any of these and I look for this sort of thing.
- Societal inertia is going to be a big factor here, around here we have people driving vehicles from the 70's, not as collector's items or anything like that but as their daily driver. Come on out here and propose to our average Joe the idea of buying a Tesla Model 3 for $37,000, a guy who barely makes $30,000 a year, who buys and drives the cheapest thing on the lot until the wheels fall off and goes and gets something else.
I could go on but it's bed time. Maybe ICE vehicles will be dearth from cities within 10 years, maybe. But even then I kind of doubt it.
Electric trains exist, and they haul around way more mass than a simple truck.
As for battery charging times, why couldn't users just swap out empty batteries for fully-charged ones, and charge the empty ones while they're offline?
But that's not what the article is suggesting. It is saying with electric self driving cars, you won't own your own car, it will be cheaper to simply use one exactly when you need it.
To misquote a famous Rabbi, if you have a sapling in your hand and someone rushes to tell you that the inexpensive fully self-driving electric car has arrived, first plant the sapling and then go and see about the car.
Together, these countries account for over half of the world's oil demand and the urban parts account for most of it. [2]
The impact on urban areas alone would be sufficient to disrupt the whole industry. The disruption will unlikely to be as drastic as what happened to Kodak and Nokia since most people cannot afford to change cars as quickly and changing modes of transportation especially conditioned on self-driving vehicles reaching broad acceptance might take some time. Your point regarding rural areas may be applicable to several developing countries. The author's key points remain valid, although the timeline looks too optimistic.
[1] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?year_h...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consu...
[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-am...
The idea is that Joe will rent the Tesla (i.e. use a taxi), not buy the Tesla because it will be cheaper to use a taxi than to own the car himself (in the city).
So Joe doesn't care about how much the Tesla cost just like nobody cares about how much a taxi car cost.
This effect is visible in Denmark: most taxis are expensive Mercedes-Benz E-Class which nobody owns privately because of the price. They are used for taxis as they are very reliable for driving a huge distance everyday.
> Societal inertia is going to be a big factor
It can change very fast when people can save money.
Same here, but I don't they are that much more reliable compared to other cars. I think it has more to do with labor and fuel being a much bigger part of the total cost vs. the upfront purchase price. So it doesn't cost much extra for taxi companies to market themselves by providing "luxurious" transportation.
I think the hype about pure electric and self driving are largely just that, hype. I do think electric will rule the day, I just don't think we're going to see it by 2030 - maybe by 2050 - but thats still a big maybe - we need one more generation of battery technology to make it to the mass market.
I also fear misinvestments from the car companies that could cause major unforeseen health and ecological risks 20 to 30 years from now. The same has happened with diesel here in Europe, which 20 to 30 years ago was seen as superior to gasoline for the average daily commuter and which now, when more than 50% of the cars in in major European countries run on diesel, has proven itself really bad for the health of people living in big cities.
Regarding trucks and cranes. What reason is there for them not to be electric? A snow plow wouldn't overload the motor - it would be designed with a suitable motor and gear reduction just like every other vehicle. For now, there probably aren't subsidies or "look at me saving the planet!" factors to make them economical. There have been lead acid electric forklifts since forever and they charge them overnight.
To start, they all have huge investments that they borrowed money for on the calculation of making a certain level of revenue for 40 or so years.
A big drop in demand will mean less sales, but also that prices per barrel, which are already low, will go down even further. The result would be maybe half the total revenue, so they won't be able to pay off their loans and will have to declare bankruptcy.
Build a car with a 30 gallon tank and you could easily be in the neighborhood of 1000 miles range.
Edit: IMO the main disadvantage of EVs today is not the energy density, with that they're almost on par with ICE. Instead it is the rate at which energy can be refueled. Driving a Tesla for long distances is still a hassle. That's why I see EVs mainly as daily commuters in the near future, while for weekend trips people may just rent an ICU car.
[1] http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-7709...
[2] http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1104121_electric-car-ene...
I used to be very optimistic because of how simple electric cars are in theory, but in practice, a century of refinement of internal combustion engines has not yet been beaten.
I would expect Teslas to be a bit more expensive to maintain at this point, as parts availability and third party after market parts manufacturers are about non-existent for them. As electric vehicles get more popular and mainstream, this problems (as far as EVs in general) will likely be resolved.