Hacker News Reader

Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

There’s relatively few coal jobs left. Nationwide in 2011 it was already down to 91.5 thousand coal miners by 2021 it was 39.5 thousand, again nationwide. https://www.statista.com/statistics/215790/coal-mining-emplo...

The industry provides more jobs for mechanics etc, but any community dependent on coal workers has already been devastated.

Oil and gas are very separate as solar or wind isn’t displacing them anytime soon. In 10+ years EV’s might start to reduce the need for oil, but it’s going to be a very slow transition. If 100% of new cars are EV that’s still decades worth of existing vehicles plus boats and aircraft.

View on HN

While EVs only look like a statistical blip on the oil market now, they are taking off fast enough that it will be less than 10 years before the impact is obvious. Cars are 50% of of oil (transport is 60%, so I'll just round and assume the other 10% is trucks trains, ships, airplanes... which are not going away as fast), but new cars are already starting to move to EVs, and that trend is continuing. It will be 20 years before oil isn't a significant factor in car transport

That really depends on what you mean by obvious impact.

Cars manufactured in the last year make up 4% or so of total cars on the road and thus ~2% of oil consumption. EV’s are just over 7% of new car sales right now if we assume an extremely optimistic 30% of all sales over the next 10 years that’s (4% per year * 10 years * 30% of sales * 50% of oil) = 6% reduction in oil use in 2033 vs no change. That’s significant but could easily be offset by increasing the total number of cars or other use etc.

I doubt 30% of all new cars sold by 2033 will be EV’s as it would require well over 30% to be sold in years 9 and 10 to offset years 1 and 2 etc. That said, somewhere between 15 and 30 years from now I expect the difference will be very obvious as the oldest ICE cars get aged out of the global fleet to be replaced with more efficient cars + hybrids + EV’s.

Several governments have made 100% EV by 203X a goal. Norway is farther along the path than the US. Predicting the future is always hard, but it is looking like EVs will be more like 80% of sales by 2030 many people are already seeing significant fuel savings, which is important.

Norway is already an extreme outlier in terms of both new and existing EV’s, which is included in that global number I mentioned. I expect several countries will break that 30%, but oil is a global commodity.

As to 80%, 2030 is only 6.5 years from now. You can lookup the rate companies are building factories to estimate the maximum possible adoption over the next 3-5 years and based on that 80% globally in 6.5 years is completely off the table. Also, adoption is dependent on what people actually buy which will slow thing down from the maximum theoretically possible. S curve to 50% which then slows down is common because not everyone’s needs are the same which feeds back into how much manufacturing capacity gets added etc.

Even in the parts of the US with 203X goals, many of the statutory "EV" definitions include vehicles with large gas tanks. E.g., the Toyota RAV4 Plugin Hybrid qualifies for EV tax credits in most states with such credits.

Once prices start coming down, I think we will see a dramatic increase in EV sales. They are better in just about every way and all we need is the price to come down to make them the obvious choice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com