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Comment by mxschumacher | Hacker News Reader

Demand for oil&gas will continue to grow for a long time due to:

- SUV/pick-up boom (America's best-selling car in 2018 is the F150 series!) and more cars + trucks in countries like Brazil, India, China, Indonesia

- crazy growth in air travel (look at order numbers of Airbus, see how many airports are under construction, see miles traveled via plane)

- simultaneous shift away from coal+ nuclear, giving a huge boost to natural gas in the long term (LNG build-out is only now beginning)

- the world getting richer (more and more humans are living like Westerners). We're on a path towards $100tn/y world GDP and 10bn humans.

I provide more detail + resources on my blog: https://mxschumacher.xyz/post/long_oil_and_gas/

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America's best-selling car in 2018 is the F150 series!

American's are going crazy for SUVs and pickups, but the F150 has been the best-selling vehicle for decades. Pickups have outsold passenger vehicles for a long time.

Coming in 2021, the electric Ford F-150.[1] That should be a great truck. Empty pickups have poor weight distribution; not enough weight in back. With a giant battery pack under the pickup bed, traction is better.

[1] https://youtu.be/bXFHgoon7lg

> Empty pickups have poor weight distribution; not enough weight in back. With a giant battery pack under the pickup bed, traction is better.

The problem you're mentioning being solved by a battery pack could just as easily be solved by putting any random ballast in the back of the regular truck. I think electric will have other advantages (and disadvantages), but I doubt this is a big one for most people.

That ballast would then make the truck use even more fuel, which wouldn't make much sense.

Sure, but it solves the problem of traction. The electric vehicle also reduces efficiency by adding weight to the vehicle - being electric doesn't change physics. And being able to remove weight is always preferable to not being able to remove weight.

>The electric vehicle also reduces efficiency by adding weight to the vehicle - being electric doesn't change physics.

The battery adds weight, but that's more than outweighed by the tremendous efficiency of an electric drivetrain. The EV equivalent of a gas-guzzler (e.g. a Tesla Model X P90D) still achieves the equivalent of 90mpg.

I am not arguing that an ICE vehicle is more efficient than an electric vehicle - I am saying that adding weight reduces efficiency for both. I was not making a general comparison between the pros and cons of electric vehicles, I was pointing out that one person's comment about better traction for electric vehicles was incredibly disingenuous because ICE vehicles can get the same benefit by simply adding weight - and they can also remove that weight when they want to unlike the electric vehicle.

Yes, but on the converse side, the weight adds extra safety, at least with the Model X. Since it's heavier and the center of gravity is lower, they tend to not roll over very easily. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/14/why-the-tesla-model-x-e...

What I said:

> I was not making a general comparison between the pros and cons of electric vehicles

And you replied:

> Yes, but on the converse side...[something that has nothing to do with traction]

Am I unintentionally arguing that electric vehicles are bad? I get the impression people think I hate electric vehicles and are trying to convince me of their virtues, when I was simply pointing out what I thought was a logical flaw from another commenter.

Your argument is incorrect as pointed out by dropin685 earlier. Additional weight by itself does not waste energy. It does require more power to accelerate. The extra power is turned into higher kinetic energy for the same cruising speed. However kinetic energy is not waste. It can be recovered during deacceleration. It's the lack of regeneration that causes ICE powered vehicles to waste energy, which doesn't apply to EVs with regeneration capabilities.

I am obviously failing to communicate as this was meant to be about the effects of weight and traction, and how batteries are not unique for adding weight to a vehicle (other than a lower center of gravity, but that has nothing to do with my original point).

While regenerative braking is most common in electric vehicles, this also is not unique to electric vehicles. A hybrid vehicle can just as easily benefit from this, such as the Prius.

> Additional weight by itself does not waste energy. It does require more power to accelerate. The extra power is turned into higher kinetic energy for the same cruising speed. However kinetic energy is not waste. It can be recovered during deacceleration.

This is incorrect unless the engine/motor, drivetrain, and tires are all 100% efficient - additional weight always wastes energy.

But I agree with you, electric vehicles are more energy efficient than gasoline vehicles.

> A hybrid vehicle can just as easily benefit from this, such as the Prius.

If you momentarily ignore the fact that its ultimate energy source is gasoline and focus only on the regen system a hybrid is an electric vehicle, just one that (sadly) lacks a plug.

> It's the lack of regeneration that causes ICE powered vehicles to waste energy,

Not just the lack of regen. ICEs waste energy while idling, as heat, noise, and vibration, and mechanical couplings like clutches and especially fluid couplings in automatic transmissions also waste energy. Automatic transmissions in particular are only 90% mechanically efficient, on top of all the losses from the ICE.

Good weight distribution in ICE cars is pretty exotic. Only fairly performance optimized ICE cars like a Porsche Cayman, BMW m3, and similar performance oriented cars get the ideal 50/50 distribution.

Changing that weight distribution is very expensive from a R&D perspective. Sometimes the battery is moved, or the engine is moved a few inches relative to the front axle. This is one of the reasons performance oriented cars are often rather large compared to their usable interior volumes.

Battery operated cars do have a weight penalty, but you can put that weight wherever you want. You could relatively trivially make a 50/50 distributor of significantly front or rear biased with no substantial R&D overhead or loss of efficiency.

For instance the Tesla model 3 not only has a very low center of gravity, but also a very low polar momentum. In an ice car that would require a mid engine design (like a Ferrari, Lamborghini, or the newest Corvette. While having an large usable volume, more like a bmw 5 series than a 3).

So basically weight distribution is easy to tweak with batteries, and even with the weight penalty have a substantial lead in efficiency.

I have already specifically mentioned that I am not talking about center of gravity or handling characteristics you'd find in a sports car. I have already written multiple comments about how you can put weight in a truck to add traction to the rear tires. I have already explained that electric vehicles are heavier but more efficient than ICE vehicles. You basically say similar things to what I said, and then come to the 100% wrong conclusion.

> So basically weight distribution is easy to tweak with batteries

No. You can do this when designing the car, but not afterwards. You want more weight in the regular pickup truck? Throw it in the back. You want less? Take it out. You can't take the batteries out of the electric vehicle. All my original comment said was you can add weight to the back of a pickup truck to improve traction on the rear axle. I didn't talk about center of gravity, or performance vehicles, or even mention that electric vehicles are heavier.

I am astounded by the amount of comments taking something I said, responding to it maybe tangentially and then concluding with "well that's why electric vehicles are better!" Let's just agree to disagree.

If the power density of batteries doubles the weight penalty likely disappears. Maybe that's not possible. But as electric vehicle production increasing there is going to be a lot of pressure to achieve that. With funding to match.

>adding weight [...] being electric doesn't change physics

Unlike Internal Combustion vehicles, electric vehicles typically feature regenerative braking. Therefore any added weight is much less of an efficiency handicap (compared with IC).

The battery weight is balanced by the removal of the engine, transmission and gas tank/gas weight.

It's not a controversial statement to say electric vehicles are heavier than gasoline vehicles. Typically an electric vehicle will weigh about 1/3 more than a competing ICE vehicle. Just look at curb weights for vehicles if you don't believe me.

1/3 sounds crazy high.

Most would consider the Tesla Model 3 a luxury car. The BMW 3 series and Telsa model 3 are positioned similarly. Both are $40k-$80k, optionally AWD, sold as performance luxury sedans in a range of different performances. If you want to pick two particular models I'd say the model 3 AWD and the BMW 330i xdrive are very similar.

The BMW weights 3,763 pounds, so the Model 3P weight 4,072, which is just over 8% heavier.

I just looked at some numbers and you're right, it does seem like I exaggerated. If you choose the lower weight range for the 3 series though the difference ends up being 14% heavier, and obviously you can choose difference cars to compare. But you are right, 1/3 seems too high. Maybe half that would be more accurate.

I looked at the lighter weight BMW model 3 series. They were either smaller engines (not fair since the model 3 AWD is already faster), or RWD (again not fair to compare to an AWD electric).

Seems like 8% is about right to me.

If you look at the Model S which starts at 4800 pounds and Model X which starts at 5000 pounds the math works out very differently.

Sure, but they are much larger cars, 3 rows of seats available, etc. What cars are you comparing them to?

For the Model S my first thought was the M4, which actually does end up with the original 1/3 weight disparity I mentioned, but I think this is just a coincidence of my first choice. Compared to an E63 AMG, a car in a similar category known for carrying a bit of weight, and the difference is closer to 10%. Compared to an RS4 the difference is about 20%.

For the Model X I was really surprised how small the differences were. Compared to a G Wagon, which I'd say is really its competition, the difference in weight is about 8%. Compared to an X5, it's about 5%. If you consider the X7 to be the competition (which most people probably do), the X7 ends up being about 1% heavier.

And just to add it since I'm already doing this, I think the clear competitor for the Model 3 Performance is the M2 Competition. They're specifically meant to be track vehicles that you can comfortably use for your daily driver. This puts the weight disparity at 18% for that model. And just for fun: https://youtu.be/HycUgd6fTWI & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pu9046wX9g

So I guess the conclusion is electric vehicles are heavier, but as you move towards already heavy vehicles like SUVs the weight differences start to vanish. But as you move towards more smaller vehicles, the difference is much more noticeable.

Come now, that's not even close. That's comparing a BMW M4 2 door coup with a rear seat (rated for 4 adults) with a fullsize 5 door sedan (rated for 5 adults). The model S has around 3 times the cargo space (30 ft^3 s "8 to 11" ft^2 on the BMW).

A 5 series is much closer, 5 adults, 18 ft^3 cargo space, and even leads by a bit on passenger space (98 ft^3 vs 94 ft^3). The model S is AWD only, so to be fair lets add that to the BMW 5 series.

The BMW 550i xdrive "base curb weight" is 4,372, the Tesla S P100D is 4883, so 11.6%. Both cars have slower/lighter versions of course. The M550i has a 0-60 of 3.8 seconds, the Tesla 2.5 seconds.

They are both handle 5 passenger, have 4 doors (ignoring the heavier hatchback on the S), have AWD, are within 1 inch wheelbase and 0.6 inch in length. Having sat in both I'd say that feel relatively similarly sized, especially in the back seat (unlike the M4).

As for the m2 competition, I think the weight distribution can be partially attributed to it being a small 2 door with a token rear seat and tiny trunk than any strong statement about ICE vs electric. I'm not saying batteries (at least today) are not heavier, just that for comparably sized/marketed cars the difference is relatively low.

I think a common trap is to compare a large tesla that fits a family of 4+dog and to compare it to a high performance sports coup... because of the similar performance. Not because they are comparable cars for most uses.

All your points are valid, with one caveat. The Model 3 Performance really is targeted at people that want the "fun" car, so I think it's appropriate to compare it to other sports cars. But that said - there is obviously a huge benefit going towards the Tesla in having more utility due to its size.

The minimum required ballast probably wouldn't make any difference at all. We're talking about a V8 with tons of torque and horsepower.

>We're talking about a V8 with tons of torque and horsepower.

Take a look at the market. Lots of the trucks actually sold are dumpy underpowered RWD sixes or less, and the new motors are getting smaller, better, and more fuel efficient. Doesn't sound like the market wants a heavier boat to careen down the interstate in.

You can charge a whole lot more for the industrially useful V8's (which are still dumpy IMO, their job is "Don't stop turning over.") and much better diesels anyhow. At least telling uncle charlie about the OEM underslung sandbags will get quite a chuckle at Thanksgiving dinner.

I put two sixty-pound buckets of gravel in the back corners of my pickup. That's a neglible difference in weight but a very noticeable difference in traction in cold wet weather.

In non-coastal America, most of the pickup trucks you see on the road are empty.

That's true in coastal America too from what I can tell.

Everyone throws some sandbags and rock salt in the bed, next to the shovel and tinfoil blanky. Sure gonna need it when you're stuck in the ditch :)

I'd take computer managed digital torque delivery over feathering my old clutch plate, if you even still get to run one of those. The dual-clutch trans will need your other foot. Mushy delivery (Sounds like an f150 to me) and out of the mud aren't really compatible.

> Everyone throws some sandbags and rock salt in the bed, next to the shovel and tinfoil blanky. Sure gonna need it when you're stuck in the ditch :)

At least you can remove that weight when you need to. I bet it's a lot easier to tow a 4,000 pound truck out of a ditch than a 6,000 pound truck.

No it isn't, not at all. The tow operator is equipped for both, already. And if you're pulling with a 3k winch maybe you need to make stop at harbor freight.

Anyhow, instead of faffing around with silly sandbags, a mid-engine truck is what you're dancing around. Closest thing I've heard of is the Isuzu ELF (NPR in my neck of the woods) which they've been producing since the 60's or so. The motor is kind of underneath the cab. Nobody wants what you're selling.

Plus, no propshaft or exhaust to get hung up on things, and you can get the CoG lower, improving handling. Plus, a level of traction control that simply isn't possible with ICE. I'm excited.

Plus, electric motors have flat torque curves, while ICEs need to get up to a certain RPM before you start getting decent torque. That means you get maximum acceleration and hauling power from the get-go.

https://www.carthrottle.com/post/how-do-electric-vehicles-pr...

(This incidentally is part of why Tesla started with the Roadster - the flat torque curve of an electric motor can give some great acceleration numbers, which is pretty nifty when you're building a status-symbol sports car.)

This!!! I've told everyone who'd listen for years that an electric motor is the better option for a pickup trucks due to the more appropriate matching of the torque curve to the hauling load demands.

When my beloved '00 Ram 1500 died about 5 years ago I decided to hold out for an electric truck that I assumed would be coming to market. Looks like I may finally get my chance shortly. I honestly don't know if the cumulative environmental footprint is better, but I do know an electric motor will be superior.

Trains are electric motors powered by diesel generators. Seems like it should be an easy sell for people that whatever trains do is an effective way to handle heavy loads.

Submarines too!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine#Diesel-electric

The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV can do this too (replace diesel with gasoline)

Trains don't do hills very well. Train tracks are always mostly straight and level. They do that extremely well.

And freeways have regulations about what the maximum road grade can be to prevent trucks from slowing down too significantly on hills.

That's just a law of converting massive amounts of kinetic energy into potential energy as the weight goes up hill.

Gah. I agree that electric vehicles are cool, but there is no need for parroting "facts" about ICEs that were true in the 1970s.

If you look at the torque curve of a modern pickup truck engine, it's either completely flat or it's actually decreasing as you go from low to high RPMs. E.g. the GM Duramax 6.6 maxes out at 1200 Nm at 1600 RPM, then decreases to 900 as you go higher in revs. For comparison, the Model X P100D puts out 660 Nm at peak.

Wrt. Tesla's acceleration numbers - it's always been possible to obtain those. In fact, sub 2-second 0-60 times were achieved with road legal Ford RS200 in the mid 1980s. Sports car manufacturers have instead been competing on track times on famous circuits like the Nurburgring Nordschliefe. Tesla hadn't a snowballs chance in a hatching machine to compete on that, so they went and optimized for a spec where there was no real competition, and that fit their technology well.

As for traction control, there is no system in the world that is superior to just locking all three diffs. This is what you find in serious off-road machines, and many decent pickups. No sensors, no intelligence, no response times, just simple mechanical engineering that will always automatically distribute torque to where it is needed. Instead of being reactive, acting when slip has been detected, it is proactive and gives you torque where there is grip.

I agree re: power. I do not agree about traction.

Assume you're stuck in mud somehow, a perfect case for diff lockers. If you lock the rotational rate of all your wheels together you are either:

a.) limiting the torque you're applying to the amount the tire with the least amount of traction available can bear before slipping out, or

b.) letting 'em rip and hoping you don't dig yourself down into a hole.

The beauty of having fine control over the power going to each motor is that you can put down the max torque that particular wheel can manage regardless of what the other tires are doing. And you can do so with a granularity that is unmatched by any ICE TC system (which IIRC use the brakes to control torque?)

> Nurburgring

Where Tesla just put down a 7:13

> torque curve

What's the Duramax's torque at 0 RPM?

Tesla did a 7:23 in a heavily modified testing vehicle that has big extra air intakes for cooling, racing slicks, a massive rear diffuser, bigger spoiler, and is believed to have 3 engines.

For comparison, a front-wheel-drive stock Renault Megane RS does 7:40. Mercedes did 7:25 in a stock 4-door coupe last year, the AMG GT 63S. The stock supercars are down below the 7:00 mark mostly.

In the non-stock category, the record is 5:19 by one of Porsche's modified LMP1 cars.

If you look up how a stall speed converter works, you'll see that an automatic transmission delivers torque at a non-zero engine RPM even if the wheels are at zero RPM. The lowest you will go on the Duramax is around 1000 RPM, where you get 600 Nm torque.

but but.. the telsa pickup truck towing capacity is rumored to be 300,000 lbs.

The difference between a Tesla and an rs200 accelerating like that is the Tesla does it with zero drama. An rs200 Is not a daily driver.

I used to own an old Ford Ranger, and in Winter I would have it loaded with bags of sand in the bed to improve traction on ice. I could have just as easily been hauling batteries everywhere.

When I was 17, I crashed and totaled my '77 Ford pickup because I slid out on wet pavement. Everyone said I needed sand bags but I loved being able to peel out so easily. Live and learn.

Love fishtailing the Camaro.

Love fishtailing the Hellcat at 70mph.

I did it first.

Lose half the battery capacity in cold weather. EVs are less efficient at highway speeds. Two things rural half ton trucks need. Add to that the loss of carrying capacity due to the battery weight. I'm not sure if motors and battery weigh a similar amount as a drivetrain and fuel, I hope so.

If it's only city travel it's fine but that's not what a truck was made for.

I'm all for electric vehicles and I hope the technology advances but people need to be realistic.

It's like the customer service industry if all the comments are compliments how do you know what is wrong?

EVs are less efficient at highway speeds

Huh? Less efficient than what? There is no way it is less efficient than an ICE.

Less efficient than the same vehicle at lower speeds, I assume. But, that's true of every vehicle...so, it's a weird argument.

A vehicle that has a towing capacity in the tens of thousands of pounds can have a big battery bank, and so it could have longer range than a small sedan. Of course the weight of the battery itself reduces range, and carrying a load will reduce range, and bigger batteries increase cost, but I suspect the reason Ford is introducing an electric truck in 2021 (and Tesla has one coming, too) is because they've done the math and it's finally starting work out right for some category of their customer base.

The truck market is downright scientific, and Ford is the leader in that market. They serve a lot of fleet customers and have huge amounts of data about how those fleets are used. They must have found a segment that will find electric vehicles cost-effective, otherwise they'd put it off another year or two or three. It's not the average truck buyer that's pushing them toward electric (there's a deep vein of stupid in that market that loves big, noisy, smelly, engines), but I'm confident they aren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. I believe Ford making an electric truck means there's a market for electric trucks, whatever their limitations, at the price they can deliver them.

But the Tesla pickup was announced to have 300,000 lb towing capacity and 400-500 miles of range.

That's like the hall of fame entry for things that aren't actually true about electric vehicles. Efficiency doesn't get worse at highway speeds as compared to gas engines. EVs and gas engines spend more of their energy going faster against air resistance. evs are vastly more efficient than gas cars in terms of energey efficiency, thats why electric cars have theoretical gas mileage of around 100 mpg. But gas is a very efficient energy storage mechanism, gas cars are about 1/4 the efficiency of electric cars but can be gased up quickly and have more net range usually.

Teslas don't lose half their range when it's cold. They do lose some range, but it's much less than other evs, because they heat up the pack. evs are great for cross country travel, if there are reasonable charging stations along the way (which is best with tesla).

> thats why electric cars have theoretical gas mileage of around 100 mpg

what good is that when your theoretical car can only hold 2.5 (maybe) gallons of fuel

theoretical gallons of gas is not useful when you have vastly different ranger per gallon (or kilowatts) of energy. Reporting miles of range is what makes sense. Cars get less mileage when they 70 miles per hour than 60 mph, but its not so visible because you don't ever have such an exact measure of gas and range available.

> I'm all for electric vehicles and I hope the technology advances but people need to be realistic.

Realistically most people driving full sized pickup trucks aren't farmers and aren't rural.

I own an F150 I inherited from my grandfather. As much as I lust after Teslas I wouldn't trade it for an electric for one simple reason: my F150 is what I drive if I must drive at all when it floods. AFAIK you cannot and should not submerge the motors or the battery on an electric car. Still, that's an edge case.

Telsa model 3s act as boats during floods. Have a look at youtube, there are numerous videos of people stranded in their engine flooded car and a Tesla floats right by.

And yet if I started a Tesla warranty climb with "So there I was, driving through several feet of water" I'm skeptical it would be approved. That was my point. Electrics are fantastic vehicles. I can't wait to own my first one, but they aren't yet built for every purpose.

I don't think the Ford dealership would warrant me driving an F-150 through several feet of water either but fixing the issues that come from it are a known quantity. Not so much with an electric pickup.

Why are pick-ups so popular? I can understand if you are a construction worker, farmer, etc. that actually needs a pickup truck; but why are they so popular for other people? The vast majority of pickup trucks I see have beds that are so clean that it is obvious that has never been used to haul even one bag of cement or load of dirt.

In the South (especially in Texas, where I lived for a bit) they're considered a symbol of rugged manliness, which is the main reason why they're so popular among city dwellers. They're also nice to go off-road in areas with not good roads.

I've driven a few and they also offer a different perspective when you're driving (you feel "taller"). Also, they might be safer than tiny sedans (although not sure how they compare with the German ones w.r.t safety).

If you live in Suburbs, its also nice to have one for the occasional lugging around of furniture or moving heavy stuff.

Here are some points about pickups that appeal to me and maybe to others:

(1) Bumpers. Pickup trucks (PUTs) tend to have actual, steel bumpers (often chrome plated which indicates that they are steel), both front and rear. Passenger cars have, instead, plastic over some structures for crumple zones or some such. So, if run into something, say, a deer crossing the road in the middle of the night, then are better off with the bumpers; the plastic and crumple zone is less rugged and more subject to expensive damage. Bumpers can be useful otherwise, say, wrap and hook on with a steel cable and pull or be pulled.

(2) Passenger cars emphasize smooth ride. So, the springs and shocks tend to be soft. On PUTs, the springs and shocks are stiff enough to do well carrying heavy loads over rough ground. So, (i) the springs on both passenger cars and PUTs are usually spring steel with a not very long fatigue life, say, under 100,000 miles. Having the springs suffer from metal fatigue and sag is a bummer. The stiffer springs in a PUT flex less and so fatigue less and even when fatigued still have enough stiffness not to sage. (ii) Over rough surfaces, soft springs and shocks more easily bounce around and bottom out -- not good.

(3) In addition to the springs, PUTs have suspensions better able to take loads and bumps and, thus, last longer. E.g., in the front, passenger cars, again, emphasizing smooth ride, have soft suspension bushings, soft stabilizer bars and mounts for them, soft shocks, and struts instead of just A-frames -- the PUT suspensions last longer. In the rear the PUTs have leaf springs with extra leaves for heavy loads instead of coil springs common in passenger cars -- the stiff leaf springs last longer before sagging or actually breaking than the soft coil springs.

(4) PUTs have more ground clearance. So, e.g., if there is a traffic jam, when in a PUT might just head for a curb or a ditch, cross some rough ground, head in a different direction, and avoid the jam. At times extra ground clearance is darned nice to have.

(5) To exaggerate, PUTs are for people in work clothes with mud on their shoes, and passenger cars are for suits and evening gowns with spotless shoes. More generally the interiors of PUTs are more rugged, aimed at utility instead of luxury.

(6) PUT brakes have to be strong enough to stop the truck when it also has a big load, say, 1000+ pounds. This means that with light loads, the brakes will last longer.

(7) PUTs have more head room in the door openings and the interiors. Tall people have an easier time getting in and out.

(8) PUTs are commonly well designed for towing; for most passenger cars, towing is less advisable. Towing requires, yes, a trailer hitch but also connections for lights and maybe brakes on the trailer, a stronger transmission, a larger engine radiator, etc.

(9) A lot of small passenger cars have front wheel drive, and PUTs have rear wheel drive as the main drive with a solid axle which mechanically simpler, more rugged, and lasts longer.

In short, PUTs emphasize utility and passenger cars, luxury.

Similarly much of the US is big on blue jeans -- utility over luxury. Blue jeans are made of essentially the same canvas that was used for sails on sailing ships and, thus, is one of the toughest cotton fabric weaves there is; the seam sewing is very strong, and some stress points have brass rivets.

You’ve made a good case for pickup trucks for people who need them, but I highly doubt most pickup truck buyers need all of these features.

Most people aren’t carrying 1000+ lbs loads or going off road or towing anything, so the features that make that life easier don’t apply.

> need all of these features.

Humans need very few things. We don't need spices on our food, dye in our textiles, or windows on our houses. Almost no purchase is ever made based on pure utility and few humans ever make decisions with zero emotional component. Which is entirely rational, because ultimately emotions are what drives us. There's nothing logical about getting out of bed in the morning. You do it because you feel like it.

Most of those features don't have a lot of negatives though. More ground clearance is hard to be a negative (I wasn't able to use the front bumper as a snow plow?)

A towing capable engine is a negative if you're not using it, because MPG; but you can get small engined trucks too.

> A towing capable engine is a negative if you're not using it, because MPG;

If want to pull a 30' boat or a trailer big enough for a family of four up the Rockies, then, sure, can want a big engine. Otherwise two of the main things about a "towing capable engine" is (i) a bigger radiator and (ii) an engine oil cooler. The main issue is that when towing the engine can run at relatively high power levels for minutes at a time instead of the usual just seconds; then discover that the radiator is not big enough and the engine oil gets hot. The radiator never was "big enough" it's just that the high power levels lasted only for seconds instead of minutes, and the seconds were not long enough to overheat the coolant.

Sure. The big radiator and oil cooler (and transmission cooler) is nice to have, and is probably not a negative (additional maintenance maybe, though).

But if you intended to tow frequently, you're probably not opting for the 4-cylinder econobox light truck package.

E.g., I like the luggage rack on the top of my SUV: It's terrific for carrying home a Christmas tree. Otherwise I never use it. It wasn't an expensive option: A rental once of a truck to carry home a tree would cost more than the option.

Different priorities for different people I guess. And also very much dependent on profession & lifestyle. Couple of the points you raised though I thought that's the exact opposite of what I want.

Crumple zones - I want that. My life matters more to me than repair cost. And it's missing a second reason for soft exteriors - pedestrian safety. Deers aren't the only thing getting hit.

Suspension, brakes etc designed to carry 1000+ pounds, to me that just means the it's calibrated for a state it'll rarely be in - and by default is suboptimal for that state it is then. Same for the weight of PUTs - the lighter the better due to stopping distance.

More ground clearance/higher seating = higher center of gravity which bring ends safety & handling issues.

Solid axle are mechanically simpler, but there is a reason most of the world dropped them - they will chew tires on turns. Also prevents nifty stuff like electronic stability control applying variable braking left & right.

I totally get the utility angle in the sense you lay it out. But the US population is like 80% urbanized. I don't see them sling 1000 pounds of hay-bales on their rides and regularly hitting deer on the way back from work.

People that need that exist sure, but it doesn't account for 50%+ of sales being pickups. pm90's "symbol of rugged manliness" theory seems much better at explaining that.

I was just listing some of the advantages I and maybe others see in, say, the Ford and Chevy versions of pickup trucks. So, there are some advantages in utility; the attractions are not all just style and fashion. Yes, there are disadvantages. Welcome to the ubiquitous problem of engineering design trade offs.

I've recently moved from NY to TN -- yup, the fraction of pickup trucks is higher in TN!!! I'm liking TN a LOT better!

> Solid axle are mechanically simpler, but there is a reason most of the world dropped them - they will chew tires on turns. Also prevents nifty stuff like electronic stability control applying variable braking left & right.

The axle HOUSING is solid and is called a "solid axle" instead of an independent suspension. The actual axles that rotate with the wheels are inside the solid housing; there are two, each a "half axle"; they come together in the "center section" which has the "differential" with a "pinion gear", "ring gear", and 4 "spider gears" -- clever device. So, such an axle does not "chew tires" on corners. And anti-lock brakes, etc. are plenty easy, generally a little easier than for independent rear suspensions -- the independent suspensions usually have more linkages to work around. Also, for chewing tires, independent suspensions tend to do this more due to the less good control of castor and camber -- that is, an axle does better keeping the tilt and direction of the wheels where they belong than the linkages in an independent suspension. E.g., might have to have a independent rear suspension "aligned"; with a solid axle (HOUSING) and leaf springs, essentially never have to do this if only because typically there is no means of such adjustment and regarded as no need, either.

Yes, an independent rear suspension has some advantages in traction on uneven surfaces. The key criterion is to reduce "unsprung weigh". E.g., when MB went racing after WWII, they used a rear "swing axle" independent rear suspension with the brakes mounted inboard instead of at the wheels -- all for lower unsprung weight.

Apparently in a relatively heavy vehicle, the extra unsprung weight of a solid axle, rear AND front, causes no serious ride or traction problems.

The struts have cute geometry and do well with castor and camber but are comparatively delicate and with just a little wear give problems.

> Same for the weight of PUTs - the lighter the better due to stopping distance.

The standard model of friction in physics is just a coefficient of friction. So, the force to slide against the friction is just the down force (weight) times the coefficient of friction. So, a vehicle that weights twice as much has twice the friction when the brakes are locked or nearly so (as in anti-lock brakes) and with sufficiently larger brakes should stop as fast as a lighter vehicle. In practice, I'm not sure whether a 2500 pound car or a 4500 pound truck with a 1000 pound load stops in less distance.

> regularly hitting deer

Hit a deer with a good bumper and usually just stop, drag the deer to the side of the road, and keep on going. Been there, done that with my old SUV that does have good front bumpers. With one of those plastic covered crumple zones, maybe are in for $1000 in repairs.

Bumpers are good protection when parallel parked: The guy in front or in rear who parks "by the audio method" will just hit the bumpers and do little or no damage to the truck although there might be damage to his crumple zones. Every time I see a car front or rear end with lots of plastic and no good, strong steel bumpers I think little bumps and $1000 repair bills -- that's just me.

The bumpers are at least just some prudent protection.

Trucks need full frames; now lots of passenger cars have mostly just sheet steel instead. The frames "crumple" less and are "stronger" -- maybe that makes the truck safer in some respects and less good for the passengers in other respects.

Yes, the higher center of gravity of a truck increases the chances of rolling over. My SUV came with a sticker with stark warnings about the threat of roll over. Also it appears that they deliberately put a lot of extra steel in the frame just to lower the center of gravity -- the frame looks like something off the battleship Missouri.

For people who want to do a lot of 80 MPH driving on Interstates, a car of about 3500 pounds, 600+ horsepower, wide tires with especially high coefficient of friction, stiff suspension (so the car won't bounce around), small frontal area, and low aerodynamic coefficient of friction -- maybe Corvette, Camaro, and Mustang are examples -- will be better than a truck. The issues of frontal area and drag coefficient might be huge, for fuel economy and maybe for stability in some winds.

Good points - esp on the axle. Didn't realise that's what solid axle meant.

> So, a vehicle that weights twice as much has twice the friction when the brakes are locked

At full lock (or near) the limit factor is likely tire/road. A bit of googling suggests the effect is give or take 10-20% [0]

Regarding bumpers - the plastic used is flexible exactly because of "the audio method" of parking. It bounces right back in most cases. Frankly I just don't see how a chrome finish bumper is going to work out cheaper than plastic.

Maybe if I spend some time living in the US I'd understand. To me the trade-offs, especially on safety seem less than ideal.

[0] https://www.arrivealive.mobi/stopping-sight-and-driver-react...

Brainwashi^W Propagan^W Advertisement.

For everyone outside of the biggest cities there are truly rough roads you may need to traverse to see a friend or take your family to the strawberry festival. Remember that a very large part of America looks nothing like the New York (or even Raleigh’s) of the world.

Sure. But you still see them in cities and parked at very nice driveways. Many trucks have never seen a bad pavement since they were manufactured.

Some people just want a truck because they like them.

Whether or not the need them or make full use of them is another story, but that's not criteria for making the purchase.

I expect part of the reason is utility vs cost of ownership. You can commute in a pickup but you can't move an apartment in a Prius (well not in one trip :-).

If you look at the marginal cost of a second vehicle[1] it is quite high. Thus you may be limited to owning exactly one vehicle, and that vehicle is going to consume a chunk of your income (insurance/gas/maintenance). In that scenario the most financially prudent choice can seem to be a truck over another choice. Towing things is another aspect, if you vacation a lot by camping rather than staying in hotels it costs less per day to camp/hike then to spend it at a resort somewhere. Or boating/fishing, same calculus.

[1] Things like parking, insurance, inspection/license fees, maintenance all add up. And the opportunity cost of that capital tied up in a car loan vs doing something else.

I mean sure, if you are in a small apartment or a dorm, but you aren't moving your home/family in a pickup truck. Most adults have far too much stuff. Even then, moving is a very rare event.

I've heard this argument before but can't really make sense of it.

Moving apartments and similar activities are (a) rare; (b) can't be done in a pickup anyway - I'd need to rent a much larger truck; and (c) renting a proper truck every time I moved and will move apartments/houses in my whole life is cheaper than the cost difference between a pickup and a smaller car, especially as fuel is a huge part of total cost of ownership.

I understand this sentiment, it doesn't persuade me either (but I am also in a situation that allows me to own multiple vehicles).

That said, my experience is primarily anecedotal; people I know who own only a truck, dealers who are selling trucks, and various reader survey type "Why buy a truck" articles that show up in the popular press like Popular Mechanics or Car & Driver from time to time.

You have focused on the actual need versus the perceived need. The aforementioned dealers are big on selling the "unknown future need" and the fear of finding yourself in a position where having the truck would solve your problem but you don't have one.

Like your argument above, I tend to be much more analytical in my purchases and so I like to believe I am not influenced as strongly by the "what if ..." arguments. (It must have some effect since I don't own a pickup truck at the moment :-). I have also learned, that precision thinking isn't always the dominant force in a lot of buyers making buying decisions. I encourage anyone thinking about this question to talk to truck owners and ask them what they were thinking when they bought their truck and how much of how they anticipated using it was something they actually did post purchase.

> (b) can't be done in a pickup anyway

I've moved myself and a number of friends using just my mid-sized pick-up.

And I've moved myself using a Suzuki Swift. Doesn't mean it was particularly efficient compared to hiring a proper moving van though :)

But, it's like $50 or less a day to rent a huge uhaul truck. And an SUV can easily haul a boat or other toys, plus keep gear covered and provide seating for more people. If you really need to haul something that wont fit in the back of the suv, you can always rent a uhaul trailer for about $20/day. Heck, you can rent a large flat bed truck from home depot for about $20 for a few hours that can probably haul more than an F-150.

Perception is important. A lot of these decisions aren't made by people who sat down and wrote down the numbers to arrive at the rational choice. But if I think I have utility for a pick up often because I like to think I'm that rugged, diy type of person, I'll think it's rational to own a pickup and assume the relative prices get massaged away.

/I drove a pick-up for a number of years for this reason until hybrid crossovers became viable.

The customer of a pick up truck is typically much more cost conscious than a SUV. The reason car companies push people towards SUVs is the profit margins are MUCH higher.

Generally you get MUCH more for your money with a pick up truck over a SUV.

My experience is that I never need a truck, because my friends that own one are strangely desperate for excuses to make use of them. I can just ask one of them to help me out.

Because the pickup truck form factor is the most efficient and inexpensive one there is. No really, hear me out! I see this asked all the time, but you're actually asking the wrong question.

I mean, think about it, what's the most minimal, lightest, cheapest form a motor vehicle could possibly take? It would have wheels, of course, some sort of frame to attach everything to, somewhere to put the engine, and somewhere to put the driver. That's it! A cab up front to house the engine and driver on a frame with wheels. Add some simple low sides to the frame to keep stuff in and that basically describes a pickup truck.

The truth is, for any particular load carrying and/or towing capacity, a pickup truck is the most efficient and least expensive common consumer option. Adding a cover over the back, additional seating, and other amenities just adds weight and cost. A tiny subcompact pickup truck version of even the smallest little hatchback can be cheaper and lighter then the hatchback can ever be simply because it's the same thing but made with less stuff.

I suspect the real question you want to ask, is this: why are such high cargo/towing capacity vehicles so popular? In other words, why do we buy such huge vehicles?

Interesting perspective. If we control for size and stick with basic principles, does converting a hatchback to a pickup provide more gain from the lower weight than losses from inferior aerodynamics? I'm not convinced it does.

Depends on the speed you most commonly drive. For urban drivers, they spend a lot of time at slower speeds where aerodynamics is less critical. Also, even pickup trucks are designed to be much more aerodynamic and efficient then they used to be these days.

For rural drivers, they probably have other reasons to want a pickup truck besides simple cost effectiveness. They're usually the ones who actually do need the carrying capacity.

You appear to be describing a motorbike.

Ha! I didn't even think of that. :)

We're talking about a vehicle that's not really even relevant to the question of why different countries prefer different four-wheeled vehicles, though. People looking for a four-wheeled car or truck are generally not looking for a motorcycle, and vice versa.

I think you're implicitly talking about a classic style 2-door pickup truck, but most consumer trucks these days seem to have four doors.

Small two door pickup trucks are even more extinct, at least in the US. I remember seeing a new Mazda pickup truck in the showroom, probably a B-series circa 1995, and it was tiny, had steel wheels, a relatively long bed, and probably a manual transmission. Price was maybe half what trucks today cost, adjusted for inflation. It's been a long time since there was a market for those.

> I think you're implicitly talking about a classic style 2-door pickup truck, but most consumer trucks these days seem to have four doors.

Replace the shortened bed in the back with a cover and a third row of seating, though, and you have an SUV that's still going to be even heavier and more expensive.

> Small two door pickup trucks are even more extinct, at least in the US.

Very true, and as a small pickup lover that makes me sad. :(

> It's been a long time since there was a market for those.

Indeed, which leads back to the question I posed above... why do we prefer such large vehicles?

Well, I would say there isn't a huge penalty for the benefits, and it's nice to have 110% of your maximum expected needs covered rather than 80%. And big vehicles keep getting better and better fuel economy, plus scaled down versions aren't significantly cheaper.

I think a major issue is that most of the cost of a car is not in the quantity of metal used to make the body/frame. So you aren't going to cut manufacturing costs much by making it smaller. This is probably why nobody can make small cars at a profit in the US. Any additional amount a customer will pay for a larger vehicle goes disproportionately to profit, so it's a win-win for the manufacturer and customer.

> ...and it's nice to have 110% of your maximum expected needs covered rather than 80%.

That depends very much on the person. For someone with no kids and that needs to move very large cargo every once in a while, it may be the pickup truck that's the 110% and the SUV that's the 80%.

A pick-up truck, especially one with a four-door cab, is by design the swiss army knife of vehicles. If you are not constrained by something specific, then a pick-up is the rational choice.

To me, it has more do with symbolism than actual utility.

Worryingly I am seeing the same trend in London, UK where I live. At my local train station , which is 20 mins from City, I see the F150, Rams and what not parked. The owner clearly working/taking train into City. They are sparkling clean and occupy parking bay edge to edge.

London where space is constrained, public transport is readily available and rental vans can be arranged on your phone, I fail to understand why City working person would need it except for the messaging impact of owning a macho looking vehicle.

While I agree on the utility that other posts have mentioned, I also must say it also has room for kids in a smaller form factor.

With three kids in car seats, I found the F-150 4-door cab to be a great option. They are designed with enough room for 3 large adults to ride in the back so fitting the car seats is no problem. It's really tough to fit three proper car seats in the back seat of a sedan.

While I could get a large SUV, I don't want to banish one of the kids to two rows deep in the back of a large SUV. We are all together in the cab. Comfortable.

> construction worker, farmer, etc. that actually needs a pickup truck

I take it you don't own a pickup.

Try owning one and it will surprise you how many friends, co-workers, etc. will come out of the woodwork and show you reasons why you/they need one.

This is true. Buying a truck is the fastest way to become everyone's friend.

Pickup trucks are popular because they're almost the right vehicle for any occasion. There's a lot of variation within any named truck model to get you closer to what you might normally need a vehicle for.

If you regularly have up to 5 people in your vehicle, get an extra cab. If it's usually just you, a regular cab works (if you can find one). If you need 6 or more people, you could put seats in the bed, but probably get a van.

If you want to occasional carry large items, but save gas otherwise, get a small engine; a compact truck with a 4-cylinder is no prius, but should be better than CAFE average. If you're towing a boat every weekend, stronger engine options are available.

Maintenance is generally easier than on a modern sedan because things are more accessible. And parts are easier to find because model generations are longer and some parts work for multiple generations. Tires are often more expensive though.

If you want butt warmers and leather everything, that's an option too.

And then you have things like visibility advantages due to ride height and a big, unobstructed rear window (at least for a regular cab).

It's also amazingly easy to clean the bed, if you care. Park on a hill, open the gate, spray water at the top until it runs clean. Or wait for a rain.

I bought my F150 2 years ago and I love it (coming from a Honda CRV.) I'm a software engineer that works from home. If I need a 2x4 or mulch for the yard, I can throw it in the back without worry. They're versatile vehicles. Getting new couches for the living room? Throw it in the back of the truck instead of paying the ridiculous delivery fee.

I paid $500 and put a hitch on my Model S. I can tow more with a trailer than I could've put in my Toyota pickup truck bed (in 10 years of ownership, I never once towed anything more than 1000 lbs with my pickup). Not saying your use case is wrong (I get the appeal having owned a truck for so long), only that folks should consider that a pickup truck is not the only path to easy cargo logistics.

Having to rent or store a trailer is a huge pain in the butt - for me anyway.

Ya, I don't think I would be too excited to haul a trailer with my $80k+ luxury vehicle. Nor would I have a place to park and store that trailer.

To each their own. Too many folks out there with pickup trucks who don't need them is my point.

> Too many folks out there with pickup trucks who don't need them is my point.

Too many folks out there with opinions about what others should do with their money is my point.

I have an opinion (backed by a consensus of scientific practitioners) on the burning of fossil fuels (because of rampant climate change) in products because someone feels they need it versus a legitimate need. There's no point in arguing about an entitlement complex of a subset of the population ("right to own a pickup truck"), just gotta drive progress forward so people make better choices (behavioral economics) or don't get to make the choice at all (regulation).

If climate change is less important than someone's "right" to own a "garage queen" (if the vehicle is never going to see service other than asphalt and rarely have a load in the bed or on the hitch), that's not an argument I'm interested in expending cycles on, as these political beliefs can border on religious fervor.

If we are wanting to save the earth, then maybe instead of buying an $80k Tesla, people should buy a much cheaper Nissan Leaf (or ride a bike) and put all the money saved into carbon offsets.

If one must pick either an expensive EV where the manufacturer is pouring the margins into expansion (factories, charging networks, etc) or a slightly cheaper, weak EV that is barely an effort (compared to their total manufacturing capacity), it's obvious which I would (and have) picked. Tesla invested over $400 million into a charging network so EV buyers could be confident about traveling with their cars, other manufacturers have not (VW's Electrify America is a requirement of their Dieselgate settlement with the US gov). Expensive Teslas (Roadster, S, X) helped deliver cheaper Teslas (you can get a Model 3 for $40k, within spitting distance of the average price of a new car).

The thesis is straightforward. People aren't going to stop driving outside of areas that have public transit (most of the US), therefore we must default to cars sticking around. EVs don't get cheaper unless battery manufacturing scales up. Cheaper batteries means cheaper EVs as well as energy storage (both utility scale and for the home). EVs and energy storage reduce fossil fuel consumption. Serious companies scale up their EV powertrain manufacturing. No manufacturer's actions have been as serious as Teslas. Carbon credits are fairly useless if you're not contributing to the rapid electrification of transportation, like a bandaid on a bleeding artery. Clean up the blood after you get the bleeding stopped.

Or buy that cheap Toyota while Toyota still flails trying to convince the world fuel cells (and the 35 or so hydrogen fueling stations in the US) are the future, while they continue to pump out 10 million internal combustion vehicles per year.

Or, buy any reasonably newish used car with reasonable parts availability, drive it gently, and keep it well maintained.

Over the long haul an electric car should be superior in total lifecycle emissions relative to a comparable ICE or hybrid, but Tesla’s questionable initial build quality (reworks figure into total emissions!) and odd design choices (like needing to replace the flash unit for the MCU, semiconductor manufacturing is highly polluting), I would question the “greenness” of Tesla in comparison to other makes.

That said, overall it feels unproductive to focus only on a car when thinking about the total impact of oneself on the environment. Someone who drives a brand new Tesla, lives in a single family home, and eats steaks every night I would guess has a larger impact than someone who drives a used Corolla, lives in an apartment, and eats lentils every night. Personal transportation matters, but it’s a part of a larger whole that’s about consuming much less.

I have a 2002 Toyota Tacoma, which was a mid-sized pick-up back when "mid-sized" actually meant something. I love it. Here's why:

1. I'm tall and it fits me much better. I have plenty of headroom, and the seat is high enough from the floor to support the backs of my legs. In many sedans, my heels get sore on long drives because they're taking much of the weight of my legs.

2. I like the better visibility. In particular, I have fantastic visibility out the back of the vehicle. Any time I drive other cars, I feel like I have blinders on and can't see behind myself well.

3. It has real steel bumpers. I once caught the edge of the truck on a fence and yanked the bumper out a few inches. To fix it, I just gently drove into a tree and pushed it back into place. Good as new. In most sedans with plastic covered crumple zone panels, that would be a thousand dollar panel replacement. A few weeks ago, I watched a poor parallel parker repeatedly bounce off my truck as she wormed her way into a spot. Not a ding on it.

4. It's a tank. The reliability of pick-ups is generally great because manufacturers have to cater to work truck consumers who care about reliability over all other considerations. If it's good enough for that landscaping company who puts 50k miles on it a year while hauling a trailing, it's going to be good enough for you. My Tacoma will likely outlive me.

5. It was cheap. Sedans are often designed to cater to an audience that wants superficial luxury and then charges people for it. I don't care about heater leather seats and touch screens. I just want something comfortable and solid. My truck was $18k new and I've gotten 18 years out of it so far. The amortized cost of ownership is incredibly good, even when you factor in the lower fuel economy.

6. It stores stuff. 90% of the time, the bed is empty. But that other 10% of the time is really convenient. I've moved apartments using it. Numerous camping trips. I lived in the bed for two days for the last eclipse. Dozens of trips to Ikea and the hardware store. When I was in a band, I put amps and instruments back there. I bought a couch on a whim the middle of a road trip. Sure, you can rent a truck for days you need the storage. But in practice, that can add so much overhead that you just do fewer things. If I want to hang some new closet doors or do some gardening, I can just go.

7. I like the way trucks look. Maybe it's a side effect of a childhood in Texas, but I like the design of older trucks. They feel simpler more "iconic" to me. They have an elegant form over function aestehtic. Most sedans all look the same to me. The parts that are functional -- the aerodynamics -- make them both and the other parts feel like pointless decoration. (That being said, newer truck designs turn me off because they're now all huge jacked-up monuments to masculine insecurity. The new Tacomas make me want to cry.)

Really, trucks are great, simple, cheap, utilitarian vehicles. People always complain that "the beds are empty 90% of the time", but 90% of the seats are empty in any given sedan, so what's the difference? A vehicle always has more capabilities than you need at any point in time. My truck doesn't have as many passenger capabilities, but it has a hell of a lot more hauling stuff ones.

Never thought I would like owning a pickup truck, then I borrowed one for a while, and now I own one. I am not a farmer or construction worker, but my bed is also not clean =). So somewhere in the middle.

1) Get the obvious out of the way: they are big. This is both a negative and a positive, but with an energetic 6 year old, 2 full sized dogs, parents, and gear on a trip, there is enough room in our F-150 to relax and spread out. Negative is the gas mileage of course, mine gets about 20 all around. For commuting I drive an electric to pay back the gas karma tax.

2) Hauling stuff. Sure, you can rent a truck from the local hardware store, but the instant accessibility of loading up and go has appeal and value, at least to me.

3) Camping. I distinguish this from "off-road" because that's a different animal. Camper on the bed or trailer behind, truck is your supplies, bike haul, power, emergency living quarters and with appropriate care in drive lines can go almost anywhere after you unhitch.

4) Surprisingly, ride. This is entirely subjective of course but both the wife and I enjoy the ride quite a bit in the truck. It doesn't HANDLE well in performance situations, but that's not what trucks are for.

5) Also surprisingly, ergonomics. We both love the livability features of the truck. Storage all over, comfy seats, practical control layout, various automation assistance features. In the right trim they are pretty luxury, and we didn't even buy a particularly high end version.

Negative values that exist for some but not me are looks tough, usual male insecurity compensation stuff, it's bigger in the intimidate others sense, etc. There's a vanity identity to being a "salt of the earth" type with a truck, and of course the truck has nothing to do with the person driving it being one of those people, but there are those who believe it does.

My favorite goofy truck thing is people who get super jacked lift kits. Reason given is often ground clearance; rarely does this allow for much - it's the differential that often matters, and even with bigger tires, you're moving that thing maybe an inch or two up. It makes the center of gravity often pretty terrible as trucks don't do well in that regard to start with. I've seen people with massively jacked kits who then have to buy drop-down hitches to be able to haul anything.

In addition to the many other answers I would add- the thrill of owning something that feels vaguely “industrial grade” or heavy duty.

A friend had one in college, turns out a 8 year old pick up truck was dramatically cheaper to insure and repair than a similar sedan. Seems like just about everything about the truck was designed to be rugged and reliable. The engine was tuned for less HP, the interior was less attractive, the suspension was less comfortable.

It wasn't fun to drive and was loud on the highway, but it was cheap.

I think there was a break on registration as well.

As long as we live in a global economy we will be hungry for oil. A global economy depends on shipping goods around the world, and for that to work you need a high energy density fuel source, and there is really no alternative nearly as good as oil.

This isn't about SUVs or consumer air travel. The world will need oil for cargo transport to sustain the trade necessary to maintain our economic way of life. Hydrocarbons are high energy density which is an essential property because otherwise your fuel becomes your cargo.

The problem isn't SUVs, it's the fact that your local grocery store has bananas shipped from 10,000 miles away for $0.59/lb. The only way you can make that happen is with oil. All the neat stuff you have shipped to your door from Amazon requires oil. Even if you buy your coffee from a local store and it's roasted by your neighbor it took oil to get it to you.

We could have a 100% renewable grid and we would still need to use hydrocarbons to support global economy

Is there any technological reason we couldn't use nuclear-powered container ships? They're the same general scale as nuclear aircraft carriers.

Trains can also be electric and powered by a third-rail type system. Trucks and drones can be electric.

Obviously there are political barriers but if it really came down to this or the end of sea shipping I suspect those barriers could be overcome.

Nuclear reactors on ships require bomb-grade uranium fuel and an elite crew of masters-degreed engineers to run them.

Container ships can run on hydrogen

>SUV/pick-up boom (America's best-selling car in 2018 is the F150 series!)

My understanding is that this is a misleading fact - There are less models of SUV in the market than other classes of vehicle, so even if less SUVs, as a class, are sold than other cars, the lack of variance means the total number of a particular model is likely higher than sales of a model in any other class.

That might be true, but total volume of SUV sales in the US is giant. In fact, SUVs are now the standard car model, with sedans being left behind. This is the result of a strong push from auto companies in terms of advertisement and diversification of SUV offers.

Crossovers apparently make up the bulk of it (40%), but yeah those plus pickups and SUVs combined eclipse small, medium, large, and luxury cars combined.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276506/change-in-us-car-...

It seems like Crossover is just a name for "I can't tell if that's a bulky sedan, a minivan with slightly bigger tires, a small SUV, or a short station wagon." I think statistics that classify them as SUVs are a little misleading because the distinctions are blurring.

It's a platform difference. The starting point for a crossover is a car chassis, whereas SUVs are derived from a truck.

The word crossover implies a unibody car-like vehicle, but people call things SUVs whether or not they are car-based.

a trend right now is a lot of wealthy/upper middle class buy brand new pick up trucks, SUVs have replaced sedans/minivans are too washed dadcore

I completely disagree.

While I do not believe we have hit peak oil yet, I do not believe we are far off nor will oil and gas demand continue to grow for "a long time".

- The personal transportation industry will go through the biggest change it ever has in the next decade. Bigger than horse + buggy -> automobiles. An electric car will be cheaper to operate and maintain. Production of EVs will proliferate even countries like China (already happening), India (already happening), and others. Autonomous ride networks, especially in dense urban areas, will also take a massive market share. The need for individuals to own vehicles will decrease in urban and even suburban environments. Couple that with almost any good or service you need being delivered to your door "instantly", the vehicle is no longer needed. The rise of remote working will also contribute to this. Yes, some people like their SUVs/Trucks, but that will pail in comparison to the reduction elsewhere.

- Air travel will grow, assuming economic stability of course. Towards the end of the decade, we will also have short length, all electric aircraft operating. That will shore up the growth of air travel in regards to the demand for more oil.

- Natural Gas growth long term... no way. Not happening. Within this decade, we will see the price of solar and batteries drop to levels never before imagined. Production and efficiency will also greatly increase. We have only just begun. You will have distributed "grids", where many more people are generating their own power, and borrowing from their neighbor when necessary. BRIC countries will also be leading on adopting these types of grids as well, especially in areas where the grid is not stable/doesn't even exist. See Puerto Rico. They have only just begun.

- Yes, the quality of life across the world is getting better. That means the demand for alternative energy and the Capability to pay for the infrastructure is ALSO increasing. This will move the growth needle forward for renewable energy. This will be your peak oil. Your peak oil will be in the past once you see entire areas of housing in BRIC countries running on Solar/batteries. Goodbye. Oil.

Also, I think humanity will do the right thing as a whole. Governments will STOP subsidizing oil like they do today. It will become much more expensive. Peak oil will be in the past at this point as well.

So go on, go invest in your oil companies and throw your arms in the air saying "yes, but it's not my problem, I'm just making money". War profiteers say the same thing. They never come out on the right side of the history book. Neither will you. Oil and Gas will NOT have growth for a long time.

Most of your reasoning hinges on spread of electric cars and electric planes. If that doesn't come to pass, oil will still be in huge demand. EVs have been in existance for almost a decade and now and they're still only 1% of US car sales: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/us-electric-veh...

If you extrapolate their upward line forward, it'll take an extremely long time before % of EVs becomes greater than 50%.

And as for electric air travel, as far I know it's not even happening yet in the commerial passenger planes and the air travel industry moves even slower than the automative industry.

In 100 years ago, I would agree with you. But, for now, we're stuck with using oil for quite a long time.

Discussion around if something that is in the works "may not happen" and therefore negates a particular thesis is wishful thinking. It is a real risk which should be considered, particularly if one's livelihood is dependent on the continued market dynamics of Oil & Gas.

Re: Your point on electric car adoption.

Your notion of linear adoption is not backed by history. Any kind of breakthrough technology follows adoption in the form of an 'S-Curve'. Example: http://www.foresightguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Scu...

In addition to that: everyone is so focused on % of the installed fleet being electric. The key metric that is more important is "what % of passenger car kilometers driven are electric". A relatively small electric car fleet run by a ridesharing service, driving around 80% of the time can displace lots of ICE passenger car miles.

When you factor in that fleets use TCO for purchases rather than purchase price / monthly payments (like most consumers do) electric vehicles become economical sooner due to the economics of operating electric vehicles.

That S-Curve your talking about is mostly for software and other technologies that have low barriers to entry. Cars are far harder than software and thus will take much longer for adoption. I mean just look at the production number projections for electric cars. It's not spiking like an S-curve. this is gonna take some time.

Electric vehicles have been around for over 100 years: https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-electric-car

> If you extrapolate their upward line forward

Extrapolations are a bad idea for "tipping point" kinds of curves. Electric vehicles are steadily improving, and as they become better in niches (like high performance cars) the curve can change to be nothing like the extrapolation.

Look at it a different way. How many years is the average car on the road? Even if we banned the sale of new ICE vehicles today, it would still take well over a decade for them to filter out of operation.

But there are very real, very possible existential crises that could massively impact the ICE fleet and filter out existing vehicles faster the usual replacement rate. To obvious examples: the cost of gas rises fast enough, and/or entire gas chains go out of business making stations hard to find.

>EVs have been in existance for almost a decade and now

EVs have been in existence for nearly as long as ICE vehicles have. The 1867 World Exposition had an electric cycle and you had electric taxis in London in 1897 [1] and by 1912 there were 33,842 electric cars registered in the United States [2]. In the 50's you had Deutsche Post of the GDR using electric delivery vans (I believe an electric vehicle was being used in either London or Paris much earlier than that for postal use but I'm having a hard time finding a link, I swear I've read about it before though). Even Anderson Electric Car Company produced something like 13,0000 'Detroit Electric' cars int he early 1900s. Even the Apollo-era LRVs (lunar roving vehicle) were EVs (for obvious reasons).

EVs are old-school, the only new-school thing about them is lithium battery chemistry.

I genuinely don't think EVs are going to catch on any time soon.

- They're far more expensive than ICE vehicles as there aren't a whole lot of used EVs but there are tons of used ICE vehicles at vary price levels.

- John Q Public can't do much to repair an EV and has to take it to a mechanic, yet even something like an engine rebuild can be done in someone's garage if they are so motivated. I've never taken a single minute of mechanic training yet I've helped 4 different friends pull engines with borrowed hoists and do major work to them and without YouTube, only printed manuals for vehicles, I've done plenty of other work to my own vehicles (dropped the gas tank, replaced ball joints/pitmans/idle arms/electrical work/replaced most of the stuff under the hood in various vehicles).

- People like me, in an apartment, can't charge at home and you're not going to see property owners rushing to install EV powering (even if they get to recover their costs by taking on a few % fee) any time soon, probably not even for new-construction. I can go to the gas station and fill a nearly empty tank in 2~ minutes which will last me 2 weeks of commuting and then some, for the same range in an EV I'm going to have to park somewhere and sit for 30+ minutes.

Two of those three things keep me from having an electric vehicle (can't charge it, can't afford it) and the third, the fact I can't do any major repairs, is a big turn off. Even my 2013 Impala I can repair/service basically everything, and if I don't have the tools I can go rent any specialized tool I need for a nominal fee from the 3 big part store brands.

I think these things are going to keep EV adoption pretty low for the foreseeable future. Even in my own experience here in Indianapolis I've only seen one tesla on the road (I actually see it most days on the way to work) in the wild and only know one person here that owns one (and he's stated it's impractical for anything other than driving to work and back).

[1] https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/the-surprisingly-old-story...

[2] https://www.britannica.com/technology/automobile/Early-elect...

> - They're far more expensive than ICE vehicles as there aren't a whole lot of used EVs but there are tons of used ICE vehicles at vary price levels.

For now. That's a combination of efficiencies of scale problems. VW Group says that they'll hit the efficiency of scale where EVs are cheaper across the board for every make and model to produce than ICE vehicles sometime between now and 2023 (that's less than four years).

Similarly there seem to be fewer used EV cars on the market than expected at this point, and they are retaining their market value better than comparable ICE models for interesting reasons: the average replacement rate is way down compared to the ICE average (where the average owner keeps a vehicle 3-5 years, the EV average is currently closer to 7-10 years), and the replacement rate seems to reflect overall reliability (Nissan Leafs have the highest replacement rate, and arguably the lowest battery reliability).

> John Q Public can't do much to repair an EV and has to take it to a mechanic, yet even something like an engine rebuild can be done in someone's garage if they are so motivated.

It's so very apples-to-oranges though. Most EV motors are essentially permanent magnet drivers with essentially no moving parts that will outlast the plastics and the frame of the car the motor is built for. There's no gas tank, fewer to no ball joints/pitmans/idle arms/timing belts/so forth and so on. Plenty of electrical work if you still want it, though most of it is now High Voltage and will take a bit more of an electrician background, some EVs still have a 12 volt system for bootstrapping the cabin systems.

> I can go to the gas station and fill a nearly empty tank in 2~ minutes which will last me 2 weeks of commuting and then some, for the same range in an EV I'm going to have to park somewhere and sit for 30+ minutes.

You think it would be hard to schedule a 30-45 minute meal somewhere once every two weeks? The car has to sit while it charges, but you don't and can schedule it as your grocery trip or your lunch break.

"You think it would be hard to schedule a 30-45 minute meal somewhere once every two weeks?"

I think there is an issue that may not be obvious with the charging time.

Let's say for the sake of argument, sure, people can tolerate taking ten times the amount of time to charge as filling a gas tank.

But what that means on a large scale, if everyone switches to electric, is that we need ten times the number of charging stations as gas station pumps in order to have the same number of locations open per person.

Of course, you say, people mostly charge electric cars at home. Sure, but if they do it 90% of the time, we still need just as many public chargers as there are gas stations now. On top of a charger for (almost) every home.

Without much faster charging or much higher capacity batteries, it seems to me like this is a basic problem with switching everything to electric that I haven't heard about from others.

Maybe there's something obvious I'm missing, but I never see people address this or identify the incredible infrastructure requirements as a problem. People describe occasional waits for access to a charger and don't extrapolate.

Everyone charging at home in off-peak hours "fills in the bathtub" on energy usage charts. Peak demand during the day is huge, and it drops off substantially at night. We already have the power capacity to support every car switching magically tomorrow to EV so long as everyone agrees to charge in off-peak hours.

Yeah, there's absolutely no reason for chargers to be rare. In much of the world we have the electricity already spread amazingly wide. Every outside plug is already a potential Level 1 charger. You may frown at how slow Level 1 "trickle" charges, but think about how long most cars spend sitting somewhere, anywhere. Gain a few miles every time the car is parked. You can't put a gas station in every parking space, but you can certainly put a boring old fashioned three-prong plug there. (We have that technology. We've had it for like a century now.)

"Charging Stations" as a construct are certainly a convenience, especially when looking for reliable charging away from home, but chargers can be anywhere the (electric) light (bulb) touches (and that's a lot of the developed world). Thinking of chargers in traditional gas station terms is missing the opportunity, and confusing how the supply chain works. We don't need to centralize big reservoirs of "fuel" to maintain an EV fleet, we use the electric grid we've already spent a century building out, diversifying, and largely decentralizing.

I've never had an apartment offer power at the parking lot. I couldn't buy a non-hybrid EV until a solid majority of them install that (either metered or on an indoor switch if I have an assigned space). Street parking is a harder problem.

Again, there are so many options, and it's just almost sad the lack of imagination everyone is bringing to these discussions. The same anecdotes appear, and the discussion just keeps going around in circles. Are you trying to solve the problem or are you just complaining that you won't bother?

You have never had an apartment offer power at the parking lot? Isn't that an issue with your landlords like any other apartment feature/benefit? Isn't that the same as price shopping for an apartment with in-unit Laundry or up-to-date Appliances? Maybe the Landlord doesn't presently see a need for such a convenience, but they should be willing to compete, open to suggestions and the right sort of incentivization, right? (At least, so claim the free market folks.)

Do you even need to charge at home? What's your daily commute, can you buy an EV with enough range that a supercharge once every two weeks will do it? That's the exact scenario discussed just posts above, this discussion is a flat circle.

Can you charge at work? Can you charge at the grocery when you are running errands?

Most Americans can, statistically, find a range in an EV today that they could charge once every two weeks and handle 100% of their average work life. Yes, everyone has an anecdote of how they are a special outlier that needs personal attention to their complaints.

You couldn't buy a non-hybrid EV, or you just aren't willing to put the work out into figuring out any sort of strategy or plan? It's not even rocket science. Electricity is everywhere and this should be really easy for everyone to figure out.

Does the building you are parked outside of have electricity? If yes, ask if it can give you an outside plug. That's it. Level 1 charging is that simple.

Level 2 charging is nearly as simple: Does that building have Dryers or any other reason to already have 220+ Volt A/C circuits? (Maybe you are somewhere like England where that's actually the wall sockets.) Get a "dryer plug" installed in the parking lot. Admittedly we use a bit fancier of a plug socket in that case, but the basic electronics are the same.

You aren't probably going to get a Level 3+ supercharger at an apartment complex any time soon (though it depends on your municipality and electric company and their goals for subsidizing the fun), but you probably don't need it. In most cases it's a lovely either/or: Level 1 or 2 charging at home/work, slow and steady every day, or Level 3+ charging in short bursts every two weeks or so. (Though it's not an exclusive-or; you could do both.)

There are options already. None of these are hard problems to solve. We have the technology, it's just amazing we don't seem to have the will or the imagination, at least in terms of how often these same questions come up in repeat on HN comments, and HN is an audience I'd expect to be more willing to explore creative technical solutions to problems rather than to just stop at the first anecdotal problem to mind.

You know what would be a lot more convincing, or at least valuable to the conversation?

If you provided some anecdotes about how you live, in an apartment, with a BEV as your only car, on a middling salary for a white collar worker (say $40-50K USD). Possibly some numbers/calculations based on your experience.

Putting people down for "anecdotes" and not having "imagination" gives the impression you might be basing your opinions on theoretical ideas.

The problem is there are more anecdotes than useful information. Apologies for getting a small bit of angry there. It's one of those cases where I've had a lot of different people pop up in my "mentions" with variations of the same anecdotes, and there's that imbalance in that even if it is the fiftieth time I've responded to the same anecdote, it can still be that person's first time thinking about it.

If you really want my anecdata, I do live in an apartment building with a tiny shared garage. I use a "range extended" EV (Generation 1, 2012 Volt) as my only car. I do my entire daily commute on a Level 1 charge, 8-12 hours charging each night for roughly 35-42 miles of charge depending on weather, entirely off of a boring, normal three-prong garage outlet. I have a dedicated parking space for my unit, but it's not entirely as convenient to the plug as I would like, but it's served me well enough now for 7-ish years. I've not yet convinced my building to install a Level 2 or higher charger, but as some of my neighbors start to talk about the idea of also buying EVs it could happen as a joint effort.

The only big maintenance issues I've had with my car in all this time have been related to its gas engine for range extending and partly related to how little I've wound up using it. (I used it a lot in the first couple of years for a dumb commute I wasn't happy with; on an average year since then I use a full tank of gas at most twice in that year for big road trips, with rare sips for weather or the car's own monthly maintenance cycle.) At this point, I do feel certain my next car when it comes time to replace the Volt will be entirely battery electric. A gas range extender made sense in 2012, but I'd strongly recommend against it in 2019, the range in BEVs is now good enough to cover 100% of my daily driving for two whole weeks between required charging, and I do have years of experience now that I can also easily cover ~140% of my daily miles in the evenings on the most boring of a Level 1 charger (110 volt, standard US three prong wall outlet), not even counting how long my car usually sits on the weekends, nor how much of a charge I could get if I could convince my office to give me even a boring old Level 1 plug while I'm parked at work.

There's this perspective that Chargers are something new and unique and need to be giant gas-station like things, and it just belies the fact of how ubiquitous our electric grid already is, just how many plug outlets we've placed throughout our cities. In my years of owning my car, I've found a small game of cataloging outdoor outlets and their rough distance to parking lots. (I've found parking spots to charge in at the back of hotels I've stayed at. The hotels didn't even know they had spots that could charge a car, and always had fun reactions if I asked to use those outlets.) Then that lead to a game of cataloging the nearest electric device to a parking spot. Do you realize how many parking lots have lots of bright shining lamps every so many feet? How many street lamps on the average street? Do you know how easy it would be to install a plug at the base of each and every one of those lamps?

(More interestingly, it was brought to my attention that the vast majority of parking lot lamps run in the US actually run at 220 volt A/C for reliability of the most common type of halogen lamps at the time a lot of parking lots were built. In theory we should be easily capable of adding Level 2 chargers near every parking lot lamp.)

We could argue middling salary multiple ways, and I'm not sure I'd fit some of your definitions, but I will offer as some evidence that I'm driving a 7-year old car, expect to keep it until at least 10-years old, and my previous car was 13-years old (and I had driven it for 10 of those) when I upgraded. I had to buy this car new to put my money where my mouth was on EV as the present in 2012, but it was a trade-off I felt important. For the most part I've saved on maintenance and gas more than enough to make up the difference from buying used, at least according to the last time I did a back-of-the-envelope check (which was an important check for my father, who is very adamant from experience about never buy a new car, always buy used).

So yeah, electric charging is already the past and present for me, I'm not just talking theoretically.

> The hotels didn't even know they had spots that could charge a car

Wait. A 115 VAC socket exposed to the elements with no meter? How do you pay for it? Was it under lock and key?

Yes, normal wall outlet. On the outside of buildings since forever for grounds keeping tools like electric leaf blowers. You see them all the time on buildings (and homes!) every so many feet in those little plastic boxes where they just flip up and are rarely with any sort of lock or key. When I've used such outlets in my travels, I've made sure to clear it with the Manager first before ever plugging in, which as I said was often a fun conversation. In my small assortment of times asking the question the majority of the time the answer, after a lot of confusion about what I was asking and sometimes which Manager I should talk to in a multi-Manager situation was "Sure, I don't see why not." A few times it was "No, I'm not sure we'd allow that," or "The person you could ask isn't in this week," and I respected that outcome.

In all the times I asked, paying for it never came up. Admittedly, when I was asking it was always a "nice to have it" request and at least to some degree I hit a sweet spot between "Hospitality companies want to agree to things that are easy for them to provide to make customers happy" and "this is new enough and uncommon enough a question that they aren't going have written policies on it yet". I was also making sure to only do it with businesses that I had an established customer relationship with (I'm staying in this hotel and/or Since I'm paying for parking here anyway). Much of the time the extra bit of electricity I was using was a drop in the bucket of the business' usual utility overhead, and/or a drop in the bucket compared to my existing expenditure (the cost of a hotel room, even the cost of parking).

(Aside rant: I think it's a scam to meter some Chargers at all. Chargers in some of the parking garages I've used or attempted to use had some outrageous surcharges to make it seem like metering was a useful value add to the process. Use something like $0.75 in electricity, tops, get a combo of $12+ in surcharges from three different middlemen [the garage, the charger company, a bonus kickback to the power company], all on top of $15-$30 parking fee just to get into the garage. You could easily cover $0.75 of electricity in that $30 parking fee.)

"Chargers are something new and unique and need to be giant gas-station like things"

Well, nobody is comparing a charger to a gas station. More like a gas pump. And I don't understand your tone of "oh, electricity is everywhere, you can basically get it for free". It costs what it costs. When almost nobody has an electric car, public chargers can be installed and subsidized as a gimmick. At some point, if people actually use them, "free" will vanish in a puff of logic.

Also, you know, I have seen public chargers in parking lots that cost money, and you know what was missing that gas stations always have? A sign with the price! I guess there are no specific regulations or something, but as far as I'm concerned if you can't see the price up front (and probably have to agree to a click-wrap list of terms) I think nobody is serious.

It's not like it's a gas pump at all though. A gas pump spends a lot of energy to move liquid from a reservoir. An electric charger is "merely" a plug or an outlet to an electric circuit. Existing outlets work just fine! We've made these shiny free standing things with crazy cables and fun new connectors that sometimes connect to more exotic circuits with higher voltages (though that's not guaranteed, I've seen Level 1 chargers in the fancy charger form factor that may as well just be a wall plug).

Yeah, electricity has a cost, but when was the last time you checked your utility rates? Electricity itself is stupid cheap, it's a commodity, as it should be. Depending on city and time of day, you are talking dimes per kilowatt-hour. When was the last time you were asked to pay 45 cents for the energy you used to charge your phone in a café, restaurant, or at an airport?

For mostly one-off, random charges at places you are only at for a couple of hours, existing parking costs can and should cover it.

Sure, you do that every day for a month and those cents add up to dollars, and that's why a lot of the chargers are more like clubs where you pay monthly dues. Which is a business model that almost works as intended, except to really work well it should just be part of your monthly utility bill with your electric company with no extra middle men in the way.

But right now the vast majority of public chargers, at least in the US, are costing a whole lot more than the raw electricity prices. They've got tons of service fees they cost to pay for their "subsidized" installation costs. It is a bit of a racket, and should be better regulated.

Which is also why it's a psychological game they are playing right now to make you think that you need expensive chargers everywhere, because it is marketing that makes them (outrageous amounts of) money. The wall outlet at your home is good enough. A wall outlet from your employer would be good enough. An electrician can install an extra outlet on a circuit for sometimes dozens of dollars (after the basic service charges of making an appointment), and if you are more the DIY sort you can pick up most of what you need in a Lowe's or Home Depot and watch a YouTube video or three. You probably don't need to invest thousands of dollars into a gas pump looking charger. If you want to worry about the cost of electricity you are adding to the electric bill of whatever building it is you don't even have to install an extra meter, just do the math, round up a bit and pay that. While you are doing the math, maybe do the math on everybody's cell phone charging while they are in the building?

Yes, there's going to be a need/use case for superchargers at Level 3+, especially for long distance travel, but all the public chargers in the middle (Level 1 and Level 2) that are fancier than just a boring old wall outlet are in many ways a psychological game that charging is more of a service and less of a commoditized utility than it actually is. Electricity doesn't magically get 5000% more expensive because it's coming out of a machine made up to look like a gas pump with lightning bolts painted on the side and a fancy cable with a silly looking connector.

"Electricity itself is stupid cheap"

Yeah, yeah...the DC fast chargers though? I saw where somebody said they were charged like $10 for enough electricity to drive less than 20 miles. I don't know if that is really representative, but what feels right to you or anybody in terms of price is even less meaningful than one random data point.

Gas stations can sell gas for minimal cost usually due to having a convenience store with high margins attached. You can charge at home due to having a connection to the grid, a house, and wiring, all of which cost substantial money beyond the per-kwh charge. So regardless of what charging "really" costs, your reasons for why it should be essentially free seem obviously flawed to me.

I'm not saying that it should be "essentially free", I'm saying there is far less competition than there should be, competition should be easy and a lot more prevalent, and part of that is the very hurdle that people think we need to install electric chargers like gas pumps in the gas pump business model only as big installations of just fast chargers, because right now we aren't doing that well either. To be doing the gas pump business model well: Yes, a lot more fast chargers should be working with convenience stores and restaurants and what have you and should be value added to higher margin industries.

The "parking meter" business model is also a valid strategy. My complaint with that business model, if its not apparent enough yet, is not that they are charging more for that business model, but that they aren't being transparent about it and double and triple dipping. If you want to charge $5-$15/hour parking, that's fine, that's a parking fee. Don't call it "electricity fees", because that's not what that is. Also, don't charge me $5-15/hour parking at both the Gate and the Meter (Charger), because that's $10-$30/hour parking and your signs are wrong.

But the further point is that those aren't the only business models. You don't need fast chargers everywhere, because cars spend most of their lives parked and the electric grid is everywhere, if we could just drive enough business models that encourage "slow" chargers everywhere we "win" when it comes to competition. Utilities make great amenities to bundle with other products, services, employment relationships.

Right now too, there's a lot of "worst of both worlds" business models, at least in the US. I've seen grocery stores with both free parking lots and low margin gas pumps, and yet very high electric parking fees. Some of that is simply because the same grocery stores that just spent millions in becoming their own gas stations are outsourcing their chargers to third parties because they don't have to compete on margins yet, and they aren't paying attention to what the chargers are costing, and how it affects the public perception of their overall amenities just yet. I suppose we'll know when electric is finally on their radars when you can use "gas points" for electric rates.

I just moved out of an apartment building that did have chargers, but they had like two in a garage for hundreds of cars. They didn't seem to have plans to provide one for everyone.

I don't get this. If I can't rely on having a charger every day, I have to plan on being able to get home without one, and then why have it?

>You think it would be hard to schedule a 30-45 minute meal somewhere once every two weeks?

Uh, not everyone can afford to go out to eat once every two weeks just to charge their car. Another HN myopic view "I make a lot of money, everyone must make a lot of money".

Nothing to do with money, pack a picnic and find a charger near a pleasant park. The point is there are all sorts of options to spend your time for 30-45 minutes. Grab a laptop and work from your car. Go for a hike. Walk the dog. Whatever you were already going to do out the house on the weekend once every fortnight.

>The personal transportation industry will go through the biggest change it ever has in the next decade. Bigger than horse + buggy -> automobiles. An electric car will be cheaper to operate and maintain. Production of EVs will proliferate even countries like China (already happening), India (already happening), and others. Autonomous ride networks, especially in dense urban areas, will also take a massive market share. The need for individuals to own vehicles will decrease in urban and even suburban environments. Couple that with almost any good or service you need being delivered to your door "instantly", the vehicle is no longer needed. The rise of remote working will also contribute to this. Yes, some people like their SUVs/Trucks, but that will pail in comparison to the reduction elsewhere.

You give no reason at all why you think any of this is true.

>Towards the end of the decade, we will also have short length, all electric aircraft operating.

This is quite optimistic. Realistically, this market is yet to be proven viable at all, and even if it is it's likely to be much more than a single decade (assuming you didn't actually mean the "end of the decade" coming two months from now) to reach beyond the prototype stage.

>Natural Gas growth long term... no way. Not happening. Within this decade, we will see the price of solar and batteries drop to levels never before imagined.

Again, why? All of this is pie-in-the-sky optimism without any attempt at justifying it.

And ignores the move away from nuclear. Europe alone is shutting down lots of nuclear. Since they are not going to do coal natural gas is very likely to be needed.

>The personal transportation industry will go through the biggest change it ever has in the next decade. Bigger than horse + buggy -> automobiles.

I'll take your bet on that one. The difference between having to keep an animal alive and in useful physical condition and maintaining a model T or A in roadworthy condition is far, far greater than the difference between one source of motive power and another.

I think your overall predictions are generally right but your timeline is too aggressive by at least half an order of magnitude.

Everyone who has actually done the math wrt actually meeting our global energy demands agrees: petrochemical dependence is not going away any time soon.

Electric car demands increases demand on the grid, which will centralize demands for fuel. Electric aircraft are a long way off, except in the private jet world. Battery energy density just isn't there and would massively increase costs. Plus there's the whole issue of explosive failure modes; contrasted with avgas which is relatively safe in liquid form.

Renewable energy technologies are made with petrochemicals, so they have their own built in oil & NG demand.

The most, wealthiest (on average) people live where renewable energy is least effective.

The numbers do show that we can drastically reduce our oil dependence, but ONLY if we're willing to trade quality of life to do so. There's little chance of that happening.

The is delusional optimism. All signs point to increasing amounts of pollution. There is no existing plan that will fix the solution that is being executed. All environmental or alternative efforts being pursued are falling short.

There is no indication ‘green’ energy will be a significant portion of the world energy supply. There is no indication we are removing our dependency on oil. We are continuing to consume coal, oil, and natural gas at increasing rates. All metrics that show positive change are local and not global. All coordinated global efforts results are over promised and under delivered.

Every problem exists until it doesn't. Saying that a problem has not yet been solved and therefore cannot be solved is a fallacy.

It's not a question of whether the human race can solve this problem, it's a question of whether we will solve it. There are no fundamental physical or technological limitations that prevent us from running the world on 100% clean energy, it's just a matter of overcoming our species' collective political apathy on this issue...and the kind of blind pessimism you're expressing tends to lead to more apathy, not progress.

> Saying that a problem has not yet been solved and therefore cannot be solved is a fallacy.

I didn’t say the problem cannot be solved. I said the problem is continuing, and current data indicates it will continue to be a problem.

You may call my opinion pessimistic. I think I’m being realistic, and our outlook is just this bleak. The global effort to fight climate change is falling significantly short to the task.

I don't think anyone is saying that we've already done enough and the prognosis is good. Also, you appear to be criticizing the people who are doing useful things, without offering any alternative. Bleak indeed.

I’m not criticizing people working on the problem. I’m criticizing the viewpoint that we are right around the bend and the fight is almost over. This is an unrealistic viewpoint.

We aren’t right around the bend. There is no indication that governments will stop subsidizing oil. Personal transportation might be electrified, but it’ll take decades and meanwhile other pollution sources would have grown to eat out the progress gained.

It’s unknown how far we can reasonably advance solar and battery technologies. It’s likely that raising global wealth and raising global population will result in raising global consumption (and pollution). Electric airplanes are decades (centuries?) away from taking over significant portions of air traffic.

This is a hard problem. You’re patting yourself on the back and pretending that we’re almost done.

We don’t have the political or economic structures to solve this problem. We don’t have good enough science or engineering to compete against fossil fuels. We don’t have enough time to build either.

I don't think anyone has the view that you're criticizing.

Sorry to repeat myself.

Key thing about electric car introduction vs other technologies is an electric car is a car and automobiles have a 100 years with of well developed infrastructure already. The only thing that's needed is the charging points. Which is point infrastructure for the most part.

That makes the switchover seamless. Which means it's only production and price limited. Not like the original cars when there was only a few hundred miles of paved roads and no gas stations.

I think this overlooks several key facts. 1. Poor countries cannot afford the EV infrastructure. As Africa gains in wealth it is absolutely going to rely on gasoline engines, the government stability is not there to allow for a wide spread EV charging infrastructure. Plus EV is far more expensive putting it out of reach for emerging economies.

2. You are overlooking the power of existing industry. Natural gas has massive lobbying power vs electric and solar and is seen as 'greener' than coal. It is also easier to retrofit existing power plants to natural gas from coal than to build massive solar fields keeping jobs at their current locations.

3. You will have distributed "grids", where many more people are generating their own power, and borrowing from their neighbor when necessary - see the above point. Entrenched industry, lobbyists and industry capture are working hard to prevent this, at least in the US. Laws already exist in many states to prevent this.

Use of combustibles is only increasing: https://yearbook.enerdata.net/natural-gas/gas-consumption-da...

I would love to transition to a green, renewable infrastructure but unfortunately I don't think it is going to happen for a very long time.

> 1. Poor countries cannot afford the EV infrastructure. As Africa gains in wealth it is absolutely going to rely on gasoline engines, the government stability is not there to allow for a wide spread EV charging infrastructure. Plus EV is far more expensive putting it out of reach for emerging economies.

On the flipside, poor countries with less sunk infrastructure costs in place have more raw capability to leap frog on infrastructure evolutionary steps. There's no reason to run copper telecom lines to bootstrap fiber telecom lines if you are building from scratch today. There are developing nations with far faster internet speeds than the US average because they don't have miles and miles of copper to replace. Just as you accuse the previous poster of ignoring the power of existing industry, the same applies in the other direction to poor/developing countries that they have fewer existing industries to side-step in a bootstrap process.

A lot of people may not appreciate it yet, but EV infrastructure has less bootstrap costs than gas infrastructure. A lot of industrial nations have already invested so much sunk costs in gas infrastructure it seems cheap as free or magic, but gas stations don't build themselves and gas doesn't magically show up at the pump. The bonus that EV infrastructure is concomitant with Electric Grid infrastructure means that poor countries need only "one bootstrap" rather than "two" to get a strong renewable (distributed) EV Grid. EV infrastructure is almost a two-for-one deal with Electric grid infrastructure. It's a lot cheaper than reliable gas infrastructure, especially when you consider the overlap with other electric grid needs.

I think it's likely that basic electric vehicles will soon be cheaper than basic gas vehicles. Right now, batteries are the biggest part of the cost (if you want long range), but they're getting cheaper all the time. If you're optimizing for low cost and mass production, you don't need rare-earth permanent magnets in the motor or battery chemistries that require cobalt.

Power grids may be a problem, but it's possible to solve in a decentralized fashion by installing solar panels and/or wind generators near the place where the car is being used. Right now, solar is more available to wealthy people, but there again costs are coming down and in many cases solar is cheaper than buying power from a utility.

Disagree. 1. poor countries already have electric power. most of the countries are using 220volts, that charges your electric car just fine. evs will soon be cheaper that most gas cars because no maintenance, 1 million mile power tranes, no spark plugs, fan belts, clutch, heater core, oil change, air filter, gas, gas filter.

2. The power of the existing industry - ha. Economic forces conquer all. Coal is failing because nat gas is way cheaper. Just like solar power and wind power will soon be cheap enough to attack nat gas.

3. Tesla is doing just fine against basically the entire gas, financial, automotive industries, etc.

I followed peak oil back in the day. I think I agree with the idea that the oil cartels know there are plenty of oil deposits and they hold them off the market to support prices and otherwise pretend they don't exist till they need them.

You are spouting nonsense. Use of oil and gas isn't a matter of "belief". It's a function of demographic, developmental and economic variables. Pretty much the energy use for the next decade or two is nearly set in stone barring fusion energy.

Also, if you think going from gas cars to EV is a greater jump than horse buggy to automobiles, then you simply don't have a clue. As for china and india, EVs account for 0.0001% of cars.

If you think we are going to be using "all electric aircraft" at the end of this decade and that it will dent the need for oil for air travel, once again, you haven't a clue what you are talking about.

If you think natural gas growth is going to slow anytime soon, once again you haven't a clue what you are talking about. The bigger growth in energy has been in natural gas. It has solely been responsible for the collapse of the coal industry in the US. And there are tremendous room for growth in natural gas production in the US, Russia, etc.

> Your peak oil will be in the past once you see entire areas of housing in BRIC countries running on Solar/batteries. Goodbye. Oil.

Dumbest thing I've ever read. It much more likely that these countries are going to increase coal production to keep up with energy demand needs than going "solar/battery" route.

> War profiteers say the same thing. They never come out on the right side of the history book.

Nope. This is the dumbest thing I've ever read. War profiteers are some of the biggest winners we have.

> Oil and Gas will NOT have growth for a long time.

If you say so. But then again, people like you were claiming the end of oil a decade ago.

> SUV/pick-up boom

Not sure why but I see the same here, in Berlin. There is even a meme circling about SUVs being just mothers (usually talking on a phone) driving their kids to school.

I've heard that consumers perceive SUVs as safer

Consumer Reports seems to back this up, but they cite an added rollover risk:

> "In car vs. SUV head-on crashes, the study found that the odds of death were 7.6 times higher for the car driver than the SUV driver. In crashes where the car had a better front crash-test rating than the SUV did, the car's driver fared a bit better but was still four and a half times more likely to die than the SUV driver. "

> "Choosing an SUV for safety isn't an automatic win, as their higher center of gravity makes them more prone to rollover, an often fatal event. "

[1] - https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/suvs-are-sa...

A criticism is this being at the cost of the other crash participant (due to mass), thus it being a spiral were everyone will drive military tanks a bit down the line.

> everyone will drive military tanks a bit down the line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummer

I would say CR doesn't back up the "SUVs are safer" argument; they say SUVs are safer in head-on collisions with smaller vehicles, but don't really indicate whether they're more or less safe overall.

larger vehicles afford larger crumple zones

*For the people inside the SUV.

Probably a true meme, I drive an SUV just because it is worlds easier to get young kids in and out of car seats in a higher suv. Had a rental car the other day and it was just unpleasant, constantly hitting my head on the interior ceiling etc.

It's insane that SUVs are back again, after their original wave during the Bush years.

They're not really back. Station wagons have just grown into them to compensate for the compromises in features that modern sedans have suffered in the name of fuel economy and safety.

People want something that's AWD, has a belt-line lower than your nose and a trunk that's integrated with the rest of the cab. In order to get that in a package that meets modern safety requirements it needs to be decently big and decently heavy. To make a decently big and decently heave vehicle comply with modern fuel economy and emissions rules you have to be able to call it an SUV with a straight face. Enter the "crossover".

Sedans and compact hatches make great commuter cars but if you can only afford one payment at a time then you can only really justify buying a multi-tool of a vehicle. On the small end that gives us things like the HRV. On the large end that gives us crew cab pickups.

Self-reinforcing arms race to sit up high and see over the top of traffic. If people could be trusted to reliably signal, merge, etc. the perceived need to see 300 feet ahead to predict behavior of immediately adjacent drivers would diminish.

SUVs were a thing during the Reagan years. Although they were mostly 2 doors and based on small pickups with body on frame construction and very little power by today's standards.

In 1987 I remember you could get a 4Runner, a Pathfinder, a Cherokee, a Blazer, or a Bronco.

Tesla is coming out with an all electric pick-up and semi. Hopefully others will follow. But at least a few years before mainstream uptake.

It's important to note that even with electric cars, it will still take a long time until most electricity is produced without the use fossil fuels.

Getting all of the required cobalt out of the Congo to make millions of large batteries isn't exactly ideal either.

Storage and long distance transport abilities make natural gas extremely attractive.

I never figured out why the cobalt has to come from the Congo. There are cobalt mines in North America that are sitting idle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt,_Ontario

It's cheaper when you don't need to follow labor and environmental regulations.

Bingo, and when it becomes too expensive there, you just do your typical political corruption/bribery dance and get the rules to change here so you can continue to profit from environmental destruction.

Besides, warlords often want lots of Nickel and other metals for projects. The Cobalt is "waste product" from what they were going to be mining for in the first place.

A few news are hinting at rare earth free batteries. Also I'd bet a grand that the minute EV tech is just good enough the market will flip. It might also trigger some electric fad that will make people root for renewables, storage, even nuclear (granted the passive failure micro reactors can materialize)

Based upon the makeup of the grid in the United States, using an EV would be the equivalent of a 68 MPG car[1]. It will be a lot better than that if you live in a state that is 99% renewable like Vermont but even in the states with the least renewables like West Virgina it still won't be any worse than the average ICE[2].

[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...

I find that people like to think of this as a theoretical problem, when it is tractable to solve the bulk of it for a lot of folks. Thinking of the average price of a US vehicle $37k, here is what we did with that same amount:

Installed 9.4 kw of solar panels (32 panels) on our roof which generates the same amount as all of our electricity usage on an annualized basis for $24k. Bought a used Nissan leaf for $10k. Refuel at home, from the sky. No oil changes. Prepaid power for life.

I know a lot of people don't live in such a sunny state as Arizona but given that I live in Oregon they can take heart.

Then I got 11k back from state and federal subsidies.

I wish electricity and gas prices would go up, that's the only way to drive additional investment into a non stupid energy future.

Lithium iron phosphate batteries don't use cobalt, and the chemistries that do use cobalt are using less and less.

Lithium ion manufacturing has been migrating from 6-2-2 (iirc that's 60% nickel, 20% magnesium, 20% cobalt) to 8-1-1, to 9-0.5-0.5, and so on.

The mix of power sources varies by state. In NY, Canadian hydro provides a lot of the electricity and coal virtually none.

When people say "haw haw, your electric car runs on coal", that might be true in West Virginia, but how many people have electric cars there anyway?

I thought the primary user of oil and gas is industry, not consumers.

I'm not sure the distinction matters, because all industry eventually serves consumers.

The distinction is crucial with respect to regulating pollution standards.

Regulation isn't the answer.

First, politics will never allow it. Look at the political environment in US, Great Britain...

Then when regulation is put in place, it isn't effective. Loop holes, grand-fathering, unintended consequences, incompetent gov't agencies.

And then even if one country goes green, it won't help if the rest of the world is spewing air pollution and dumping plastic into the oceans.

The probability of all this getting aligned to make regulation effective is zero.

I'm sure the residents next to the Hudson river in Upstate NY would love more GE polychlorinated biphenyls dumped into their rivers.

I think what you mean is that our current bought politicians don't have the guts to properly stand up to the people who pollute the environment.

Shouldn't prices on electric cars fall enough eventually to produce affordable electric SUVs and pick-ups? Or that's too much into the future still?

We need a $3/gallon gas tax in the US. And/or completely stop subsidizing oil production.

- simultaneous shift away from coal+ nuclear, giving a huge boost to natural gas in the long term (LNG build-out is only now beginning)

I have a feeling natural gas plants will not be built out to the extent you are imagining, because solar, wind, and lithium-ion storage are now competitive, and still getting cheaper very quickly.

Annually the world adds more power to the grid. Renewables are maybe 25-30% of it. We need to reach 120-130% where new demand is all met by renewables and we are shuting down coal and gas plants.

The thing about evil capitalists is that they like to have low cost equipment and operations and high price outputs.

IF you exclude government subsidies, these evil capitalists that are out for a buck are not rushing into implementing what you are talking about.

Which means that: It is not nearly as close to parity as you apparently believe that it is.

I mean no insult, but: If evil capitalists are not rushing towards doing it without government subsidies - it isn't as close to parity as you think it is. YMMV.

Those evil capitalists are choosing to build offshore wind, without subsidy in the UK. Gas expansion has completely ceased, and based on the last auction round for offshore licences is nearing a point where building new wind is cheaper than keep running existing gas plants. So I expect to see the decline of UK gas start soon. Fossil simply cannot compete on price. It would be even more of a no-brainer price wise, if we didn't have a government stupid enough to cease onshore wind.

Coal is almost completely out of UK generation - the single digit number of plants left spend almost all their time idling as source of last resort. Gas is next. It might survive a little longer as a fill in source used in lieu of battery and storage, again temporarily.

TL;DR Gas is on borrowed time unless it has been given an artificial leg up, i.e. regulation or fossil subsidy.

Great! Depending on geography, one would hope this to be the case...

Do you have projections that include the temperature rise as a result of this?

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