Cratering motor fuel sales in Norway show the death spiral that can end oil
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It makes sense that you'd find more EV charging in residential areas and more gas stations near where people travel and work.
Because that's what's really in competition: you have to be with your car the entire drive to and from the gas station, plus the few minutes it takes to fill up and pay, whereas you don't have to be with your car when you're plugging it in to charge: that time is now yours.
The people who will be living there with ICEs will certainly be driving them past gas stations elsewhere in the city.
Also it's not fun having to make your trip even longer stopping to get gas. I'd prefer to just leave the house with a full tank every time.
Even if there isn’t one directly on your route, we’re talking a long ways off I think that you need to travel 15 or minutes from every point of your trip to each a gas station. Like, we've reached such a low density that the entire distribution network is barely even sustainable anymore.
A gas station has never been hard to come by in my experience. Anywhere I've been that's big enough to have a grocery store has a gas station. Anywhere not big enough to have a grocery store has a gas station, and that gas station probably has a limited selection of groceries. And if you live somewhere small enough that you don't have either, chances are you're occasionally driving your car to somewhere that does because you generally need to buy groceries and other supplies.
I haven’t used any public charging in the last 3 months.
Surely no one driving an EV ever got to their position to buy one driving an ICE.
Edit: happy this comment inspired lots of spirited discussion. Would like to stress the "Perhaps not in NYC" part and if this trend spreads to say Oklahoma.
I'm open to anyones knowledge in this area I dont have but our primary mode of transportation when we were struggling was a $2,000 USD 30 year old Toyota.
If you don't think EVs are a luxury than we both need some clarity.
Used car prices have ballooned in recent years, so I’m not sure how much lower you can go without buying a complete heap. As a comparison I looked at the cheapest Nissan Sentras and Versas on the market, which are about $4k, a bit older, and have 200k miles.
Does it? A cursory search seems to put an (used) EV at around 10k$ at best. Poor people definitely do not drive 10k$ cars here. Hell, even my tech-adjacent friends in their twenties rarely own anything more expensive than 3k$-ish.
The real problem is that right now a $10k used EV is almost certainly an old Leaf or Kia Soul EV etc with extremely low range and degraded battery (because they lacked proper thermal mgmt, mainly). So they're not really directly usable by most people. This will eventually change though; in 10 years there'll be boatloads of Model 3s or Ioniqs or Bolts etc on the used market. And yes, they'll be more expensive than a used ICE but they'll also be cheaper to maintain.
Cars still need brakes (for now) and tires and lots of other stuff, but there’s a huge amount of infrastructure built in a car to help it blow up million year old leaves. EVs are simpler so should be able to be made cheaper (eventually).
Maybe that means that what we expect from a car changes. If it costs you $10,000 to do all the stuff for a gasoline engine then a $1,000 AC isn’t a huge addition and there are maybe a bunch of other thousand dollar decisions that get added to make the cars cost what they cost.
Makes me think of stuff that used to be luxury items that came in expensive packaging and came with expensive accessories and now the actual item is so cheap the old packaging costs more than the actual item.
Meanwhile the floor on an ICE is more the complexity of manufacturing and labour. Some of which exists also for EVs.
This is my main trouble with EVs available so far. If I want something that's not substantially smaller than what our current Ford Galaxy has, and I want to still have the tow bar and roof box, there are very few EVs available and they cost $$$.
We're talking stuff like the Nio ES8 at $70k+, or the Mercedes EQS at $105k+.
Or you can go down the van route and get a Peugeot e-Traveller ($65k) or Mercedes EQV ($85k) or something like this, you get even more space but your range is abysmal at 150 to 200 miles.
Meanwhile on the ICE side you can get the spacious Dacia Jogger for just $15k new! Then you have $40k+ left to spend on gas and maintenance...
It had a warranty battery repair (to replace a failing module, free of charge to me but a possible concern long-term).
As the guy who turns all the wrenches on the family cars, it’s been incredibly low maintenance. Wiper blades twice, cabin air filter three times, and I had to charge the 12V battery once in the peak of COVID shutdowns when the car sat for 8 weeks or so with a Bluetooth adapter plugged into the OBD2 port. It’s about due for tires all around.
It was $32K before $10K in government cheese, so $22K for a new car was pretty good, but, like any then-new car, it has been a lot more expensive than buying a 2011 Honda CR-V would have been. I paid that premium in order to see if I'd enjoy having an EV. Overall, I have, but only because we have a 2005 Honda CR-V for long-distance travel/road trips, etc. The LEAF is entirely impractical as an only car (though other EVs are better in this regard).
Our electricity is expensive in MA, so energy costs about $0.06 per mile. That compares slightly favorably (about half) to a 35 mpg car buying $3.70/gal gas and doing periodic oil changes.
Around town or to neighboring towns, we choose to drive the LEAF almost 100% of the time. If it had a better CarPlay story, we'd probably choose it 100% of the time. (If I'm not sure where I'm going, the aftermarket Android head unit with CarPlay maps that I installed in the CR-V is easier and safer than the terrible factory nav in the LEAF.)
When you're poor, you can't afford the bucket.
> The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Which is a dumb claim. As you’ll note, I said that the general effect was true but this claim was wrong.
You appear to be arguing something tangential
The less you (have to) spend on goods and services the more you can keep invested to compound.
If 100% (or more) of your income is taken up by paying for necessities (shelter, food, transportation), what do you have to compound?
* https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-biggest-lie-in-personal-fin...
The compounding effect of wealth scales with the amount of wealth you have more than the incremental savings you’re likely to earn. Trimming your expenses won’t make a difference. If you have no wealth and low income then the compounding is irrelevant. Even if your income is high it’s very hard to acquire “wealth”.
Poor folks will be poor even if you chop their expenses by half.
The end-point I want is for people to live in dense walkable areas by default. But people don’t live there and the few places that exist like that are disgustingly expensive because they are (surprise surprise) desirable patterns of building cities. So we need to build more of it. It will be a very big very energy intensive build-out program that will take decades. So the question is: Is it better or worse for the environment to move people to ICE so they can live in their existing buildings or is it better to build entirely new infrastructure so they can walk.
Maybe my thinking is too black and white. I want the latter but I’m not sure the costs to the environment in the short term are justified. Maybe the long term benefit justifies it. I don’t know.
If they want EV adoption, they also have to Provide housing.
Here, it's a great aspirational position to have, but wholly impractical in the short or medium term.
Perhaps, if the Republican Party genuinely collapses within the next couple of years, it might become possible to pass the kinds of massive infrastructure overhauls required to make owning a car anything but a necessity in the vast majority of this country. Until and unless something that drastic happens, their adamant resistance to that kind of measure makes it very clearly impossible.
"If we outlaw child labor, isn't it kind of troubling that families who particularly rely on their 8-year old's wages will be the ones losing the most..."
The fact of the matter is that EVs have gotten cheaper, they are getting cheaper, and there are government subsidies to help people buy them. Maybe those subsidies could be even larger, or better targeted, or means-tested? Or, yes, in fact we could improve public transit!
Anyway, I'd give this argument more credence if the same partisans for sticking with fossil fuels had demonstrated any kind of consistent care for the world's poor in any other context, but I haven't seen that.
Transit is cheaper still but has the problem that it’s nowhere near as subsidized as private vehicle travel but expected to have high fare box recovery, and the transit experience is directly worsened by private vehicle use. Simply subsidizing car ownership less would help there by not masking the true costs and reducing congestion.
There will be a lot more “cheap” EVs in 5-10 years as the first EVs depreciate and sell for $3,000 type thing.
He took the car to tide him over to a great deal we were supposed to be getting at work on EV cars. Went back to sell the car to the dealer and the chap said best he could offer would be £8k (well over a 50 percent drop), and he actually didn't want it even at that price as he had 5 on his forecourt already.
Last summer we wanted an automatic, and vaguely looked at EVs - and they were totally out of our budget. This year we totally could have bought one.
I'd say it is possible to geta £5k ev here in the uk now, and in the next year or two it will get even better for the 2nd hand market.
Base electric vehicles like the Fiat 500e can be had for ~35k [1], if all you're interested in is commuting without getting wet choose a Twizy for ~10k [2], and if you're fine with whatever and just need something cheap, get a motorcycle for ~5k.
[1] https://ev-database.org/car/1328/Fiat-500e-3plus1-42-kWh
10% EV adoption is not far off, thats when we start seeing collapse of gas station. EVs charge at home or work, except when going on long rides. Gas stations lose this foot traffic forever. Adding EV spots at gas station won't help, there is nothing for people to do to for 15 - 20 mins at a gas station, they'd rather go to Target, Walmart, Costco and do some grocery shopping.
Most people don't understand how quickly things change. We went from flip phones to smart phones in less than decade. Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains How The Horse Industry Vanished in less than 20 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvzw7NPmppY
Folks buying new ICE cars will soon (< 10 years) have a rapidly depreciating vehicle, nearly worthless because it will be costly to own and operate. It will be like owning a horse after everyone bought a car.
[1]The first gas station in the United States opened in St. Louis in 1905, and by 1994 there were 202,800 across the country. Fast forward to 2013, and station numbers had decreased by 25% or almost 50,000, and by 2020 that number had shrunk to 115,200. A 2019 report by BCG predicts that 80% of conventional gas stations could be driven (pun intended) out of business by 2035: https://enpowered.com/the-death-of-gas-stations-will-be-far-...
Just pointing out that people spending 15-20 mins at stations is not unrealistic. At least near motorways, gas stations already position themselves as a place where you can do your regular rest during a long drive, with diners, cafes, children's playgrounds, etc., some drivers even catch a quick nap in the parking lot -- this is how it looks in Europe at least.
This is super unrealistic due to volume.
I filled my car at Costco this morning. I spent about 3 minutes pumping 10 gallons. At the same time, 25 other cars filled up at the 25 pumps. And there was a line backed up. To change refuel times from 3-5 minutes to 15-20 (rather optimistic based on my supercharging experience) won’t work unless you increase the charging infrastructure significantly.
People will need to charge at home, not at gas stations. And motorway stops are going to have to have hundreds of chargers not the current dozen or two.
But agreed that charging should shift to the home, the problem there is chargers for on-street parking though for people who don't have driveways/garages (of course this might eventually get solved by fully automated vehicles and lowering ownership of vehicles, but that's still vaporware right now while EVs are clearly here right now).
Seattle tried installing chargers at public street parking spots and the cables were stolen.
Some random chargers being vandalized isn't really indicative of anything.
I guess if you have to, then leasing is the only reasonable way to go?
The hearsay also says that they close when they need expensive maintenance, not before.
The analogy with smartphones is also not a very convincing one, because a smartphone is a fundamentally different (vastly more capable) product than a flip phone. A current-gen electric car is just a car, with some advantages and some disadvantages that will each matter more or less to you depending on your circumstances.
I don't really have any reason to doubt mainstream EV market share predictions, which IIUC have them at about 50% new vehicle sales share nationwide in 2030, and I expect that will make it harder to buy gas, probably much harder in certain locations with above-mean adoption. But projections like that need to be (and I presume are) based on more than what you're offering here.
Yes, gas sales are nearly zero in US, they are just starting. I agree other factors were driving that trend. Probably gas stations figuring out that its not a viable business. But now, EV sales have started. 25% of cars sold in California are EVs and growing. If gas stations have gone down 50% (202K to 115K) without any EVs, we can predict they will go down faster with EVs.
> gas sales industry was continuing to meet consumer demand
There is no consumer demand for gas sales, any more than there is a demand for whale oil or kerosene. There is a consumer demand for lighting, and whale oil, then kerosene were used in lamps obsoleted by electric lamps. Similarly, there is a consumer demand for going from point A to point B, most people are not gas-holics, they'll use whatever fuel is cheapest (first and foremost) and convenient. Well, EVs are most convenient, you can charge anywhere you park, it is hard to think of any building (home, work, shop) without electricity. If the biggest challenge that mankind is faced with is running a cable from a building to parking lot and we fail spectacularly at that, we are doomed. However, we have precedence that we can do this. Standard oil is built in consumer demand for lighting and kerosene lamps. When light bulb was invented, its not just about convincing people to buy electric lamps. It is also about doing the far harder things of producing electricity and distributing it. This grid was built and people switched to electric lamps. So, I am someone confident people will figure out how to run a cable from a building to parking spot. US has 2 billion parking spots and ~250 million cars, just converting a small fraction to EVs is enough.
An EV is a bigger breakthrough than a smartphone (which is primarily a content/addiction delivery mechanism). An EV solves energy storage, an unsolved problem of civilization. EVs can provide passive income. Folks who participated in a VPP pilot with powerwalls made $150/day [1], this is the very definition of passive income. A powerwall has 13.5kWh capacity vs car batteries of 80kWh, there is nothing preventing cars from supplying power to the grid at peak prices and making bank. Most of our electricity bill is for peak power, which is from costly natural gas peaker plants. These will all be replaced.
Next, there is significant curtailment of renewables, which overproduce and there is no demand. Power prices go negative (200 million times/year [2]), which means an EV owner can be paid for the privilege of charging his car. I can think of at least a few people who'd be interested in getting paid for charging their car, or even charge for free.
An EV is primarily an energy storage device (idle in parking lot 95% of the time), which provides elastic demand, as well as supply. Nothing else on the grid has this capability. This capability changes things permanently. Think of a time before information storage, youtube/instagram/tiktok -- all of this content and businesses were not possible before we figured out how to store information (hard disks, ssds). EVs bring that capability. This is a significant civilization upgrade that will enable many things in the future.
[1] https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo... [2] Wholesale prices went negative about 200 million times across the seven US grids in 2021: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/trapped-r...
> An EV is a bigger breakthrough than a smartphone (which is primarily a content/addiction delivery mechanism).
These are consumer products! The average consumer's eyes are going to glaze over if you try to give them this spiel; they'll probably pull out their iPhone and start scrolling.
EV ownership saves a lot of people money and time, which I assume is the primary reason their market share is growing so rapidly right now—those people see the value proposition. Schemes like distributed grid energy storage via EV battery have the potential to save consumers even more money, but those schemes will have to be implemented on the garden path of EV ownership to actually move the consumer demand needle.
This omits a significant factor, which is that it used to be many gas stations also had several repair bays, employing a mechanic or two.
Anecdata: between mid-1980s and 2000, four such gas station/repair businesses within a mile of my house closed, leaving three gas/convenience store businesses remaining within that same radius, some of which used to have repair service as well.
This used to be a solid small business opportunity for a solo or partnership owner/worker. I suspect that as cars became more computerized the repair business became too specialized, and also some of the stations which were leased from large oil companies were sold out from under the operator.
Those repairs that are necessary are harder than they used to be. I recently had to have a headlight bulb changed professionally because I just didn't want to dismount the wheel well mud guard. Some, I've heard, require you to remove the bumper.
But I think a lot of those service bays just stopped seeing as much traffic as they used to.
Where I am (in Europe) all the major petrol stations have mobile apps you can pay with. One even launched a system where you can register your license plate, and whatever you fill up is automatically charged to your account.
If foot traffic is all that makes money, it seems they should want you to go into the store, not pay from your phone.
Regular gas stations have matched the time it takes to fill up gas with the time it takes to get in and out of the convenience store. A 20-30 minute typical shopping round in a Costco doesn't match up with a 4-5 minute gas fill.
It does incidentally match up with an EV charge up.
Here is a graph from the source used in TFA. Now look at the sum of gasoline, diesel and biofuels, and tell me that's "cratering".
[1] https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/table/11561 [2] https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/fuelsales.png
EVs, plug-in hybrids and high efficiency non-plugin hybrids all combine with biofuels to dent the market demand.
When you get further North, that diminishes. From Lofoten to Tromsø, you see more and more petrol or diesel. And heavier vehicles.
The automotive culture there starkly reminded me of Iceland.
Maybe someone from norway can calculate/check how much a mid-range petrol/diesel car (eg. VW golf, renault megane,...) costs there after all the taxes, and compare to an electric one, but it's a LOT more than in eg. germany.
Obvs the market for newer 2nd-hand ICE vehicles is going to wash away.
With the 3k€ lower price, a range of 430km, and fast charging stations every 30km along the major highways, there's just no reason to pick the Golf.
We still have a PHEV in addition to our electric car, but there's no reason to. If we're going on a 500km road trip, we'll take the electric BMW i4, no question.
I’ve travelled London to Stockholm before, and the only reason to do it is to travel with a family pet. Otherwise flying or taking the train will be faster, and cheaper.
This highlights why range anxiety is a much bigger issue for Americans than Europeans. That, combined with the considerably higher fuel prices, are why EVs do so much better in Europe than they do here in the USA.
I really liked the idea of a generator that could go in the truck bed for the F-150 Lightning. You could convert your car from EV to gas powered for those 2-3 times a year that you need to, while still charging at home and getting the benefits of an EV the rest of the time. You could even rent or borrow the device from dealerships. Alas it seems like this early concept will not be included in the final vehicle.
I wouldn't normally drive more than 1000km in one trip though, and that's at most once per year.
Absolute majority of countries does not have a capital of Norway to subsidize on such a large scale.
EVs had similar drawbacks: range anxiety, et cetera. It was not a given that people would buy them even if they were cheaper.
Now we know they will, and get a glimpse of society in a world where EV's are cheaper than gasoline cars.
If these occur with no difficulties, it will be easier for governments to uphold their 2030 and 2035 agreements.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...
Oil/Petroleum products are massively employed in the manufacture of daily life items (pretty much maybe everything, not just plastics) and cutting the usage of petroleum products in that area will be the real death spiral that can end oil.
Peak oil is still a thing, and we will still need to shift the feedstocks to something renewable, but the schedule doesn't need to be the same.
Who cares how quickly they charge if you’re stopping to sleep for the night anyway?
If you are in US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, you might reasonably need to cover huge distances in a day.
However there are a _lot_ of people in countries across Europe, Indian sub-continent, SE Asia for whom the current EV range is actually enough.
Probably more complex for cars (the weight alone might make usability a challenge), but a cool concept
https://www.powersystemsdesign.com/articles/why-did-tesla-gi...
Personally, I think that plastic is mostly used for throwaway consumerism. We'd probably be better off if we went back to making things out of materials that could last.
Most people just don’t buy 20+ gallons of milk at a time.
Propane has gotten down to $3.30/gal in the US West.
Also, a huge part of oil refining is already shortening the chain lengths by adding hydrogen and "cracking" the hydrocarbon molecules [1]. They don't do that to gasoline at the moment because it has such a huge available market that it doesn't make economic sense to process it further. If that market disappears however then we absolutely would be able to convert "waste" gasoline further into jet fuel or plastics or whatever.
So if electricity goes out, you most likely have more than enough range to drive to a nearby store or fast charger.
If electricity goes out for an extended amount of time in a large radius around you, that sucks and you may have to find alternative solutions such as walking, running, skiing, biking… It’s not scary or considered as big issues in Norway. Many many people enjoy that kind of activities even with electricity.
Electricity goes out rarely too. I think I had two short incidents in the last 10 years.
And if plastics become more expensive due to no longer being a "free" byproduct of oil consumption their usage will also go down.
Oil is not strictly a necessary precursor to much of the chemical industry, it is rather a convenient raw material because the high value of gasoline makes lights virtually free. In the early days of oil exploration, lights were constantly burned as they had no economic use at the scale they were produced.
If oil exploration would continue just for the sake of chemicals, the cost structure of these precursors would fundamentally change and it would become more attractive to replace them with renewable sources.
Would that it were so!
I think it’s important to look at the future pollution and compare without going into the sunk cost fallacy. The pollution from your existing car cannot be taken back and I think there is no point to make this pollution "worth it".
Producing a new vehicle, that will generate a lot of pollution too, may be better over time. It will depend on your electricity grid and how much you drive.
You old vehicle may also go on the used market and replace a much more polluting vehicle. It’s difficult to take into account all parameters.
You could also compare the pollution per km in the remaining lifetime of your current car, and the pollution per km in the remaining lifetime of a new EV. Your local electricity grid may improve over the years, but you could ignore that.
(This is true even if you own an EV and you sell it and buy a new one)
Currently, the average age of cars on the road is 12.5 years. When someone tries to sell their 10-yr old EV, the buyer will know that a huge battery replacement bill looms, discouraging sales.
"EV batteries typically cost at least $5,000. [...] an EV battery lasts 10 years on average before needing a replacement. In addition to requiring expensive batteries, today’s electric cars run into repair problems after collisions. EVs are still relatively new to the market, so finding replacement body and battery housing parts can be difficult. Additionally, EVs typically have more expensive technology (such as Tesla’s Autopilot) that requires more expertise to repair."[0]
[0]https://www.motorbiscuit.com/do-electric-cars-last-longer-th...
Also a followup about air pollution, but this doesn't include production: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electric-vehicles-...
The takeaway is that any analysis that suggests gas cars are better, at the very least, assumes that gasoline exists in pools just under gas stations. But gas is mined, just like lithium, and gas cars require 100s of tonnes, instead of 100s of pounds.
This is the best argument I can think of when people start to talk about how awful lithium mining is for the planet. Yes, it does genuinely suck that we have to dig these giant holes in the ground, but at least when we find what we're looking for we don't ship it across the world and then literally set it on fire.
Also, is all of Norway energy produced by wind or solar? Or does this just move the tail pipe and introduce more toxic battery waste?
You can check the data on this website: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
Can do! Fossil fuels cause more harm than the waste products of batteries. The myth of batteries being worse for the environment has been _thoroughly_ debunked. Feel free to do your own research.
However, if we're looking for oil death spirals in Norway, I recommend: https://crudeoilpeak.info/global-peak/norway-peak-oil
My metropolitan area is like 6 million people, but only 500K lives within the city of Atlanta.
It makes it less interesting in the context of switching to EVs.
Vast cities are interesting because it's challenging to provide enough charging capacity for a "small" area, but also because there are a myriad of transportation option that could effectively complement cars.
Countries like Norway is interesting because the cars are need because low population density makes other options to expensive and because now the cars need a much longer range. It's also interesting because, regardless of peoples opinion about the size of Norway, it is a country. Imagine the changes in government policies that are because possible when gas powered cars are no longer a thing to consider. Norway also taxes fuel, that money will be missing from the government budget in the future. It's going to be harder to explain that you're taxing electricity in a country that gets a large amount of it's power from hydro and windmills. Or how about the fact that Norway is a huge oil producer... is it morally right to ban gas powered cars at home, but sell oil abroad?
It's hugely interesting precisely because Norway is an entire country.
Whatever reason you want to use to brush it off - that’s a daft one.
I don't think he meant that it wasn't an actual country. It obviously is.
On top of that, Norway has a lot of hydro power, I believe. So not only there are wealthy with a small population, but they get effectively free electricity...
Tell that to anyone paying an electric bill, especially if they live in Southern Norway.
Population wise, Norway slots between Minnesota and South Carolina and is ~7.5x the mighty "city" of Alaska. It has a mainland latitude sweep of nearly 24 degrees, California covers 16 degrees of latitude. It's coastline is a mind boggling 51,748 miles. I can't find a good stat on total road network size, but neighboring Sweden of similar foot print has only a little less roads than the Spain.
Some city I guess.
As a Washington State resident, my biggest primary holdback with going all electric is the range reduction that occurs in winter months due to cold. Canadian friends have confirmed that it's a real thing. I would love to see what effect this has in Norway. I also would love to see which makes and models are trending there.
From what I can tell, a substantial mitigating factor is if you can garage your vehicle.
The consumption is still higher though. Mine goes from 14 kWh/100km when it’s 20 Celsius to 24 kWh/100km when it’s -10 Celsius. Highway consumption changes less dramatically as going faster you spend a larger share of the energy on moving as opposed to heating. So 18 kWh/100km to 20 kWh/100km.
Range wise that’s a 25% reduction in usable range. I do 400 km comfortably during the summer and 300 km during the winter. Mine has a heat pump though, which should make it more efficient when it comes to heating.
Nice part is that you (usually) don’t have to pay road tax on it.
And yet the first 4 things you choose to compare Norway to are, conspicuously, not countries. If we want to compare Norway to a country, by wealth and population it makes about as much sense to talk about Liechtenstein and Luxembourg than Saudi Arabia, Australia or Canada (other resource rich countries, in case you're wondering). Qatar too, which is ... basically a big city.
https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/58777074043/populati...