Oil Demand for Cars Is Already Falling
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I found this interesting site [1] where you can see the gasoline consumption for every country between 1991 and 2012. And all big EU countries I looked at (Germany, France, UK, Italy) exhibited a steep decline between 1999 an 2012. This can't have anything to do with electric vehicles. Most likely it's the continuous improvements in car efficiency.
To check this I went to edmunds.com [2] and I compared the same car between the 2004 and 2018. Here's what I got for the highway mileage for 3 random cars (in all cases I looked at the most basic model):
- Mazda 3: 2004: 29 mpg ; 2018: 37 mpg
- Toyota Camry: 2004: 29 mpg; 2018: 39 mpg
- Ford Explorer: 2004: 19 mpg; 2018: 23 mpg
That's an improvement between 21% and 34%. Not bad at all.
[1] https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?country=de&product=gasoli...
Paris reduced car mode share by 45% since 1990: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/the-automotiv...
Somehow that seems to totally escape everyone here.
It is also common wisdom that gasoline demand growth (and more generally energy growth) is the most direct and reliable indicator of economic trouble, more so than any other (mostly because governments "change" (a cynic would say falsify) essentially all other indicators).
And lo an behold ! This matches the data in other sources:
https://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f...
https://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f...
(note that the last graph is without taking inflation into account, so the real "zero" level is somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5% at the moment and therfore hasn't seen a single year of real economic growth since 2000 or so, and has had a few years of double digit "real" declines)
So I think we can safely conclude that the real issue is that Italy has seen a very long an disastrous economic recession, and that they are in fact not buying a lot of electrical cars.
This is also very much not a positive evolution. This is going to have cost a LOT of Italians a LOT of quality of life.
But try living in Belgium, a bit more rural Germany or the Netherlands (perhaps with the exception of Amsterdam) and things are definitely less accessible if you want to get out of the city for a bit.
If you mainly use public transports, then you know what places are easily reached that way, when the last train, bus, etc. goes in the evening.
There is stuff that is hard to do with public transport (be in the middle of nowhere early in the morning) and there is stuff that is hard to do with a car (go out drinking in a city center).
But outside of it, many parts of London will have people drive all over the place. If you're in Havering or Barking and Dagenham or other areas on the perimeter of London, a car is basically seen as mandatory for anyone over 16 or so.
I suspect it's partly cultural too; a lot of the Hacker News/Reddit user/cosmopolitian 'liberal' mindset becomes a lot less common outside of tech hubs and densely populated urban areas.
I also disagree that anywhere in London requires a car. And doubly that anyone from the perimeter requires a car early on. I know many people who lived in these areas and did not learn to drive.
Smaller towns and rural areas in the UK do require having a car to live effectively in.
But in all seriousness, that does look pretty poorly connected, but it also looks like the only place. Some people I know from Slough, Kew, and Watford all don't know how to drive, and none seems to have suffered from it.
And then there are segregated bike routes all over the place, in addition to lots of on road accommodations.
Do you just not think anywhere there is "out of the city"?
You can always rent a car when you want one. Just checked some prices and in the off season here in Barcelona you can pick up a car for $1/day...
Feel free to add a source that is transparent about all non-fuel costs.
There's tons of false advertising, e.g. rent a car for 1 euro a day (service charge), but also pay a maintenance charge, an insurance charge, a monthly membership fee etc etc.
For example I have a 3 euro a day rental, but I also pay monthly.
Typically cars will cost about 30-35 euros or so per day, for the cheapest ones, with possibilities here and there to do 15-20 in certain seasons under limited conditions.
See here for numbers: https://dollarsandsense.sg/complete-guide-buying-car-singapo...
Their example car worth 50'000S$ (~36'000 USD) will end up costing 160'000S$ (116'000 USD) total.
The only decline in car ownership was in 2008, and that was because of the financial crisis, not because of great public transport (which has actually been getting worse in my city in the last few years). The story that people are giving up cars in masses is mostly a myth, even though it might look like that if you live in certain bubbles in the largest cities.
If enough families get additional cars that could also easily offset whatever young people are doing. It's more complex than "there are more cars, thus people giving up cars is not a trend"
True, but the embedded carbon cost of each additional vehicle is roughly equal to 10-12 years of driving that vehicle.
This is not really true, though you can adopt certain extreme assumptions that would support such a claim.
Using statistically average assumptions (12 tonnes of embedded carbon/"average" car, 180 g CO2/km, 14,000 km/year) results in DIRECT CO2 emissions from burning the fuel alone to be roughly equal to 5 years of use.
But to get a like for like comparison, you should add the embedded emissions in producing the fuel, car service and maintenance, accidents, infrastructure costs etc... under such considerations the embedded carbon cost of the vehicle will roughly equal to 2-3 years of use.
FWIW.
On the other hand, if there was a way for me to get to work with public means, I’d do it (28 miles/day commute) I’d still keep my car and still flirt with the idea of having an extra beater (I.e an extra car for the wife) lying around for weekends [1]
I wor the day that I loose my ICE car though. The ICE car, if terrible, is one of the most important tools for the maintenance d liberty (with no AI, of course). As an example, the pentagon papers would not have been published (and therefore hasten the end of the Vietnam war) if not for the mighty station wagon.
[1] when you have kids having either parent able to take the kid out to an event and maintain the other’s ability to go to stores quickly is a massive increase in flexibility.
Nobody suggested this. The point is that when public transit is effective, it becomes more attractive because of the cost savings relative to owning a car. In the absence of effective public transit, commuters will still tend to buy cars regardless of the expense because they don’t have a good alternative.
it's half an hour wasted vs an hour doing something productive.
greetings, eMBee.
How do your french friends in the rural countryside manage without cars?
And yeah, it's very common for someone who lives in the city themselves to have all of their friends also live in the city. Not many young adults out in the boonies, plus how would you ever meet and become friends with them in the first place if you couldn't get there?
Even the regional railway lines often get you faster where you need to go than a car would, especially during rush hours.
There's also the rarely mentioned factor of parking space becoming increasingly harder to find and more expensive in city centers. In my region, this is being solved by building affordable, or even free, parking decks near subway stations on the fringes of the city.
But even with that the parking situation still remains tense.
One (there are many pros and cons) slightly positive side effect is that efficency have to increase. It’s unavoidable as humans in general seems to have a will to survive.
What seems to slow it down is mainly an unbridled capitalism, which is why for example China in a weird and somewhat unexpected fashion leads the way.
EV’s are not only more energy efficient, they also have a positive impact when it comes to proximity pollution.
Do you think nobody lives in the countryside any more? Do you think the next generation will permanently live in cities? Who do you think will grow your food and look after your open spaces?
My point was the author of my parent comment probably has a very skewed view of the need for cars, if all their friends are young metropolitan professionals.
They have a blind spot to the needs of a lot of other people.
Less and less people. Pretty much all of my extended family moved out two decades ago, for example, and several no longer live in the countryside because their region is no longer countryside.
And AFAIR France at least a few years ago had a problem with farmer solitude stemming from this, and ultimately from farm automation.
In the context of the thread and with my own situation in mind I’m not surprised that the demand for oil to support public transport is decreasing.
I’m with you that the car is going nowhere!
I think we just missunderstood each other a little bit.
Robots, i hope.
Funny, I have the opposite dream for technology where it alleviates the need to pack in as tightly as possible into cities for no particular purpose other than a job. While some people do truly love the city for the density and variety of amenities (I did when I was young), many people are forced to go there because that's where the good jobs are. This is made obvious by the number of people willing to commute an hour in from suburbs.
Ideally the only people living in high density are people who want that, which could easily be enabled by technology (remote working).
We can't all move into the cities and leave the countryside as a wasteland. Many people want to live there, and we need people to live there to keep the spaces living and working.
I worry that many people in tech have never spent any time outdoors and have no appreciation of nature at all.
Every time I had to drive to the house, it was a huge pain in the ass. The agents wanted to meet in the middle of the week, so I'd have to drive in the morning, find a coffee shop or library to work from, drive to the house, go back to the coffee shop, then finally drive home. It was a couple hours+ dead time every day.
Where I ended up buying I took the train (working the whole way), rode my bike 15 minutes, viewed the house, rode back to the train station, and took the train home (working the whole way) - whole thing fit in a regular work day + lunch break.
Now if I lose my job and wind up having to commute, I'll still have the train time to work, do personal projects, etc. but if I'd been in a car I'd just be sitting there getting out of shape and wasting my time (and trashing the planet).
Even though living in the country means I'll definitely need to buy a car, it should (hopefully) only be one for our three person household, and the drive vs. train visits to view places was a helpful reminder of how much I hate car commuting.
This does not sound like a public policy solution, but parents paid more for bigger flats
What newer apartment blocks brought was an option to stay in the city. Surely a 3-bedroom apartment with a big living room and a kitchen costs more, but prices are comparable with own houses in far away suburbs. That gives an option to stay with kids if not in the city center then at least within a short ride from it in public transport.
I'd bet that diesel vehicles had more to do with the big decline in Italy, and the smaller decline in Germany, than anything else.
For example, this EU diesel consumption chart showing a correlation on timing between the drop in gasoline consumption and the rise in diesel previously:
https://i.imgur.com/qV3CxY1.png
I'd be very curious to see if Germany's drop in gasoline consumption coincided with an increase in diesel consumption.
The large diesel vehicle boom perfectly coincides with Italy's drop in gasoline consumption:
https://i.imgur.com/UGVFxt6.png
Italy went from ~33% of new cars being diesel, to ~60% in only four years.
Germany went from ~30% of new cars being diesel, to ~48%, in just seven years.
The UK went from 15% to 50% over a decade.
I wonder if overall the economic benefits were worth it, based on what evidence is coming to light regarding the health effects of diesel vs petrol.
There's a known solution to sort out the SO2 emission, but it would cost a bit more.
The problem isn't pushing diesel over petrol, the problem is letting the car vendors cheat so blatantly, apparently with political backing (in Germany at least).
Not if you're Volkswagen.
diesel cost MORE than petrol already even in Europe and modern diesel engines consume as much as modern petrol engine with automatic transmission, in past diesel used to be more efficient, but this benefit was wiped out
In most of Europe (the UK is one exception I know of) diesel costs less at the pump than petrol. The cars themselves cost a little more, but the fuel usually is cheaper.
Excluding hybrids, the current generation of petrol engines (as they historically have done) have a lower fuel economy that diesel. A new VW Passat for example can be configured with a 1.5l petrol engine which achieves 53.3mpg (UK) or a 2.0l diesel engine that achieves 68.9mpg (UK) [0].
Diesel fuel itself has around 15% more energy per volume than petrol, and the properties of its combustion just make it more efficient than petrol, so I don't see how this will ever change, unless a new method of combustion is adopted. I don't really see that happening though, as hybrid and EV technology will likely take over from pure ICE vehicles.
[0] https://www.volkswagen.co.uk/app/configurator/vw-gb/en/passa...
I remember when I got my license around 2008 everybody was freaking out in the idea that the price would approach 1 euro per litre. Now after years of recession the price casually goes to 1.80 especially in the islands. So people just drive less and also more reasonably (not fast accelerations, showing off etc.). A welcome side effect is the big reduction in road accidents.
High unemployment rate is also a very likely culprit: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?id=LRUN64TTG...
[1] https://blog.toyota.co.uk/honest-john-honours-toyota-verso-f...
The newer models feel lighter and more nimble. Almost as if they've got rid of a significant chunk of their unneeded, inefficient components from under the hood and replaced them with something radically different.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=metric%20system%20tale...
Contrast with a gallon, which is too much liquid for most people to ever drink in one sitting. I feel I have way less handle on a gallon than on a liter.
Also, this guy's arguments come off as really shallow. To quote from what you're citing:
> A meter does not match anything; a foot does. I can imagine the meaning of “thirty feet” with minimal effort. A mile, from the Latin milia passum, is a thousand paces. Likewise a stone (14 pounds) corresponds to . . . well, a stone. An inch (or pouce) corresponds to a thumb. A furlong is the distance one can sprint before running out of breath. A pound, from libra, is what you can imagine holding in your hands.
These are lame ass examples.
A stone is "a stone"? Goddamn, there's stones of all sizes. You can rationalize any unit of mass that way. A furlong is how long you can sprint before running out of breath?? That surely varies a lot by athletic ability (and many people don't run at all, and certainly couldn't make a whole furlong at a fast pace). A pound is what you can "hold in your hands"? Huh? Surely that depends on the density of the material in question and the size of your hands. None of these are helping me out at all.
You can make better arguments by flipping the tables. 0 degrees is where the weather turns from rain to snow. 1 Liter of water weighs 1 Kilogram (compared to a gallon of water weighing 8.336 pounds). 1 Kilometer is simply 1,000 meters. I could continue but I think I've made my point.
The author hasn't demonstrated that legacy metric systems are innately superior. All he's demonstrated is that it can be hard for people to switch, which is true of many people. He hasn't a lick of evidence pointing to people in SI-using countries being less able to visualize what a kilogram or liter or kilometer are. And he won't be able to, because all units are arbitrary, and SI's convenient allowance for powers of ten always allows you to pick a right-sized unit to work with that doesn't yield a number that's either too big or too far off into the decimals.
One finger in height is an 1/8th of an ounce, two is a 1/4, and 4 fingers high is 1/2. But I've never been quite sure how much a "lid" is.
But if it takes a stone of weed to get you stoned, it's very bad weed, or you have a very high tolerance.
However, I suspect that was a rather sarcastic response.
What's so difficult? A handle is 1.75L or about half a gallon...
E.g. I’ve completed some basic carpentry projects. At the start I couldn’t have told you how much ⅛ of an inch was. Now I’ve got a good feel for that length. There is no reason why I couldn’t have learned what ½cm looks like instead as both are equally arbitrary.
TL;DR: any measurement unit can be learned; Metric strength in the simplicity of conversions.
It's not, though your sample is somewhat optimistic. For most vehicles it's closer to 20% than 34.
The interesting point is that electric cars don't reduce oil consumption by ~20%, they reduce it by ~100% (or ~99.5% since 0.5% of US electricity comes from oil).
That's about to be a dramatic drop in oil consumption as they come to be even a significant minority of vehicles.
In aggregate, oil consumption may drop, but it doesn't account for the possibility that fossil fuel consumption (natural gas, coal) in the energy mix of power generation will rise to meet the increased electricity demands from charging electric cars at home and workplaces. At least, until we completely figure out an efficient way to harness renewable energy like solar inside (swappable) batteries.
That's a relevant distinction for climate change, not if you're an oil company, or Russia and OPEC. Pre-tax oil prices are liable to trend lower -- and give countries an opportunity to raise fuel taxes without causing significant consumer harm, reducing oil demand even further.
And the capacity increase is poised to come from mostly non-fossil sources anyway. Expanding coal is preposterous -- solar is already cheaper and the only people who don't hate it for five different reasons are coal mining companies. Natural gas might be expanded somewhat, but even there solar is cheaper, and anyway natural gas releases less carbon per KWh than oil (much less coal) even before accounting for the greater efficiency of electric vehicles.
> At least, until we completely figure out an efficient way to harness renewable energy like solar inside (swappable) batteries.
Electric cars already do this. The batteries hold more charge than the average daily commute, so all that's required is to charge the vehicle during daylight hours.
What's old is new again.
[1] https://qz.com/1183779/europes-intoxicating-love-affair-with...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
[1] https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-prices...
Perhaps EU countries raised gasoline taxes in that period, or people got poorer.
Pretty soon we will be as good as 1985.
https://www.mpgomatic.com/2007/10/16/honda-civic-gas-mileage...
1985 civic was quite small, about 150" in length and small engines usually < 100 horsepower. the new civic is (169.3 in) 4,300 mm, considerable larger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_(third_generation)
you can see the evolution in civic size by car generation here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic#Ninth_generation_(...
It has electric range of 48 miles - perfect for the daily commute ~30 miles round trip. A nice gas option is there just in case the battery is gone - which I used couple time.
The charge point app shows that the car took in 169KWHr in Oct. I figure if it is charged at home 15c / KWHr = ~$23. That's 50% to 75% cheaper than my last commuting car's gas cost.
I am doing my share to reduce the oil demand.
Looks like 49% of California's Electric still comes from NG from 2016. Solar was < 10%.
Hopefully solar will be higher and higher percentage of it soon.
I love to see the 50%+ or more Ca's roof top, parking lots cover with solar panels.
I like to a solar deployment system such that: * a 40 ft container pull up to a parking lots. * A machine drill 4, 6, 8 1x6 ft holes on the ground. * A concrete 1x6 ft concrete anchor beam drop down - secured. * Some posts erect on site in a half hours. * The per-fabricated solar panel pull on top and fasten. * The whole solar deployment is finished in < 4 hours.
https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/18/pilots-hate-glare-from-world...
[1]https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/comparempg.shtml?words=#id=1...
"Oil use for cars peaks in the mid-2020s, but petrochemicals, trucks, planes and ships still keep overall oil demand on a rising trend. Improvements in fuel efficiency in the conventional car fleet avoid three-times more in potential demand than the 3 million barrels per day (mb/d) displaced by 300 million electric cars on the road in 2040. "
So yes, you are right fuel efficiency is a big factor; that's in fact exactly what the report says.
However, the article then goes on to claim that the report's prediction of electric car growth is actually off and that the impact will be much larger and much sooner than the report predicts. They also call out the notion that electric buses are currently already having a bigger effect than electric cars. I think they are right and that there are more currently oil intensive sectors where electrification is going to have an impact in the near future.
They then they get a bit hand wavy citing diesel demand declines in Germany that probably have much more to do with Diesel-gate and the sharp drop in demand in Italy, which in all likelihood has everything to do with the bad economy there and nothing whatsoever with electric cars. Also Germany is actually way behind in deploying electrical vehicles compared to e.g. the US, Scandinavia or the Netherlands.
In my view the real drivers here are going to be economical and not environmental. E.g. buses burn a lot of diesel. Diesel is expensive. Electricity is not. Therefore any reasonably priced electric bus is going to be saving cost. Which is why that is already having an impact.
The same is about to happen to most commercial operations involving cars. There are already police forces driving Teslas, which aside from being cool and good PR is also saving them a good bit on fuel. My bet is the taxi sector will start transitioning to being mostly electric in the next few years already. Fuel expenses are an enormous chunk of their margins. Same for local deliveries in cities. As long haul trucks become electric and self driving, that will also have a cost impact (eliminating the two single most cost factors of people and fuel). Aviation and shipping are next. That's starting to happen but will probably accelerate towards the end of next decade as technology matures. Also the economic life of such vehicles is much longer so this will happen slowly. But it's the same principle: fuel is by far the biggest cost factor and eliminating that changes the game.
Right now going electric doesn't quite make sense everywhere yet but that abruptly changes as volumes go up, prices go down, electricity becomes cheaper, and infrastructure gets deployed. By 2040 it is not even going to be close in terms of cost advantage. I'd actually say that by 2025 it is going to be very uneconomical to be burning fuel in cars (it arguably already is today); downright silly by 2030, and completely bat-shit insane by 2040. Somewhere in that time line any manufacturers still depending on internal combustion engines will be wiped out by a near complete collapse of demand and their profit margins. That's why essentially all of them are simultaneously investing heavily to make that happen while downplaying how fast it is happening so they can buy some more time to make it happen. They are all scared shit-less this will happen before they are ready to deal with it.
All this will also have an effect on oil production and related investments. In short, oil investors are already divesting. That cat is already out of the bag. Two things seem certain, decreasing demand and increased uncertainty over reliable supply and the resulting price volatility are going to be major concerns for anyone having oil as a dependency. It's not that there's not enough oil, it's more a matter of having an economic way of actually getting it to where it is needed at a predictable price.
2. Fewer people use private transport because public transport is slowly improving in Western countries
3. More people elect to own mopeds, which eat like 10 times less gas than a car
4. More people move to big cities, pushing even bigger incentives to abandon private vehicle ownership
1. various technologies to vary cam timing and lift, which allows you to keep the engine efficient over a wider range of rpms. Forms of this have been around a long time but they are become more widespread and more capable.
2. direct injection - where some or all of the fuel injectors inject directly into the cyclinder, rather than into the intake manifold just before the cylinder. Because the fuel can be added just when you want it to ignite, you can leverage higher compression ratios and/or turbo chargers without pre-ignition
on top of this there have been some small improvements in tire CRR, aerodynamics, materials. But a lot of the use of lightweight materials seems to coincide with also making the cars bigger. They certainly haven't gotten lighter overall!
If cars had stayed the same dimensions since the 1980s, the fuel economy savings would seen WAY more amazing.
I am not speaking of hybrid cars where the technology change is obvious - I am speaking only of pure ICE cars.
The "technology", where there is any at all, consists of mostly petty optimizations to the existing ICE model ... engine start/stop at intersections, cylinder deactivation at cruising speeds[1], optimizations to cam timing and making the fuel injection system behave more like a Diesel engine, even when it is a gasoline engine.
Again, all petty optimizations that don't represent any interesting technology and I find it laughable to see car advertisements in 2018 for various aspects of the engine/drivetrain.
The real gains have been from switching 6-cylinder, 3.x Liter engines out for 4-cylinder 2.x Liter engines and attempting to make up the difference with turbo and super chargers (sometimes both!)[2].
The end result is what you would expect to see in a mature, already optimized, already spec'd technology: very small incremental gains that have large tradeoffs in other areas. These little 2L 4-bangers are loud, they vibrate a lot, and they're going to be very finicky in terms of maintenance when the dual turbo/super chargers get to 8 and 10 years old.
I can't wait to never see any of them again.
[1] I think this is only applied to 8 cylinder engines which are turned into 4 cylinder engines at highway cruising speeds.
[2] ... and generally failing. I hope this "wisdom" is lost to time because we move away from ICE cars entirely, but for anyone still interested: "There's no replacement for displacement".
I regularly forget that most people here are in the US. The vast vast vast majority of cars in Europe are smaller than 2 litres, even diesels. Most petrol (gas) cars here are 1.2-1.4L engines, while most diesels are 1.6-1.8. A 2l VW golf is pretty much the top of the line in terms of "standard" cars, before you get to "performance" style cars.
I have the next model up, a 1.6L 4-cylinder. It is quiet to drive and has good fuel economy.
This article doesn't recognize the trade-off of increased demand on the power grid, and source of that fuel.
If they were talking about greenhouse gases, then the answer seems to be that it depends on where you live and how/what you drive, but an electric vehicle almost always produces less emissions than an equivalent gas powered one. [2] does a decent job explaining though I feel he leaves a few parts out for the sake of clarity. For example, driving a P100D isn't the equivalent of driving the average car. It's more like driving a sports sedan (like a BMW M5), so those sorts of vehicles would probably be a more fair comparison. In the same vane, the whole US car fleet includes lots of SUVs and other trucks, which if there were equivalent electric models, would obviously not go as far as a Leaf. It would be great if there was a US calculator that worked like [3] does for the UK so that we could do the same sort of comparison based on the mix where we live.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#Product... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM [3]https://www.nextgreencar.com/tools/emissions-calculator/
My old Honda 2001 gets between 35 and 40Mpg consistently.
The truth is that gasoline is still king because it is the fastest way to recharge your car. Manufacturing process and incremental improvements have made combustion engine far more efficient and cleaner. It's likely that this trend will not weaken, instead get even more boost more than ever because it offers a cheap alternative to electric cars.
Coupled with a low oil price, we aren't going to see combustion cars disappear like HN folks would have you believe, instead we will see consumers voting with their money.
At some point we will see combustion engine that approach somewhere a bit shorter than the 80~85% theoretical limit of combustion engine efficiency, but that is still an insane improvement to what we already have.
I don't disagree that electric cars will get more popular, but a cheap oil price and highly efficient combustion engine that is coming is not going to lead to an apocalyptic future where sportscar owners are banished to remote islands, free to cause all the pollution they want.
"but we have over 60% efficiency from our combustion engine!" they yell to no avail. The silence of electric cars whirring in the cities snuffs out Doug Demuro's fans.
No, that's not why. Gasoline is still largely king because it's the legacy technology, so it has a very wide install base and it's still cheaper.
The average person very rarely drives the full range of an electric vehicle within a day, so the charge time almost never becomes a limiting factor. Indeed, for many people, having to fill up at a pump every so often brings more inconvenience into your life than simply plugging in your car at home or the office every so often. Once you have access to a charging station at some place you're already going regularly to anyway, electric becomes more convenient than liquid petro fuel.
Do you know why it's so popular? You can fill up anything from cars, jets, boats, planes several folds faster than the current battery charging technology. Battery also tends to have a fixed weight even if its used up which becomes a no-go for the military and aviation.
If what you say is true about the average electric vehicle driver, that they rarely charge and it's a none issue, consider for a moment the average gasoline vehicle driver, who can't afford an electric car, who doesn't care as long as it takes them from A-Z as cheap as possible, who are more likely than the electric car driver to leave in less affluent neighborhoods requiring longer commute, the downtime is more expensive than someone who can afford to wait around 30 minutes to get a partial charge. When you start to leave the city core and drive long distances, the ability to quickly recharge energy and get going again is critical.
The infrastructure for battery charging has quite some time to go before catching up. Ironically with the increase usage of such power stations, the power to manufacture both batteries and charging stations would still cause pollution and harm to the environment.
There's no silver bullet here and electric cars will be just another niche for people who are rich enough to care about the environment, while majority of wage earners would be lucky to even afford a used gasoline car.
Public mass transportation will benefit the most from reduced cost of operation due to fuel, but that's also minimized the trend of falling oil prices.
When oil became cheap, people chose to go around half the earth than through the quicker Suez canal. It's a testament to how powerful the price of oil is in our society.
Even if ICE efficiency can improve substantially, can it match the rate at which the price of batteries is falling? Morgan Stanley predicts EVs will reach price parity with ICE in 2025 and then continue to get cheaper.
https://insideevs.com/morgan-stanley-evs-price-parity-ice-20...
Add to that cheaper fuel and maintenance. I think you are being too optimistic about ICE's future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations...
It's also not a simple matter of getting rid of these plants, there's an entire political stake in seeing these continue to run, and there simply is no other way to scale up quickly and at a lower unit cost using alternative renewable sources of generating electricity.
You can always burn more coal or some non-renewable sources to meet your varying peak demands. Not so with other sources like solar panels or hydroelectricity.
When it comes to electric vehicles, the question won't be oil, it will be the supply chain still being very polluting and China having a massive foothold on lithium supplies.
- Electric buses, which have much higher usage than personal vehicles [1]
- China’s sustained and increasingly stronger push for EVs [2]
China is the largest land vehicles market in the world with 30% of global sales, so its moves have a large impact. [3]
When the initial sales prices of EVs become competitive with ICE cars without subsidy, it is likely that Chinese EV manufacturers will push hard to expand markets in developing countries where cost is a major concern. They should have a cost advantage over established global brands. The flip to electric, for new car sales, could be quite rapid then.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/electric-...
“The numbers are staggering. China had about 99 percent of the 385,000 electric buses on the roads worldwide in 2017, accounting for 17 percent of the country’s entire fleet. Every five weeks, Chinese cities add 9,500 of the zero-emissions transporters—the equivalent of London’s entire working fleet, according Bloomberg New Energy Finance.”
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/china-is-...
“The world’s biggest market for electric vehicles wants to get even bigger, so it’s giving automakers what amounts to an ultimatum. Starting in January, all major manufacturers operating in China—from global giants Toyota Motor and General Motors to domestic players BYD and BAIC Motor—have to meet minimum requirements there for producing new-energy vehicles, or NEVs (plug-in hybrids, pure-battery electrics, and fuel-cell autos). A complex government equation requires that a sizable portion of their production or imports must be green in 2019, with escalating goals thereafter.”
[3] http://www.oica.net/wp-content/uploads/Sales-all-vehicles-20...
Soon you won't be able to sell many ICE personal vehicles in China. Huge taxes will be levied on them, or the big bosses there will ban them altogether. (I would put money on a ban. The Chinese government always did have a fondness for blunt instruments.)
In any case, it has now been confirmed that even companies like Ferrari and Maserati have electric vehicles in the works. Mainly with the Chinese market in mind, and targeted for 2020.
So yeah, if the largest market is intent on a wholesale switch to electric, then that's definitely gonna have a big impact.
That being said I doubt they will get rid of them because that isn't really the way China works. For taxis, you really need an ICE at the moment. For delivery vehicle not so much. Every delivery vehicle that I've seen in cities is electric. The trucks between cities aren't but lots of the intercity deliveries are by train (some is electric some isn't).
One thing to be aware of is that China generally has tough laws that are not well enforced. This is by design. They don't have to change the law they just need to enforce it more strictly.
What generally happens is that the laws are introduced into the top tier cities and then slowly out to other cities over time. What they have been doing is increasing the emission requirements. This is to bring down pollution. We had an old jeep that we rented that had to be tested every 6 months because of its age. There was a loophole that let us pass the test. It cost a little bit more but we could drive it. The government knew about the loophole and let it exist for a few years then closed it. You knew it was coming just not when. I think the jeep was moved into the country or sold for scrap.
The emission requirements will just keep slowly going up. There will be way around the requirements (which they are aware of) but they will slowly make it harder and harder. If you really want an ICE it will still be possible but when you go for a new car it will just be less effort and easier to get electric.
This is why I have an electric moped. I could get a petrol one which would technically be illegal but it is just so much easier to get electric.
Very interesting. Where I am in North America, nearly every taxi is electric, and I think I’ve seen two electric delivery vehicles in the last five years.
I wonder why our transportation is so very opposite.
There is so much online shopping that distribution centers are roughly every 10km so you go back to base get a load and a new battery. Same for food.
The difference is there isn't really a car charging network here like in the US. Most of the charging here is just using normal sockets or at home. I charge my batteries overnight twice a week. There are a number of charging points in the public garage but it is still slow charging.
So not good enough for a taxi going all over the city but good enough for delivery.
Do you mean hybrid? Or really electric? Which brand, models do taxi use?
May I inquire where? To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never seen one.
Maybe Uber/Lyft around here you’d see a few, but never a taxi.
Spoke to a driver about it once and the Tesla’s rarely do more than a single charge in day.
The need for long charge time is not that big of an issues as drivers still have to do mandatory breaks, and show up at depots for cleaning at least once a day.
Who cares if someone has a massive SUV if they drive it 2 miles per day? It’s the 50 mile per day driver that you really want to discourage from buying a gas guzzler.
Sincerely, a dude that bikes to work 90% of the time unless the weather is particularly deplorable (or has a big load go bring home)
It makes sense to do both, because it's necessary to catch the average driver without pinching either end too hard.
It doesn't take much to convince the heaviest drivers to buy more efficient vehicles -- it may not even take anything, since the fuel savings is already thousands of dollars for them regardless of any taxes.
But they're still paying the fuel taxes even with the more efficient vehicle. Meanwhile the average driver would need a much higher fuel cost to convince them to buy the more efficient vehicle -- high enough that it would hammer the innocent heavy drivers who have already bought more efficient vehicles.
On the other hand, a combination of fuel tax and incentives for purchasing more efficient vehicles will convince the average driver to switch without putting too severe a burden on heavy drivers who have already done the right thing.
It's also generally not good to discourage productive usage. Better to get consumption from 100 gallons to 60 by going from 30MPG to 50 than by only being able to drive 1800 miles instead of 3000 and losing whatever value the extra 1200 miles of travel was worth.
And of course it would be the opposite if you tried to do it entirely through a fee on inefficient vehicles -- the amount required to convince the median driver on its own without a fuel tax would be too much burden for vehicles with light usage. Which is why you want a balance of both.
Require them to buy 1000km of fuel when buying the vehicle.
Plus second hand owners won’t feel the extra taxes on new cars, not directly anyway.
On the other end you can do what California is doing which is paying people a couple of grand towards a down payment if they replace an older ICE car with an electric car. Would be a good idea if the state would also identify and target longer distance commuters for buyouts.
The second is that this turns into a form of environmental redlining. Poor folks who need a car get priced out of the new car market. They then get stuck in older, less efficient, and less safe vehicles. Mass transit may eventually fix this, but in most parts of the US you’d have to raze entire cities to get a working mass transit system.
It's the reason why people rent a $1k TV that lasts for 10 years at $50 (5%) a month ($6k spent) or pay 2% a month on a creditcard.
We tend to overlook the small amounts and get slapped in the face by the large amounts.
Most of the personal EVs I saw in Beijing were Teslas; because if you were rich enough to have a private parking space, you were looking for an Audi replacement, not an economy one.
It probably won't work. Or, come to think of it, it will sort of work as it will force the "poorer" people (those who can't afford a dedicated parking space with access to a charger) to sell their ICE cars and revert to using public transport, so you'd only have "richer" people driving their EV cars. A similar thing is now happening in cities like Paris, where recent rules forbid the use of older diesel cars, which has in fact meant that people who had moved out in the banlieues for cheaper rent while still working in downtown Paris have had to go back to using public transport, which out in the banlieues is not that reliable compared to the downtown area. That means that those "poorer" people now have issues arriving at time to work or picking up their kids from school. Regressive taxes and bans are bad.
The drivetrain is awesome... Not as good as a pure electric, but still awesome.
- A lot of people who work remotely still need/want cars. In fact, I'd speculate that one reason a lot of people are drawn to remote work is precisely so they don't need to live in expensive, crowded locations.
- Remote work is still a fairly small slice.
- In many cases, people who commute are commuting further/longer, in part because of housing prices in elite cities.
I'm not sure how typical you are. Even though I mostly work remotely, I still drive a fair bit for recreational activities even aside from running local errands (which, in my case, I can't really do without a car).
I work remotely and my wife and I have two cars. We do significantly less miles than when I worked in an office. Often our gas car sits in the garage for 2-3 days unused.
This is because we try to do as many electric miles as we can.
Sure, but working remotely means I put gas in my car every 2 weeks instead of every week.
I do agree that it's mostly like too small of slice of the population to make a difference yet though.
I doubt it happens a lot though, because you cannot guaranty that you will be able to work remotely in your next job.
And unfortunately changing cars too often has a significant environmental cost. I think making of the car has as much as 50% of its average life-time carbon footprint. So buying a newer car may be increasing the MPG, but brings in a huge upfront environmental cost.
- Almost all manufacturers have admitted to BSing the MPG tests, so the gains in practice probably aren't as good as we think.
- Ideally, that ratio will shift over time to be more on EV and efficiency gains.
This video is worth one million words:[2]
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wy2O/state-farm-backstory-truck-song...
What is depicted in the video is considered, by much of the United States population, to be their birthright. The tax or incentive regime that would be necessary to prevent every young male from buying a huge truck[3] would be a bigger political impossibility than banning firearms.
I note that General Motors just reintroduced 0% financing for trucks.
[1] ... which is well deserved. Bus transit in the United States is terrible. In most municipalities, there is no other option.
[2] A state farm (insurance company in the US) commercial that was aired in the past year during American football (not soccer) games.
[3] If you don't live in the US, you have no idea how enormous the vehicles are that individuals are using to drive their single persons to the grocery store. It is very common to see a 7 meter long vehicle that is rated to tow an 8 horse trailer (or a yacht) being driven, with no cargo, and a single occupant, to run errands around town.
I'm quite interested to see how Tesla's pickup truck does in this market. On one hand, it can be a total flop, because as you pointed out, huge swathes of this market exist because men need to acquire and exhibit their "masculinity" (as they understand the concept). Burning fuel and making noise seems to be one of the core components of this "masculinity". Coal Rollers simply take this to it's logical conclusion.
On the other hand, maybe its other attributes (0-60 times, towing capacity, size, technology, price) can be sufficiently better to overwhelm this "burning fuel and making noise" aspect and become a well-selling truck. Maybe buying a ridiculous 6-seater, $80k+ EV pickup will be how you update this "masculinity" while distancing yourself form the coal rolling assholes.
I wasn't aware that Tesla had a pickup truck in the pipeline...
On the platform side, the skateboard chassis design and its low center of gravity along with AWD achieved with multiple engines, etc. - there's a lot to be excited about there.
However, the UI/UX is getting weirder and weirder and I have a hard time imagining that serious workers/contractors/fleets are going to embrace a big touchscreen and no physical controls and no physical dials behind the wheel, etc.
I think a much better outcome would be a Tesla licensee who could concentrate solely on the professional truck market.
I know the USA has much lower fuel prices than here in the UK, but even so surely it's something to factor in? Also, it's a relatively recent-ish phenomenon even in the USA isn't it (i.e. marketed for lifestyle/personal use outside their original intended commercial purposes)?
I was in the market for a new vehicle recently and went to test drive a few, even some bigger ones like the Nissan X-Trail. But even this had something like 60mpg fuel economy. The smaller stuff I tested was ~70mpg. I'll have to factor in the purchase cost, maintenance costs, fuel costs etc. They are all such significant expenses I couldn't afford not to. And I'll more than likely end up with an equivalent to the Ford Focus 1.6L I just sent to the scrapyard, because it's decent enough but affordable. Or a Transit Connect/Caddy minivan for moving all my biking gear around. I'd love a bigger and more luxurious car, but it's very hard to justify rationally. A truck would be way out of the question for both affordability and practicality. It's not really even there on the spectrum of desirability, and I think anyone who did get one would be roundly mocked for "compensating for something" and "not caring about the planet".
I can understand it when the public transportation options aren't great. But when they are readily available, why not use them. I've never really considered driving a desirable luxury in the current world; unless perhaps I had a chauffeur! It's a necessary and not particularly pleasant chore, and if I can avoid it, I will!
* Lower classes i.e. poor tend to use the bus more, and in general the middle classes in the US avoid contact with this demographic group.
* Infrequent routes means you have to plan your whole route in advance; if you miss your bus by a minute, you're whole days plan is fucked
* Infrequent routes have the additional drawback of making you wait for long hours at the bus stop; more contact with said lower classes, more inconvenience etc.
* Homeless folks tend to use the bus a lot, and they stink, and the whole bus will reek
When I was in South Korea, I LOVED using their clean, on-time buses. They were an absolute breeze. But most American bus systems are pretty gross.
I'm curious about South Korea, do they simply address homelessness better, or what's the reason for them not having this problem?
I hope those countries have a plan B for when the majority of the world's car run on something else than oil.
That said, they'll still be in a lot of trouble if oil/gas collapses.
I don't own an S-400 but they seem to do ok.
"Russia's defense industry employs 2.5 – 3 million people and accounts for 20% of all manufacturing jobs in Russia"
>Around 70% of Russia’s oil production is sold in Europe. Each time we fill our tanks, we are sending about €7 to Russia. This analysis details how rising oil demand in Europe has funded increases in Russian military expenditure over the last decade.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/how-europe...
You don't need electric vehicles to cut oil demand. This is just one example of many moves the industry is making.
This has always been a problem for Jaguar, I wonder why they have never been able to get a grip on it.
Personally I thought the shape of the X Type and S type was nasty, but loved the engine. Mine was sold to scrap when the reverse gear blew one day-- don't try to force the shifter into reverse if it won't let you for some reason.
The 70s XJS is a really cool body style and anyone with a lot of time, money, and or skill on their hands would be really wise to just knife a crate engine into it somehow and get all the reliability that Jaguar mechanical bits have never delivered, ever :)
> Without Tesla, ... There would still be a transition to sustainable energy, but it would take much longer. History will judge this, obviously, but I would say on the order of 10 years, maybe 20 years.
Source: https://www.recode.net/2018/11/2/18053428/recode-decode-full...
Even the plugin hybrids might be worst for the environment: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46152853 (transporting a heavy battery and never charge it is pretty dumb).
We really need to skip the hybrid phase and go directly to 100% BEV.
I get that companies might buy things and the use them wrong but that's another issue.
Tesla's primary competitors are BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, Audi, Infiniti. Anyone selling a lot of cars over ~$45,000.
With that said I hope history will acknowledge the impact that Tesla and Musk have had/will have.
I.e what has happened to all the mom and pop exhaust shops, transmission shops, service centers, local mechanics, etc etc. Have they just packed up and left? I'm really curious how this has played out in countries where adoption has happened fairly rapidly.
EDIT: and then I figure another leap was the convergence of the two. gps/internet on cell phones.
Tangent, "can barely cope with modern highway speeds", well, why does the highway speed limit have to be 65mph or 75mph or 80mph anyway? People got by when it was 55mph. Now, I'm not calling for the return of 55mph, but I'd like to point out that highway speeds are not natural law. Raising them was a choice- a choice that was one of many small pieces to arriving at where we are today, that is to say without much improvement in fuel economy.
It is a bit of a matter of conventions akin to driving on the left or right side of the road - while there may be some fringe situational benefits in some circumstances it really doesn't matter what you do so long as everybody does the same thing. In a bit of irony unusually following the law when few others do can itself create bits of hazard.
It's a far cry from the 90s model of the same truck, that was getting single-digit mileage.
You are the one who started with the comparison!
> My truck tips the scale
If you use it to do something you could with a normal car like commuting or shopping, does it matter?
A lot of people I know who have pickups use the bed 3 or 4 times a year. Renting one when needed would make a lot more sense.
p.s. The USA is also a top oil producer?
So in general, the "electrification of everything" along with cheaper renewables and storage will likely push countries towards more "energy independence" than currently.
But if the power grid goes down (e.g., cyber terrorism / cyber warfare), then so does your vehicle.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly in favor of cleaner energy. However, it does also change the overall nature of the game. It's not simply swapping one souce for another.
another key point is oil recycling. most of the new oil put into engines is recycled with 15-20% new stock at best. the really old stuff that can no longer be refined after use is either blended for use in asphalt or recycled plastics.
Are you sure this is true? I believe the size of the average American new car is the largest it's ever been. Sedans and station wagons have been replaced with SUVs and trucks. Hell, Ford's barely even making cars anymore, just SUVs and trucks. More info here: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/the-steadily-disappearing-am...
I suppose that you were referring to Hummers, but they were only ever a tiny portion of the market. The rest of the market, however, has been steadily transitioning to larger vehicles ever since.
- who is 'we'? The policy-makers? The voters? They voted a climate-change-denier into the presidents chair. Not fair? Should've listened to those fear-mongerers telling you to stop using Facebook as a source of news.
- how to deal with the global economy? There is no 'central' plan. Funding green energy will just shift the balance to other countries.
- who is going to produce so many electric cars in such a short amount of time? Without transportation, you will risk civil unrest.
- how would you produce steel? How to prevent movement of steel production to developing countries?
- how will you transform the agricultural industry? Even if you start now, the transition to 0% fossil fuel usage will take at least a decade. The supply of lithium and the battery production capacity are simply too low.
- if you subsidise green energy, you will also promote the inefficient production of the goods necessary for this new market. The inefficient production can and may happen oversea, causing you to just shift the problem to China or elsewhere.
- "the alternative of runaway climate change is far worse". You cannot influence the global markets. If the nationalisation/taxation will cause civil unrest and an illegal usage and trade in fossil fuels, the alternative might be better! At least the (legal) usage and trade is subject to international oversight.
2nd Paragraph Text: Oil use for cars peaks in the mid-2020s...
Ugh!
> But demand for oil consumed for transportation is already waning in certain markets and segments.
ICE vehicles are not going to the junkyard anytime soon.