Cost of converting entire U.S. to electric cars? Zero. | Hacker News Reader

Cost of converting entire U.S. to electric cars? Zero.

blogs.law.harvard.edu

55 pointsbdfh42111 comments

Another exercise in utopian ego-centric social planning using back-of-the-napkin stats that ignores all side effects. There are an infinite number of these pseudo-analyses that can be done, and they're easy because you don't need to collect any hard evidence.

For example, I propose that we start a forced diet and exercise program for the United States. The cost of this program will be negative $25 trillion. It will pay for itself in reduced medical costs. The present value of our Medicare obligations are around $50 trillion, so let's say we save half of that.

I could churn out another 50 of these in 50 minutes. It's easy - just imagine yourself as an all-knowing dictator (and since you already think you know what's best for everybody, you're half-way there!) and then pull numbers out of your ear.

Let's ban alcohol! Net savings = the amount we spend on alcohol each year + reduced health costs. And it worked so well the first time! Heck, let's ban fast food!

Of course, all of these ignore the intrinsic value that comes from not living in a society where some politician has control over all your consumption choices, but Americans long ago stopped caring about their own freedom.

Sounds like a fun parlor game.

Unfortunately many people like to play it in legislative buildings.

Here's my attempt (and boy would it be fun if it actually gets implemented):

Think Green!

Want to save time, money, and the environment? Its easier than you think– just THINK GREEN.

Gasoline consumption in the US is the largest contributor to global warming and one of the largest expenses. Top Economists at Harvard University have determined that the best way to save on gas and cut down on pollution... is ignoring red lights! Only when the path is completely safe, of course, but the gas savings from avoiding unnecessary braking and reacceleration adds up to over $20 BILLION dollars a year!

Being smarter at stop lights and stop signs may only boost mpg gallon by a few mpg (think about it: cars get better mileage on the highway then in the city because of less stopping and starting), but the amount saved can really add up! Here's the math: America buys 150 billion gallons of gasoline each year, and with gas at $4 a gallon an estimated 22 BILLION DOLLARS can be saved by smarter driving, saving every driving American $100 EVERY YEAR. Not to mention the time saved!

Even better, if less gasoline is used the laws of supply and demand force the big oil companies to LOWER THEIR PRICES. So you will need to buy less gas, and will help make it cheaper!

Worried about getting a ticket? If you are not endangering anyone, police will give you a free pass if you remember to mention the Think Green program.

So what should you do? Avoid unecessary stopping and acceleration. If at an intersection where it is safe to go but you see red, THINK GREEN and go! By each of us doing our part and acting efficiently, we can reduce pollution, save time, and save some serious money at the pump.

So next time you are coming up to an intersection: Think Green!

Very well put, Prrometheus, but perhaps some more subsidies for electric cars would be in order as a softer way to move in that direction and would be justified as a measure of national defense (cutting off the funding to terrorists and Islamo-fascists by driving down the price of oil) and environmentalism?

In general, I'm all for free market solutions and only free market solutions, but they don't work as well when you're talking about defense and things that are in the commons like air and water.

Instead of a subsidy for some specific thing - just tax the alternatives. It's far easier to get rid of taxes later on than to get rid of subsidies.

In this universe, we almost got rid of a tax to pay for the Spanish American war.

What taxes have been abolished in your universe?

That's a point, indeed.

But somehow I feel I aimed at something different in the original post. I can not point to it now, though.

Well, someone has to keep us safe from Spain!

>In general, I'm all for free market solutions and only free market solutions, but they don't work as well when you're talking about defense and things that are in the commons like air and water.

I understand the "public good" argument in favor of governments, but when I see governments producing so many "public bads" I question whether they are doing any net good at all, let alone enough good to justify their cost.

For example, the United States "defense" department doesn't produce defense, but rather produces useless destabilizing wars on the other side of the globe. Is that worth the $600 billion that we spend on defense each year? Hardly. Congress just passed a $300 billion farm bill to subsidize people with average family incomes of over $200,000. An effective use of my money? I don't think so. They spend an additional $100 billion or so each year to spy on me and make sure I don't get high. I'd like my money back.

Yes, I am an anarchist. It's a pleasure to meet you.

"All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?"

One addition - I would like to point out that smart people are most often susceptible to these Utopian authoritarian fantasies. Mostly they tend to underestimate the complexity of society and overestimate their own intelligence.

Smart _young_ people. I can easily see myself buying this 10 years ago. Right now it's almost reflex to think about side-effects, but only because they bit me in the ass too many times. Also in time you read more and your mind opens more - and not in the usual sense.

During WWII, we were cut off from natural rubber, so we invented synthetic rubber.

In the ecology movement of the late 1960's, the federal government mandated removal of all lead from gasoline by 1975. We made it. (Anyone remember "Leaded or unleaded"?)

In the first oil scare in 1973, Detroit responded by pulling 2 old inventions off the shelf, front wheel drive and fuel injection. Effectively doubling the world oil supply within 5 years.

Why should now be any different? If the federal government mandated all new vehicles being electric only by 2014 (grandfathering in all existing vehicles), we'd make it. And the problem would gradually resolve, like every other problem.

The only thing stopping it is special interests. Anyone in congress supporting this would probably cut off his own fundraising lifeline.

>Why should now be any different? If the federal government mandated all new vehicles being electric only by 2014 (grandfathering in all existing vehicles), we'd make it. And the problem would gradually resolve, like every other problem.

How about if we wait for the technology to be ready instead of setting an arbitrary deadline? And what's so important about switching to electric cars that it can't wait 10 years?

Sometimes, the arbitrary deadline is the thing that forces the technology to be ready.

Do you think JFK had any idea if the technology would be ready when he declared the goal of a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s?

We need more vision and less debate.

> We need more vision and less debate.

If "vision" means rash feel-good actions and "debate" means thoughtful consideration of all view points, then I respectfully disagree with you. I think we need more debate and less "vision".

I think that he had a pretty good idea.

Do you think JFK had any idea if the technology would be ready when he declared the goal of a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s?

Yes. Do you think he got up and made that pronouncement without at least asking, say, Wernher von Braun whether that would be a realistic goal?

I'm not sure all of this type of initiatives have happy endings.

Especially front wheel drive. Yeech!

Cute idea, but a a lot of the details don't even stand up to a basic reality test.

For example: "value of a used car, if exported to Latin America or China: $5,000"

Does he seriously think the US can sell the entire set of automobiles currently on the road to Latin America or China at that price?

I didn't see him use that number in his analysis (other than list it), so it doesn't seem important either way.

Sure he does-- he subtracts it from the (assumed) $20,000 price of a mass-produced electric car, to give a net price of $15,000 per vehicle.

Yes you can convert everything from oil-based to renewables, but what about cost per kWh? At the moment, renewable energy sources just can't compete with oil even with the current high prices.

That's not to say that entrepreneurs aren't making headway and closing the gap... Soon. Can't wait!

he's not talking about renewables, this plan would involve building many more coal plants. Browntech. We're going to burn through the coal, even once we convert the southwest to a solar farm we are still going to need mor energy. And we have a lot of coal.

And the cost of the ensuing clean up? It's more than zero.

It's better to burn coal in an industrial energy production facility that has cleaning technologies than for there to be millions of internal combustion engines. The economies of scale reduce externalities. I would hope a government good enough to give its people free electric cars would invest another trillion dollars in clean coal.

Why not nuclear?

Wikipedia: Contrary to popular belief, coal power actually results in more radioactive waste being released into the environment than nuclear power. The population effective dose equivalent from radiation from coal plants is 100 times as much as nuclear plants.

He mentioned nuclear, too. But are there not even less resources than oil?

We could use nuclear for 100% of our energy needs for the next 5 to 10 thousand years (assuming everyone in the world uses as much energy as people in the US and a world population under 20 billion.) If we switch to fusion we would have energy well into the billions of years range.

The problem with fusion energy is that nobody got it to work yet. Unless you count solar power.

I've heard other numbers about the nuclear energy, but anyway - time will tell.

Uranium is vary common. On average you could extract more energy from coal by using the trace amount of fissionable material in coal than you get by setting the stuff on fire.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power) As of 2004, nuclear power provided 6.5% of the world's energy... At this point, the enriched uranium, containing more than the natural 0.7% U-235, is used to make rods of the proper composition and geometry for the particular reactor that the fuel is destined for. The fuel rods will spend about 3 operational cycles (typically 6 years total now) inside the reactor, generally until about 3% of their uranium has been fissioned, then they will be moved to a spent fuel pool where the short lived isotopes generated by fission can decay away. After about 5 years in a cooling pond, the spent fuel is radioactively and thermally cool enough to handle, and it can be moved to dry storage casks or reprocessed. As opposed to current light water reactors which use uranium-235 (0.7% of all natural uranium), fast breeder reactors use uranium-238 (99.3% of all natural uranium). It has been estimated that there is up to five billion years’ worth of uranium-238 for use in these power plants.[33]

PS: The five billion year figure makes some assumptions about the rate of use but once you start looking into the numbers it's far enough into the future that our predictions are just about meaningless.

Edit: There are a lot of odd regulations and political history around whey we do it this way but long term supply is not the real issue with fission.

Nuclear power is not actually as economical as other forms of electricity, which is why, even with massive government subsidies, there aren't any new nuclear plants being built in the US.

source: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/parenti

Actually, nuclear is not as economical as other forms of energy after all the US govt. red tape is accounted for. If that were not the case, much of Japan and several countries in Europe would not get a majority of their power from nuclear power plants.

Along with the "US govt. red tape", there are US subsidies for plant construction (read the article linked to above), and US law limits the liability of nuclear-plant operators in case of accident.

The governments of those other countries provide even more subsidies to their nuclear industries.

The electric grid gets cleaner even without renewables. Clean coal is a rapidly growing area in electricity production and nuclear production continues to increase.

Having to create electricity to meet our energy demand is a fantastic problem to have. Energy independence should be an economic goal of any developed country. You don't want ANY foreign control of 7% of your GDP, let alone a cartel like OPEC.

President Clinton turned the biggest source of clean coal in the world into a national monument. Curiously, the folks who owned the second biggest source (in Indonesia) were big campaign contributors.

>Energy independence should be an economic goal of any developed country.

Why? The whole idea of comparative advantage is that you can increase your overall standard of living by making the things that you are best at and importing everything else. The only reason why you would want to be independent is if you planned on fighting a war with all the other countries in the world at the same time (granted, this could be the policy of our current US administration). Interdependence creates peace.

If China attacks Taiwan, they will have the huge percentage of their GDP that consists of trade with the US on the line. So I consider outright military conflict unlikely. However, if we were as "independent" as you suggest I think war would be much more likely.

Why again is independence a good thing?

<sarcasm>Because we know that foreign energy dependence has kept us from waging war on other countries.</sarcasm>

Uh, sorry. I think you've got it completely backwards. Why do you think the framers were so concerned about being "entangled in foreign alliances"? The kind of entanglements you propose will prevent war are exactly the kind we should be avoiding because they could very well draw us into wars we don't want to be in.

"Energy Independence" is probably a misnomer - but the point is to change our economics so that we aren't forced to provide advantage to our geostrategic adversaries. Because our economy is so dependent on oil, we currently have little choice but to fund those who currently fund our (the U.S. and the rest of the West) enemies. The desire is simply to make oil a commodity like any other, and not one that can make or break the U.S. In other words, we need something to give us the ability to tell the Saudis to kiss off.

>In other words, we need something to give us the ability to tell the Saudis to kiss off.

And then we can invade the Saudis! Brilliant!

What I'm arguing is that being able to tell the Saudis to kiss off means we won't ever have a reason to invade them.

Realize I'm using "the Saudis" as a proxy here. But further:

Can you imagine a scenario in which the following things are true:

a) we buy, say, 40% less oil overall

b) we have the same tensions with SA and Iran as we do now

c) SA and Iran are as rich as they are now (translate: capable of financing terror groups to fight proxy wars) ?

I can't.

There's no such thing as clean coal, it's an oxymoron made up by energy companies, it's newspeak! What's next, dry water?

The biggest problem that I see with this idea is a social one, and not an economic one. It can be summed up in one word:

Pride.

Just look at how tenaciously consumers cling to SUVs and large luxury cars, even though they surely know better. People who can't even afford decent food or housing spend ridiculous amounts of money on excessive vehicles.

I'd imagine you'll have to pry the wheels of their gas-guzzlers from their cold dead hands before they get in some cheap, mass-produced, plain-vanilla electric transportation, virtually devoid of status and "bling."

>I'd imagine you'll have to pry the wheels of their gas-guzzlers from their cold dead hands before they get in some cheap, mass-produced, plain-vanilla electric transportation, virtually devoid of status and "bling."

Why can't you have electric transportation AND status and "bling"?

I'd say it's starting to happen already.

When I see a Hummer these days, my first thought is "chump", and wonder what the price of a fill up is at current rates. I think among some high earning demographics, the car with the most cachet is already the Prius.

Of course, then you have the ginormous Hybrid SUVs being pushed now by Detroit. Do people really not understand that whatever gas you save through the "hybridness" is more than offset by the few tons of metal they're driving around, compared to a smaller non-hybrid?

(Yes, this question is rhetorical.)

If all the people in the US would drive electric cars, you obviously need electricity to do so. Let's assume the power stations use oil the generate electricity. How much oil would you need to keep all these electric cars in the US going? Would that be more or less oil the US consumes now for keeping its cars running?

Let's assume we would all drive a Tesla: http://www.teslamotors.com. Who will do the math?

Except we are in the US, which is blessed with 27% of the world's coal reserves (by far the largest; Russia is second with 17%).[1] So there is no reason we would burn oil to generate power.

Even better would be generating all that electricity with Nuclear power, since the "middle east" of Uranium is Canada and Australia, with 28% and 22% of global production, respectively.

[1] http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/coalreserves.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Supply

Of course there are better options than to use oil to generate electricity. But what I am interested in is: what is more energy efficient? x million combustion engines or a few centralized power station plus x million electric cars?

Wired published a quick oil reserves map the other day: http://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2008/oilreserves

Most interesting find: Canada is #2 in the world with 179 billion barrels. Why are we getting our oil from the middle east? And what % comes from up north?

"We", as in North Americans, don't get much of our oil from the middle east. We get the majority of our oil from Canada, Mexico, and various South American countries.

However, we pay world price because the oil that we get from those sources can be sent elsewhere. If the middle east shut down, the Euros would buy from "our" suppliers.

Much of Canada's oil (I'm thinking of the Alberta tar sands) hasn't historically been economical to produce, because it's harder to get out of the ground and refine. In the Middle East, by contrast, they dig a hole and it comes bubbling out like in the Beverly Hillbillies. (One interesting consequence of that is that petroleum economics haven't been widely practiced in the Middle East.) Anyway, with the price of oil having gone up so much there is now huge investment going on in northern Alberta to develop this stuff.

See the Dilbert toon on fungibility:http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-02-19/

That is the most retarded use of flash ever.

Agree, but the old site is inaccessible.

Why make the government pay for the entire thing? As oil and gas prices increase, the costs of purchasing an electric vehicle are going to be on parity with the costs of purchasing an electric vehicle. I imagine that the Big 3 in Detroit are wringing their hands over Toyota's success with the Prius.

And, with the bevy of new electric vehicles that are getting released in the next couple of years, you're going to be seeing more and more of them on the roads. even without massive governement intervention.

I for one am actually glad that gasoline prices are increasing. I think that we should tax gasoline heavily like most of Europe does. Do you think they drive around in those tiny little cars because they are comfortable? Increased gasoline prices decrease consumption, and increase innovation in fuel efficiency and alternative energy vehicles.

You'd want to do this transition over time and give the cars away in a lottery, in a way calculated to upset the financial markets as little as possible. Saudi Arabia would NOT be happy with this arrangement. They would be very, very angry in fact; we have been such close allies. I would not like to see them angry.

Cost of bureaucracy, inefficiency and fraud in such a huge government program: $2 trillion

Little over simplifying the situation but its fun to read and think the way he does.

so we charge those cars with what? Pedal power? No, more than likely we charge them by burning fuel in some power plant miles and miles down the grid, losing energy in the process due to storage and conversion.

Cost to produce the energy? Cost to upgrade the existing stations?

The cars can be charged at night, when the base power stations are producing electricity far below their capacity. (In many places, electricity is cheaper at night for that very reason). I remember reading somewhere that 70% of the US fleet can be converted without needing more power plants.

That works so well for folks who vacation by car.

How often do you vacation? You can rent a gas guzzler for those two weeks of the year.

I vacation more than two weeks a year. I take trips on weekends too.

yeah, because the markets often do things where no profit is involved right? there's no evil conspiracy. people want gasoline, companies supply it and make money.

Exactly, this is a clear example of the imperfections of capitalism. Do you think it would be good for a powerful globalized government to fund free electrical cars for the people?

> Do you think it would be good for a powerful globalized government to fund free electrical cars for the people?

Any organization large enough to do so would be fearsome, bureaucratic, unpredictable, and with an agenda of its own.

I feel voiceless as one of 300 million US citizens. I have no desire to dilute my voting power by another factor of 20.

see this is the problem I have with progressives. Your entire paradigm relies on collectivism. No, the government shouldn't take my money and decide how to spend it "for the good of the people". People should decide for themselves and the market will be forced to reflect people's real desires rather than some artificial notion of "good". Who are you to decide what's good for me?

Gasoline isn't a problem. Eventually supply will be constricted and demand will slow down. It's not going to be The Grapes of Wrath overnight, we'll be forced to gradually move to more efficient transportation. Economics trumps feel good social programs.

prometheus beat me to all the anarcho-libertarian points. good on ya.

I have a dream, a dream that someday people will actually pay attention to what economists tell us.

I'm only 20% collectivist, the rest is ideal Austrian economics.

One by one:

Problem #1: (Price/Barrel: $130) Does he seriously think that there is no chance that the price of oil will ever reduce from this plateau?

Problem #2: (5% interest) The interest payment for a long term loan of $8 trillion are going to be a lot more than just 5%.

Problem #3: (cost of a new electric car, if mass-produced: $20,000) So... an electric lexus can be mass produced and sold for $20,000. How about a Ferrari?

Problem #4: Administrative costs: Who does the book keeping.

Problem #5: Who pays for the massive amounts of electricity used by these electric cars?

Problem #6: Who pays for the infrastructure required to keep these cars charged?

Problem #7: Who pays for the massive infrastructure to maintain these awesome cars after they are manufactured and bought?

Problem #8: If it really was so cheap and efficient to convert straight to electric cars? why isn't anybody doing this in scale?

In total: A very haphazard analysis of the cost of converting to electric cars.

1: certainly I would bet on the price of oil increasing over time

2: The US government bonds aren't very high interest rate.

3: $100,000 for something Ferrari class in speed, see the Tesla Roadster

4: The government

5: The consumers and electricity companies. The coal lobby would be in favor of a plan like this, they are itching to start burning all the extra coal we have in the USA.

6:The consumers

7: The consumers and the mechanics repairing the cars in the free market.

8: Because this type of thing requires strong government authoritarianism.

>2: The US government bonds aren't very high interest rate.

Currently US government bonds have a low interest rate. However, we also would be doubling our debt on this plan, and inflation expectations have been ticking up. Furthermore, such desperation for energy independence might be looked down on by international investors who already view the actions of the US government as reckless. What might the US be planning in the Middle East that they need to take such rash actions to get off of oil for?

All these factors could swing interest rates higher.

> 4: The government

Administrative costs by the government will be non-zero.

>8: Because this type of thing requires strong government authoritarianism.

Actually, I just don't think the technology is there yet. If scale production was the only obstacle in the way of the electric car right now, then it would require an investment in the $1 billion magnitude to start up efficient production, something within the reach of modern car companies. Economical, comfortable, useful, and safe electric cars are not available with modern battery technology. As soon as the technology is ready to make an attractive electric car, I expect to see consumers converting to them voluntarily and at-scale in the free market.

Now if we want to force everybody to convert to an inferior and immature product right away, then we do need strong government authoritarianism, yes.

"The coal lobby would be in favor of a plan like this, they are itching to start burning all the extra coal we have in the USA."

I'm surprised the Republicans have not jumped all over this.

This could give them a card to play in the energy independence debate. There's a lot of coal in some so-called swing states, and coal miners and their friends and neighbors are part of the demographic that have been voting Republican on "social" issues but are now swinging Democratic on "Bush is utterly incompetent" issues. Proposing a program to transition the country to coal powered electric cars would go over well with this group.

To the rest of the country, it could be sold as more pragmatic than trying to generate all our energy from solar and wind in the near term, while still offering a path to energy independence. They could play up arguments about how coal generated electricity is already less carbon emitting than the gasoline engines in autos.

This might not be as easy a position to take for Democrats, because the staunch environmentalists on their side may not be happy about increased coal burning.

Apparently the consumers aren't so eager to invest in this. It's a chicken and egg problem on many levels:

- To be able to finance this you need the money you pay for oil. To use those money you already need the solution.

- To have many electric cars on the streets means you need the distribution system (ie gas stations). To finance the new electric stations you need enough cars on the road.

- To get the consumers to buy electric cars they need to have lower prices and better autonomy. To get to lower prices and better autonomy you need economies of scale and a few generations of cars to develop the technology.

This chicken&egg problem it's specific to this. Pretty much any successful entrepreneur just found a way to solve one in his domain. If nobody invested money and time in this it just means there are better ways to invest - i.e. it's time hasn't come yet. When it will, you'll see people coming with the money.

And about forcing the government to invest into a venture private capital doesn't dare enter yet it's ... not a good idea. This rarely works, and only for some special cases. Remember the government is always less efficient then private capital, so there'd better be a good reason to succed where free market failed.

Problem #1: We'll see probably $200 this year and even higher in the next years. This can only be slowed down and nothing else... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

I don't know a single person who takes near-term Peak Oil seriously who is not some random blogger or pop star.

Edit for the down-modders: Our "years of consumption" for oil, which is known oil reserves divided by current usage, has increased pretty constantly since 1920. In 1945 we had about 20 years of consumption left, in 2000 we had about 40. You can find this stat as figure 66 in "The Skeptical Environmentalist" which sites the primary source. "Peak Oil" is an unproven baseless scare-mongering prediction about the future.

It should also be noted that these kind of simplistic doomsday predictions have been going around since at least 1865, when Stanley Jevons predicted that England's coal supplies would run out and torpedo the industrial revolution. He failed to account for the incentive effects of rising coal prices.

But you know what they say about those that do not study history...

Perhaps the Shell geoscientist, Dr. Marion King Hubbert?

I've seen Congress people talk about it at length on CSPAN. Granted, not necessarily a great vote of credibility, but does not fall under the headings of blogger or pop star.

Arguably pop star :)

Maybe "celebrity" would be a better fit.

These days, random joe blogger has more credibility than Congress.

Lots of people aren't happy with President Bush - he's got approval ratings somewhere in the low thirties, I think. Even less people are happy with Congress - they were in the 14% ballpark recently. I'm tired of the whole lot. There are some good Republicans, but I'd sacrifice them to wipe the slate clean.

Term limits!

Not that I disagree, but what makes you think Congress will ever vote themselves out of office with term limits?

I don't know. You can amend the constitution without congress, but that would require quite a lot of organization and "grass-roots" (I hate the phrase, but to use another cliche, it's used for lack of a better one) efforts. You could probably get started by picking off a few active and former members of congress to sort of "lead the charge", but the effort would have to be sustained through several election cycles, I think. You'd also have to make sure you leverage the precedent set by the 22nd amendment (presidential term limit).

It's a bootstrapping problem, and a particularly difficult one because there is a reasonable argument against it (people should be free to elect whomever they want).

It'll never happen, that's the reality. I wish it would, but at this point I have very little faith in government, in fact I have none. They're corrupt and the system is setup to keep it that way. The foxes have been running the hen house for a long time.

Only popstars and random bloggers?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8183966529898602701

I've seen the hearing at the congress last week, these excutives didn't look and sound very confident to me...

My understanding is that this prediction of oil running out (always a few decades in the future) has been commonplace for almost a century. How is it possible to know what will or won't be discovered, either by way of new deposits or new technologies? 30 billion (estimated) barrels were just discovered in Brazil.

I should perhaps add that I don't have much of an opinion one way or the other. I just like being skeptical, and I smell ideology in these predictions.

It's not about oil running out, it's about supply peaking and not being able to keep up with demand. That's happened, China and India demand is only going to continue rising. Short of some new technology, prices will continue to rise from now on.

At a certain price, there is always enough supply for the demand.

Of course, but then you can't expect low prices, demand dictates price which is exactly what we're seeing now.

Fair enough, but these predictions have a way of turning out wrong. I think the ideology driving the prediction is the operative factor.

Edit: I'm being too hasty this morning. How exactly does "supply peaking" not have to do with "oil running out"?

Supply and demand are the operative factors, price is up because demand is up while supply remains steady. Ideology has little to do with it.

I look at who's making the predictions, what else they think, and what agenda they have. From that perspective, ideology has a great deal to do with it.

Which means little once the predictions start coming true. Look around, peak oil isn't really a prediction any more, it's happening, demand has sky rocketed beyond what supply can handle. When pieces of sky are hitting you in the head you don't stand around questioning Chicken Little's ideology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Oil_Prices_1861_2007.svg

Demand trails price and production trails demand by several years and it's related to politics. So it's hard to make real predictions. In the end politics plays a huge role in today’s oil prices and long term we can manufacture it from other sources for less than 200$ per barrel. Granted we use a lot of oil so infrastructure costs are huge so the major players are going to be vary conservative.

RE the oil price: at status quo, prices will go up, since Chinese and Indians are learning to spend like Americans.

But if the US spent 8 trillion scrapping its entire auto fleet, that would probably have a chilling effect on oil prices (incidentally making the entire effort less meaningful)

Oil prices will continue to rise in the long term because Oil reserves are finite, prices reflect cost to extract a barrel or oil not the cost to produce a barrel of oil.

And people forget that oil has another important uses that aren't related at all to energy, it is used as base material for a most plastics, lubricants and so on.

Problem #9: If we are sending all of our gas-consuming cars to Latin America how does this solve any environmental problems?

Problem #10: This neglects the energy costs of producing a new car.

As long as we're being completely hypothetical, wouldn't it make more sense to just mandate that all new cars must be electric after a certain date?

Electric cars are important to the United States because of the economy and energy independence, not because of global warming. Remember, the people making energy decisions don't "believe" in global warming.

#3: Simple - we just all drive the same car issued to us by the government. This has the added benefit of reducing class disparities in transportation.

Viva la revolution!

The revolution will be canceled due to road construction.

I will employ a driver then.

Another big problem: hypothetical $20,000 electric car with acceptable range doesn't exist yet. The closest thing we have is the Tesla, which costs $100K, carries two people, and... well, still doesn't exist yet.

It's no good saying that the price would magically come down immediately if they were produced in sufficient quantities. If anyone had the ability to build a $20,000 long-range four-seat electric car they'd sell millions of 'em anyway.

The technology for cheap and practical electric cars will arrive eventually, but it's probably still a decade away. When you can buy a decent electric car for $20K then people are going to convert anyway, with no need for a huge scary government program forcing them to do so.

There are already $30,000 electric cars with dandy range for commuting. (The Aptera.) These are only two seat, but they would suit my needs just fine. It seems reasonable that this could hit $20,000 if produced in volume.

A more realistic goal would be the incremental replacement of internal combustion cars with electric cars. Something like 30% in 10 years would be a tremendous good and would seem possible. I think the ultimate goal should be 85% electric vehicle use. I suspect that there will be a last 15% of uses for which the IC engine will still be the most cost effective solution.

The Aptera, eh? I hadn't heard of it before, but I looked at their website and they have a "Reserve Now" button combined with a FAQ which says "We are currently in the process of setting up our production facility". I think that moves it out of the "already exists" category and into the "vaporware until proven otherwise" category.

Actually you can right now get electric cars from Zap or GEM for less than $20K which are suitable for commuting provided your commute is very short and very slow. I'd be tempted to get one myself if I actually had a garage. But we're nowhere near anything that could be called a replacement for a real car, rather than a supplement to one.

There are real working models, so they are not vaporware. They are instantiated-but-not-yet-coming-off-an-assembly-line-ware.

Well okay, I'm not sure whether having a working prototype actually makes it officially not-vaporware, but until there's something I can actually buy I remain skeptical about the range and price.

Range has been verified, I think. If it hasn't already, the range of the hybrid version will be verified by automotive X-Prize officials.

the technology exists, it's been done, the oil lobby will not allow this to happen, too many rich people (Hi George W. Bush and family) would lose their fortunes...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV

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