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Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

Gasoline is only one of the byproducts of oil products a modern economy requires. Lubricants, diesel, nitrogen, and the list goes on - these are still all needed even if we convert to 100% EVs.

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All non-transportation fuel uses account for a total of only 33% of crude oil consumption. Of the other 2/3rd, gasoline accounts for 43%. So yes, switching to EVs would have a massive impact, and probably put unconventional sources of oil (eg. Venezuela and Alberta) out of business. As for diesel, EV truck sales are starting to take off too.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc... https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025/trends-in...

Oil products are a fractional distillate of a barrel of oil. How are you going to pave the roads all these EV’s are going to drive on, or produce the plastic they consume (EV’s require ~40-50% more plastic)? If gasoline demands softens it doesn’t necessarily mean that other oil product demand will decrease at similar rates. Oil production declines over time so you need constant development even in a declining consumption scenario, and I think we are heading into a world where domestic supply will command a premium.

And let’s not forget: fertilizer. About half the world’s population is fed with foods produced from the Haber-Bosch process, which makes nitrogen fertilizer [1]. This relies on hydrogen inputs primarily from natural gas. The fact that we’re burning this resource that our highly populated planet depends on is suicidal.

https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-people-does-synthetic-fe...

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