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Comment by elihu | Hacker News Reader

> "Looking further afield: it seems likely that the end of internal combustion engines will be in sight. Some countries are already scheduling a ban on IC engines to come in after 2030—electric cars are now a maturing technology with clear advantages in every respect except recharge time. Once those IC cars are no longer manufactured, we can expect a very rapid ramp-down of extraction and distribution industries for petrol and diesel fuels, leading to a complete phase-out possibly as early as 2040."

At this point the proposed bans are on the sale of new vehicles that run on fossil fuels. As far as I know, no one is planning to outright ban ICE vehicles yet. Headline writers consistently get this wrong, because making the policy sound more extreme than it is attracts ad views.

> "As about half of global shipping is engaged in the transport of petrochemicals or coal at this point, this is goin to have impacts far beyond the obvious."

Huh, that's a lot. If that's correct, it's a lot more than I would have guessed.

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From the comments on Charlie's site, and not by me:

Wyvernsridge | January 9, 2022 19:06 | Reply 8:

I love these kinds of posts! I would, however, caution about thinking that the end of ICE car manufacturing will be dictated solely by government diktat. It will most likely come earlier and more chaotically because of manufacturers being unable to source parts and components to continue making those cars.

The auto industry is basically a pyramid where OEMs [ie the car companies] depend on module/system [Tier1] suppliers as well as component suppliers [Tier 2] and Parts suppliers [Tier 3]. Those relationships are built on contracts that span out to five years and beyond. Today, contracts are being negotiated for 2025-2030. Those contracts, if happening at all, are being done for much lower quantities of units. After all, an EV does not need a cast-aluminium gearbox assembly. The manufacturers within those tiers are highly competitive among themselves and they know they need to find alternative to manufacture and remain viable well in advance of 2030. For OEMs this means trouble finding components, and paying much higher prices for those than they used to [ie the suppliers are costing in the risks]. This means that ICE car prices will skyrocket at the same time that EV prices go mainstream.

I don't think it's unlikely that ICEs will be phased out as quickly as the optimists are suggesting. Once there's critical momentum things move quickly, so +1 from me.

However, all that new electricity demand needs to come from somewhere. Drawing power from the grid at night works great today, but that's because of a coincidental uneven energy demand, which I doubt will last for too long. Once EVs are truly mainstream, it will (1) saturate the grid at all times of day and (2) make the grid more critical than it already is (meaning mitigations like rolling blackouts are gonna be even more infeasible). Sprinkle some demand surges from A/C and heaters from extreme weather events on top of this, and while we're add it let's decommision nuclear prematurely for political points (see e.g. Germany and Sweden).

Anyway, what I mean to say is that electricity supply will be a real problem (especially in the US due to car centrism) and short sighted politicians will need to provide immediate duct-tape fixes. Fossil fuels are sinfully well suited for fast energy injections, and I'm afraid that will often be the only option.

In other words, I worry little about the ICE-EV transition, but that doesn't mean anything for the fossil-renewables transition in general. I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow's electricity will be dirtier than today's.

In a worst case you could just burn gasoline in some turbine supplying the grid and it would probably still be more efficient and cleaner than ICEs.

That's true for gas fired plants so I expect it would be the case for light liquid fuelled ones. You wouldn't burn petrol in them, because that fuel is very specific to piston engines (turbines don't need toxic anti-knock additives, for example).

As far as grid stability though, in more advanced countries it's relatively easy to build out more grid capacity, just expensive. Only in politically troubled countries like Australia and the USA does the "but how do we create an effective market for building the grid" dominate that discussion, and result in a poorly functioning grid but also (obviously) a badly broken market in providing a grid. Back when I was exposed to economics electricity grids were a cliche example of things where markets are inappropriate and inherently unworkable - they're a natural monopoly. Even the most die-hard capitalist isn't going to suggest two or three independent grids supplying every building... well, maybe in Texas :)

I'm in Australia, and the big advantage we have over much of the USA is being closer to the equator... only about half our current houses have solar PV on them, and less than a third of commercial buildings. We could get 20% more electricity just by fixing that, and it would be conveniently close to demand as well.

In that case, you could just skip the grid and put the turbine in the car.[1]

Yes, the vehicle is heavier (=less efficient) when you carry the range extender around with you, but that's compensated for by not needing as heavy a battery. Eliminates dependence on the grid; replaces it with dependence on the current refuelling infrastructure. Which latter, at the moment and in most places, certainly is better than the currently available EV charging infrastructure. Crossover point where pure EVs become more efficient TBD by how fast fuel infra is reduced and how fast charging infra is improved... With an additional confounding factor introduced by GP's hypothesized grid instability.

___

[1]: Wow, what a genius I am, look what a great new idea! ... Or, well, maybe not so new after all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner%E2%80%93Porsche

Worth remembering that one reason electric cars are cheaper to run is that they're more efficient. More of the energy added to the car translates into moving you somewhere and less is converted into waste heat etc.

As a result 1MJ of petrol consumption replaced with electricity when somebody replaces their car with an EV is not 1MJ more electricity to deliver but perhaps 600kJ. This can mean guesses of the necessary infrastructure investment to deliver a fit-for-purpose supply network are significant over-estimates.

Cars are also an excellent target for "demand side control" in electrical grids. You'd be very angry if your refrigerator shuts down temporarily when the grid load is high, and pretty unhappy if your lights or TV shut down, but how about the tumble dryer? Most days you wouldn't care, and if you got paid for the option you might jump at the chance. However charging your car overnight who cares whether it charges from 1830 (when you arrive home) to 0340 (full) or from 2230 (as people go to bed and the network is less strained) to 0740 (just before you get in the car to drive to work) ?

ICE cars are still needed because battery tech is not good enough.

There are plenty of studies showing that an hybrid car is much better for the environment on the long term than the current state of lithium battery electric cars. Long range EV are a pest. Lithium mining is way worse for the environment than people believe, and there is the whole other issues related to mining in general.

We still need ice cars

Source? This sounds awfully lot like the ICE manufacturer backed FUD about EVs.

Cars are a bad option for long-range transportation anyway. I'm not convinced at all by this argument.

That is true, but it's also true for EVs.

Changing every car to EVs is missing the point. We need much better transport for both inter-city transportation, and for intra-continental goods transportation.

EVs are just going to change the location of the pollution.

EVs make the polluting energy sources fungible - you no longer have to modify the car to replace them with something better.

The metals in the batteries can be recycled into better batteries for increasingly efficient cars. I see it becoming like steel where the vast majority is recycled. Unlike plastic, it's just metals, so they can be remade endlessly

> half of global shipping.

There was a post here just yesterday, of a piece by Bill McKibben on this very topic. 40%. Seems about right to me.[1]

> > At this point the proposed bans are on the sale of new vehicles that run on fossil fuels [...] leading to a complete phase-out ...

> ... making the policy sound more extreme than it is

And the reduction in fossil fuels, too. Gasoline is somewhere between 30% and 40% of total oil consumption (if I am interpreting pages on the IEA's website correctly). There will be a ramp down, perhaps, but not a complete phase-out.

The ramp-down could happen slowly, then all at once, though.

On the one hand, ICE vehicles will be around for many decades after the bans come into force. On the other, most vehicle miles travelled are travelled by newer vehicles (say up to ten or twelve years old). I think there could be a tipping point after a while, in which the price of gasoline suddenly rises sharply because it's uneconomic to refine the small quantities demanded.

All the other components, not so much. There are lots of uses for which there are no good substitutes: industrial chemical feedstocks, ships, roadmaking, off-road construction and agriculture, trains, backup generators, military vehicles, and many more.

Diesel, kerosene (jet fuel), naptha, bitumen, etc., will be with use for a long time to come. Let's hope someone comes up with a cheap way of synthesizing them from atmospheric CO2.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29850631

While gasoline demand may bounce up and down, it is important to remember that no one is pumping petrol out of the ground. It is a component of crude oil and so some fraction of the crude oil demand is being pushed forward by ICE users. If the push stops then demand for crude will drop until some other fractional component user picks up the slack. What will be interesting to see is which fraction will end up hitting a floor first and setting the price -- maybe kerosene (jet fuel) but given the attention upon that fraction recently in terms of global warming I do not see it expanding much, so cutting petrol demand 30%+ could really push crude production down an almost equal percentage.

Cars don’t last as long as you’d think, on average. There will also be a knee in the curve where the ICE fleet drops below critical mass and gas stations start shutting down - and the harder it becomes to find a station, the faster people will switch.

They last a hell of a lot longer than they did when we were still putting TEPb in the fuel.

The lifespans of cars have been elongating rapidly. The median car on the road recently passed 12 years. Especially sensible cars with medium-displacement engines making little power through a CVT, these will go a million miles with ease. The long tail of model year 2030 Honda Civics is going to be almost impossible to eradicate without controlling the supply of fossil motor fuels.

I don’t know. I think that few people would prefer to drive an old , slow, non responsive, smelly, inconvenient, and expensive to drive Honda by 2050. These cars are already unloved in Norway. A classic American muscle car or an Italian supercar yes of course, but the Honda Civic will be recycled IMHO.

Who cares about Norway though. What about India, China, Brazil etc.? Are they mainly going to scrap their old functional ICE cars and buy brand new, fresh smelling EVs?

Why would the (most likely) first world power drive shitty cars ?

There will be a demand for synfuels, and conversion kits, because as power generation cost continues to plummet, it will rapidly become too expensive to explore for and extract petroleum to drive any such activity.

I think ICE cars will see a retro use period like many nostalgic things, so while I agree the daily driver will change, it's very likely that fuel will be seen as some sort of luxury product. Right now fuel is a loss leader for most gas stations, that dynamic will definitely change as ICE vehicles become a toy or status symbol for upper middle class and wealthy people.

Huh, you're saying that gas station sell their main product at a loss and then make back the difference on what… tictacs and slim jims?

Actually yes. I don't recall it being a loss leader, but at the very least, gasoline has a very low margin because the gas price market is highly price-competitive. Store items have a much higher margin (as much is obvious just by looking at sticker prices). The average motorist will not purchase a lot from the store (as seen from your quip about "tictacs and slim jims"), but you also have truck drivers who are much more frequent customers of gas stations.

I don't know how it is in the US, but in France, yes, most gas stations are owned by adjacent stores and they make really little margins (actually, there are frequent sales of gasoline at cost price).

In fact, when buying gasoline in those stations, it's common to receive some voucher for the owner's store.

Other stations are owned by petrol corporations but they are in direct competition when they are near stores or they are very expensive when they are located on our highways, which are privatized(and it's a shame), so they are in some sort of closed market since you cannot leave the highway without paying.

Boutique carrying the finest petroleum and other refined goods:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqkmaIfWMWQ

(Shot during another wave of rising gas prices)

I think EVs will quickly overtake ICE vehicles once they're price competitive and battery manufacturing scales up to the levels needed, but that's a separate issue from government bans.

My point is that several governments now have policies in place that say they're going to ban the sale of new ICE vehicles after a certain date. But they aren't going to disallow the use of ICE vehicles in their country or on their roads, which is what it would mean if they were literally going to ban ICE vehicles.

I've seen a number of articles with headlines like "X country is banning ICE vehicles after 20YZ" but then the article contents specify that it's a ban on the sale of new vehicles, which isn't the same thing. This is unhelpful sensationalism that is likely to convince a lot of conservative people that government agents are going to show up at their front door on a certain date with a tow truck to take away their Ford F150 or whatever, and that's just not the case. So, whenever I see anything that uncritically repeats that idea I find it necessary to post a comment saying that "banning ICE vehicles" isn't the same thing as "banning the sale of new ICE vehicle" in hopes that fewer people are confused and maybe more people will demand clear and accurate communication on this issue.

In the long run, bans on the sale of new vehicles will mean that existing ICE vehicles will wear out unless people want to make the extra effort to keep them running, which for most of them it's just not worth it. So, this achieves the needed policy objectives without antagonizing existing ICE vehicle owners. In other words, it's actually a much more reasonable and moderate position than what the word "ban" implies.

> I think EVs will quickly overtake ICE vehicles once they're price competitive and battery manufacturing scales up to the levels needed, but that's a separate issue from government bans.

Not entirely. Government bans provide additional incentive for manufacturers to switch to EVs, which hastens price competitiveness through economy-of-scale effects.

It sounds as if you're disregarding early effects of the bans and overvaluing late ones.

For example, if someplace bans new ICE car sales from 2032, ten years from now, what does that do for the value of car-related businesses in 2027, five years from now? If you own a petrol station in a city and are offered a lowish price from a property developer, do you close the business? Or do you assume that you can sell at a higher price in 2037?

Or if you're looking for a new car in 2027, five years before the ban takes effect, do you think you'll be able to sell your car at a nice price in 2037? As of 2027 there's no ban on selling used cars, but do you trust that to remain?

The total cost of ownership for an EV is still pathetic in a certain sense if I need to allot even 10 extra minutes waiting for a charge somewhere on a weekly basis. Especially a small business owner like Joe Plumber -- that's around 10k in lost job time over the life of the vehicle. If I'm well-off with thousands of watts wired to my garage then great but that's not so many people especially in denser cities as well as plenty of business fleets.

It's like the reverse of switching from coal to natural gas heating. Coal required delivering and shoveling a bunch of dirty fuel and ash around frequently, which was a waste of time, so the switch to gas was welcomed as time-saving and much much cleaner. EVs are so much cleaner and quieter than ICE but the convenience factor is not solved yet

You sound like someone who doesn't own an EV? I plug mine into a standard outlet outside my house. It's pretty much always charged. If your plumber is driving so far they need to recharge on the way I think you have bigger problems than the ROI on the vehicle.

> business fleets

In every case that I am aware of, a business takes care of this (i.e. I've seen it done). It's not exactly complicated - it's just a bit of work.

In most cases that I am aware of, small businesses have zero ability to deal with this. For example, the local HVAC company has 12 or so vans that are just parked in some lot with a small office. There is no garage and no infrastructure for charging. Same with my landscape person and snow removal person and so forth. They just park their vehicles in some warehouse lot.

If the lot has power, wouldn't they just install charging infrastructure? From a quick search around, it doesn't look too expensive. Unless the weather is an issue while it's charging?

I agree, there won't be any "bans" for ICEs per se.

But there WILL be higher congestion charges and maybe even localised bans for ICEs in city centres. No one wants a smoking diesel truck idling under their window if they have the option to replace it with a quiet EV.

Disagree. Jurisdictions that (though mostly happenstance of economics and demographic distribution) wind up with most ICE users being economically marginalized or a political minority will enact bans. It's a great way to win political brownie points so it'll be done.

Closer to 40% than 50% from the most recent numbers I've seen, and that's of volume shipped, not volume*distance (Australia to China / India being a relatively short route that carries quite a lot of the coal).

That wouldn't disappear entirely if you electrified everything; coal is widely used for producing steel (1kg blast-furnace steel uses 750g met-grade coal, this is ~10% of imports in China) and preparing cement (producing 1kg cement uses 500g coal).

However, mass electrification would still be a dramatic drop in shipping.

We can't keep making steel with coal either. It's slowly shifting over to other reduction agents.

Back to charcoal?

There are a few new plants using hydrogen as the reducing agent.

Heating is mostly a solved problem. Coal is just cheap and someone else’s kids pay for the pollution.

Some cities in Europe are already banning old petrol and diesel cars from driving through them. With plans to ban more over time.

Recharge time needs to be under 10 minutes or you have a pipe dream. 5-7 minutes would be better. Too many renters, condo owners, and small businesses with fleets don't have time to deal charging.

The only time charging is a hassle is long road trips. And honestly the really fast chargers make that only marginally painful.

Even on a long road trip most stops will be for peeing, a drink and maybe snacks. The times you actually need gas are few and far between (obviously, because cars are efficient these days and the tanks are quite big).

If you're going to pee and get a sandwich with a meatball (or a hamburger, a sack of carrots or whatever it is counts as a snack for you) anyway, you may as well do so while charging your car. Given that even the really cheap ones can charge to a pretty significant level (80+%) in 20 minutes or so, these activities are compatible.

So, I recently took a trip that is 7.5 hours for a gas car (my friend did the same trip in her Audi) and took me 9 hours in my electric car with ~220 mile range. It definitely made me want to think about 400+ mile range cars, which seem to only be two makers: Tesla long range and the new Mercedes EQS.

At least one of our stops (visiting Joshua Tree) was at a charger that I think is essentially a glorified 110v socket (ChargePoint in Yuca Valley). We charged there while eating breakfast and while it reduced the range anxiety some, getting to 80%+ was not on the menu.

On main highways you're right, although traveling over the holidays led to at least one wait for a charging spot. To be fair, even the gas station had a line.

> ... 400+ mile range cars, which seem to only be two makers: Tesla long range and the new Mercedes EQS.

Also the EQE, I would have thought? If not to begin with, then probably such a variant will be introduced as a follow-up. And maybe if you drive a Taycan reeeally carefully...?

Given that the average car spends 95% of its lifetime being parked, I don't think this is as big of an issue as you make it out to be.

Working class mothers with small children who live in apartments don't have time to jockey for a time or position to charge. It's a regression for them compared to gas. We're going to need a lot more infrastructure. A lot.

Witricity claims to have an inductive charger that works even with poor alignment or on the move. I was excited because they had signed Hyundai as a customer and it was rumored to be on the Ioniq 5 or 6 but it's not listed on a product sheet anywhere so I think that got scrapped.

What's interesting about their design is that the end-to-end losses are within a couple percent of the end-to-end losses of a conductive charger (the losses move from the transformer to the induction coil).

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