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Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

One consequence of the transition to renewable energy and electrified transport, is that oil imports will start to decline. And the dollar is of course the currency of choice for that.

The US economy and other countries that export fossil fuels will feel the impact over the next decade or so. The energy transition might go a lot quicker than people seem to expect. Currently about 20% of global car sales is electric. In some countries it's well over 50%. China of course being one of them. And they are making rapid progress with electrifying freight as well. This is already impacting their fossil fuel imports. They still import a lot.

One effect that I think people underestimate is that while it will take a long time for all the ICE vehicles to disappear, the new ones do most of the driving. So, new EVs have a relatively large impact on fuel consumption and imports pretty early on. E.g. Chinese diesel imports apparently already are being impacted by their rapid deployment of tens of thousands of electrical trucks. Soon hundreds of thousands. That's already a third of the market in China and will probably head for well over 50% in a few short years. The EU is not that far behind.

The ripple effect that's going to have on oil trading, refinery capacity, etc. is going to be substantial. Of course current geopolitics is speeding things up massively. LNG and oil scarcity is causing a lot of issues globally and countries are accelerating moves to reduce their dependence on that.

View on HN

Demand destruction will collapse profits and accelerate the oil/dollar downfall. Saudi Arabia can profitably pump oil probably under $10/barrel. If demand drops, thats where oil should be.

China with [EVs|Solar|BESS|Turbines] will replace all of the fossil fuel countries (US, middle-east, Russia). This is probably the biggest transition in the history of mankind. This is energy production, storage and all the appliances that use electricity. After this, its incredibly hard for any other country to compete.

Saudi Arabia needs oil prices at ~$86.60/barrel to balance their budget, per Bloomberg. It is not the marginal cost to pump a barrel, but what a country needs to support their sticky spending from previously assured energy exports. Governments will collapse long before we approach low single digit oil prices on the global market.

The World Is Awash With Oil and Prices Are Poised to Keep Falling - https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-global-oil-supply-pr... | https://archive.today/hkhtI - December 18th, 2025 (Control -F "Crude Price Forecasts Are Below Levels Needed for Budgets")

> China with [EVs|Solar|BESS|Turbines] will replace all of the fossil fuel countries (US, middle-east, Russia). This is probably the biggest transition in the history of mankind. This is energy production, storage and all the appliances that use electricity. After this, its incredibly hard for any other country to compete.

Strongly agree. China is replacing petrostate economic demand with demand for their clean tech products, which keeps their deflationary economy afloat, provides them soft power, and will transition the yuan to a global reserve currency. Today countries by dollars to by petroleum ("petrodollar"); tomorrow, countries will want yuan to buy "manufacturing fiat," to trade with the world's factory (China is 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity, as of this comment). Stocks of assets vs flows of energy.

Indeed. Electricity will be the only abstraction layer of energy, all end uses (transportation, cooking, heating, cooling, appliances) will switch to electricity.

Electricity can be generated from any source (dirty + clean), but the abstraction layer of electricity will allow the grid to continuously increase the clean fuels. It helps that the cleanest is also the cheapest. Solar panels are cheap as dirt. In 1975, a solar PV module cost $128.27 per watt. In 2026 it costs $0.1 - $0.2 per watt, a thousand times cheaper. In 1975, only satellites could afford solar. Today, its the cheapest source of energy.

China will be an electrostate. Are there any other electrostates? Maybe Bhutan, Costa Rica, but they are too small.

> China will be an electrostate. Are there any other electrostates? Maybe Bhutan, Costa Rica, but they are too small.

China for sure. The rest will come as they replace the last of coal and fossil gas with anything low carbon, solar, wind hydro, as well as the necessary battery storage and transmission for energy orchestration and agility. Like Norway is already at 100% of EV sales and other countries are still close to 0%, we're simply observing a global energy transition horse race. Exciting time to be on the timeline imho.

Ember Energy: Global Electricity Review 2026: Solar surge halts fossil generation rise as clean power meets all demand growth and renewables overtake coal - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-... - April 21st, 2026

The ‘profound’ global impact of China’s rise as an electrostate - https://www.ft.com/content/013e8a27-ade5-48ed-8f2e-ffbf70cc5... | https://archive.today/J0bew - October 10th, 2025

You are assuming that carbon negative countries are all electrostates. That's not true at all. Buthan and Panama which are carbon negative are very far from being electrostates. Costa Rica is not even carbon negative nor an electrostate. Carbon negative countries and Costa Rica due to their low GDP are very far behind on electrification.

Just look up the percentage of new car sales that are electric on each of those countries. It's around 5%. The reason? They cost 35,000 dollars at the low end even for a Chinese SUV whereas the average new car uses gasoline and costs 16,000 dollars for a Chinese SUV.

according to these countries' censuses, Cooking with electricity and drying clothes in a clothes dryer are rather rare too, around 10% or lower. although clothes dryers are more common in apartment buildings, apartments are only around 10% of all houses. Most people cook with small government subsidized 25 pound LPG tanks. Water heaters are used by 5% of the population because the water is actually desirable cold and not hot because the air is hot instead of cold and there is no winter.

They are carbon negative because their population is small enough to have most of the country still covered in virgin jungles and forests. They are big enough to offset the carbon emissions of their small populations. The ratio of forest to population works out to make the country carbon negative.

Also due to low GDP, they don't consume much energy and houses are small. For example most people don't run AC most the time unlike the US or don't have AC at all. Houses are usually 50 to 100 square meters. Electric service is 120 amps at 120 volts split phase. That's just 14 kilowatts. Running AC even for 8 hours a day can cost half the average monthly wage.

Everything is within walking distance and highly centralized in cities. Even suburbs are high density with almost no outdoor space.

But China is already in decline before reaching this ascendancy.

I think new models will result in new structures, not just a switch from the US to China.

China's population is declining while building and operating the largest fleet of manufacturing robotics in the world. The US population is not declining as quickly while having limited capability to do anything. A recent example is $500M of taxpayer dollars spent on a munition manufacturing facility that did not build a single munition.

The US has coasted just about as far as it can go on it's exorbitant privilege while failing to invest in the future.

TLDR China builds, and will continue to build long into the future, the US prospers (for now) from financialization but cannot build, nor has the will to attempt to.

China Makes AI-powered Robots Core of National Strategy: China´s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) marks pivot to innovation - https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/china-makes-ai-power...

> Frankfurt, May 05, 2026 — China has launched its 15th Five-Year Plan by placing robotics at the heart of its modern industrial system. The aim is to pivot its AI research towards physical applications with robots as main drivers for economic growth. This is a next step in the country´s strong automation development: China´s manufacturing industry already has an operational stock of around 2 million units — approximately 4.5 times more than the global no. 2, Japan. 54% of annual industrial robots installed worldwide were deployed in China. This is according to the World Robotics 2025 Report, presented by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).

General Dynamics Failed to Build Artillery Shells for the Army - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281711 - August 2026

Wikipedia: Exorbitant privilege - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege

That sounds like a wish? China has 1.3 billion people in an area the size of 1/3 of the United States (basically the area from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi river Florida to Maine). Imagine if the United States had 1.3 billion people just in that area with the rest of the country being the equivalent of the Tibetan Plateau). One could argue that you would need/want to have fewer people not more.

I am arguing that population is not a component of success criteria, but steady state manufacturing capacity is. China has it, the US doesn't, China continues to cultivate and prioritize it, the US doesn't. If I want to build something of high value at scale, am I going to do it in the US or China? The answer to that remains clear, I'm on the next flight to Shenzhen.

For example, China can build ~20M EVs a year, the US ~1-3M per year, as of this comment.

Ember Energy: China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... (updated monthly)

> As the world’s largest manufacturer of clean technologies, data on China’s cleantech exports provide an important early insight into the pace and scale of the energy transition. In 2024, China produced around 80% of the world’s solar PV modules and battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles.

A multipolar world where every pole is a decadent husk or a former (or not even former) great empire.

Yeah, sounds about right for this timeline.

Sure. What difference does it make if they're 1.2b or 800m? It's still huge by any metric. The current US administration is definitely clearly working in their favour. That's part of why Detusche Bank is a yuan clearing house now.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-thucydides

If you buy yuan just to turn around and spend them you aren't holding the yuan.

China is currently pursuing all types of energy/solutions. They are not stuck on any particular one, is that because they’re run by engineers instead of lawyers/MBA’s…

>Saudi Arabia needs oil prices at ~$86.60/barrel to balance their budget

They can always cut down on candles, they will be fine.

> China with [EVs|Solar|BESS|Turbines] will replace all of the fossil fuel countries (US, middle-east, Russia)

I dont agree with china having the same position as the FF exporters. Simply because with renewables, you export the means to produce energy rather than the energy itself. So in terms of monetary value, china will be selling alot less panels than the FF countries sell oil. And other countries can also manufactor renewables tech themselves, while with oil they couldnt materialize it under their feet

Basically i think the paradigm of the energy trade being cornered for politcal controll wont exost with renewables. Renewables are decentralized and so not controllable

ACtually no , even with the export of primary goods that go into the manufactue of renewables like solar the price differential still favours China. A recent example is the boom of local solar manufacture in India whil relies on solar modules imported from china.The assembled panes are still 2X the price of a similar fullly aseembled one from China. And not due too subsidies of labour - a lot of the value chain is highly automated and densely colocated diffrerent from other industrail setups where complimentary industries are geographically separeted which increase final costt by adding unreliable transport and delays into the mix. So at scale and with high volume will continue to be the dominated by China , wear and tear even with renewables will continue to favour the first mover as tech evolves over time.The solar modules/batteries of 10-15 years ago are not the same effficency as those of today.

China indeed makes very cheap solar panels, inverters and batteries, but that just means that they take up a smaller share of the cost of a complete installation, which also includes labor and additional hardware for the mounting system. So solar panels doubling in price won't double the cost of new solar capacity, let alone the cost of electricity from existing installations. That reduces the political leverage a lot compared to oil, where a supply disruption affects prices on fairly short time scales.

Yep exactly , also they are perfectly content to keep selling at the razor thin margins for commodities rather than attach political costs.Unless and only when their red lines are touch see Lithuania(hosting a Taiwan quasi consulate) and recently Panama(after rescinding the port concessions and confisicating the operations).

Im sure theirs still market dominance to be had. But it wont be at the level that the US has with oil. This isnt just market dominance, its complete economic dominance. The US can controll all money because oil is sold in dollars. That wont be true for solar panels, simply because a country couldnt afford to go a week without oil imports, but a country could go years without solar panel imports, given how existing panels will still work and new panels can be manufactored domestically if needed (even if they are expensive). You cant jist manufactor oil, you meed to buy it

China has shown the willingness to develop and use any source of energy. The same cannot be said for the United States.

China is now the world leading developer of Thorium Reactors.

Innovator's Dilemma for the US. Any alternatives to fossil fuels impact the big energy companies, who want to preserve their cash cows.

From one of the GP comments, it's about preserving the petrodollar and reserve currency status as a whole. That's a way wider scope than a few companies. P

Theyre holding on for dear life but its futile i think. Renewables will be the future and they wont have that political leverage attached. Geopolitics is about to become more equitable. Itll be interesting to see what that looks like. Idk if itll more or less peaceful. I'd bet less honestly

While the Trump administration is anti wind and solar the actual market has installed a lot of wind and solar in the US.

And china installed more solar last year than the US has in total.

Coal in China has many applications beyond simply burning it to produce electricity.

Coal 2025 report

"China consumes 30% more coal than the rest of the world put together. It also produces more coal than all other countries combined, and it is the world’s largest importer. This dominance by a single country makes global coal markets very dependent on developments in China, notably those related to economic growth, government policies, energy markets, weather conditions and dynamics in the Chinese domestic coal sector."

https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2025/executive-summary

In terms of reducing oil consumption China is pursuing two strategies:

1. Electrification of transport

2. Producing synthetic gasoline/diesel/chemicals from coal.

"The sector last year turned 276 million tons of coal - equivalent to almost a year of European coal use - into chemicals, oil and gas, according to the China National Petroleum and Chemical Planning Institute."

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chines...

"China’s power sector is undergoing a visible transformation. Electricity demand rose by 5% between 2024 and 2025, reaching 10,368 TWh, yet coal-fired generation declined by 113 TWh to 6,294 TWh in a year, reducing its share in the power mix. The entire increment in electricity demand was absorbed by nuclear and renewable sources, whose combined output rose by 617 TWh. On paper, this reflects a decisive shift away from coal and toward low-carbon energy. In practice, however, coal is not disappearing from China’s industry – it is being redirected."

"Coal-to-liquids (CTL) and coal-to-chemicals (CTC) technologies provide the missing link. Using Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, coal can be converted into synthetic liquid fuels such as diesel, gasoline, and naphtha, as well as petrochemical feedstocks including olefins for plastics production. China and South Africa are the only countries operating CTL and CTC at an industrial scale. China alone consumes hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal annually (380 million tonnes as reported by the IEA) for chemical and synthetic fuel production. It is important to note that the largest part of this demand goes into the CTC industry. China has effectively replaced gas as its main feedstock for ammonia and methanol production with raw coal, to the extent that roughly 80% of these chemicals’ output is now fed by coal."

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Chinas-Renewable-Boom-Masks...

What this means is China can flatten the demand much faster as they have a way to create synthetic oil. They may continue to buy oil as long as prices are reasonable.

This reminds me of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power Book by Daniel Yergin. Germany created synthetic oil but it was too expensive, resource-intensive, they couldn't make enough of it economically at the scale they needed. They had no choice but to go to war for fossil fuels which they don't have access to.

I wonder how the unit economics are working out for China.

I don't think that Germany had no choice, because Germany scaled synthetic oil production a lot during WWII:

"Being petroleum-poor but coal-rich, Germany used the process during World War II to produce ersatz (replacement) fuels. FT production accounted for an estimated 9% of German war production of fuels and 25% of the automobile fuel."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...

But you can get soft power by being humanitarian.

China delivers a second donation of 5,000 photovoltaic systems to Cuba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrvjyZ76Z5w

Panels cost nothing, the balance of system costs and labor will be borne by the recipient. People will remember for 25 years.

People will remember but they wont submit. The US got countries to submit to them becuase of the economic sanctions made possible by cornering the energy trade. I dont think we'll see that again given renewables becoming the meta

In yiur example, cuba will remember china's help, but china will have to keep being nice to keep that loyalty, which means conprimising with cuba rather that forcing it like the US could do

But, how much of the extracted oil becomes ICE fuel? Because other transports cannot be converted that quick (air, sea...) and most if not all petrochemical industries will still need to exist even if all cars drive electric. So how big will be the effect of crashing fuel demand?

25% of oil production is for cars

16% for trucks and buses

7% for aviation

4% for shipping

2% for rail and domestic waterways

25% + a chunk of the 16% (city buses, shorter distance or smaller trucks, etc) is a good amount.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/307194/top-oil-consuming...

You mean a good amount of the 46% consumed by road transports. So my napkin says, when we all switch to driving EV the oil demand will drop by 15%. It's something for sure, but not overly dramatic (to me).

Trucks and buses are starting to be electrified as well. Some boating as well but that‘s a rounding error.

Every 24 months of EV production in China destroys 1 million barrels a day of global oil demand, as of this comment, at current rates of EV production. We should expect these rates of production will continue to increase. Total annual light vehicle sales are ~90M units. Globally, over 1-in-5 (22%) of new cars sold were electric in 2024. This share was 92% in Norway, and in China, it was almost 50%. In 2025, it was 1-in-4 (25%). The world has 20-30M units/year of EV manufacturing capacity, as of this comment. Light vehicles and heavy vehicles are solved for with battery electric, I argue, based on all available data.

Aviation and petrochemical use cases are unlikely to disappear in our lifetimes, but that is a small slice of today's oil demand (lets call it ~15-20% for the sake of argument), and will be the remainder as renewables and batteries eat global energy demand. ~40% of marine shipping disappears when you're not moving energy around the world, the remaining half can burn renewable energy produced ammonia or methanol for fuel. Like bankruptcy, the change happens slowly, and then all of a sudden. China now has more power than OPEC because of the facts in this comment and their vast strategic petroleum reserves.

It is understandable to say "this flywheel is spinning slowly" before it is spinning very fast, while you're watching it spool.

How China became the world’s great oil power - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238158 - August 2026

Laos went 100% electric vehicles overnight with a drastic approach [Bans Fossil-Fuel Car Imports] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49040819 - July 2026

Electric Vehicle Sales Boom as Ethiopia Bans Fossil-Fuel Car Imports - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47068567 - February 2026

Norway EV sales and related data - https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/

Our World In Data: Tracking global data on electric vehicles - https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales

Global oil price stuck in triple digits. Goldman Sachs says it may stay there for years - https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/20/energy/oil-gas-prices-intl-hn... - March 20th, 2026

Electric Cars Pass a Crucial Tipping Point in 23 Countries - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-28/electric-... | https://archive.today/e8XSt - August 27th, 2023

Almost 40% Of All Ship Cargoes Are Oil, Coal And Gas - https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2022/01/12/almost-40-... - January 12th, 2022

https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/rmt2019_en...

There's no reason to separate cars from trucks and buses. Everything is getting electrified. In jurisdictions where Buy America Act doesn't apply (i.e. the world outside the US), electric buses are already the default.

Moreover, it takes a lot of oil to refine and transport oil. If there's no demand for road transport, then the corresponding demand for refining and transport will disappear as well.

Finally, coal is already replacing oil in the chemical industry. Not because it's cleaner, but because it's cheaper and more available.

I separated cars and heavy vehicles because that's what the GP post asked about.

Copenhagen, where I live, has had a fully electric public bus fleet since 4 months ago when the last two bus lines were converted. The harbour ferries are also electric, and obviously the trains and metro. Garbage trucks and delivery trucks (e.g. delivering beer) are increasingly electric.

About 6% is for plastics. That isn't going away anytime soon, but it also doesn't release much carbon, it's mostly just changing form from liquid to solid.

I would add energy generation to ICE fuel. This is about 84-86% of total I believe

This, and it's murky because a good chunk of that used directly by ICE will move over to power generation to power EVs -- it's not as if we're anywhere close to 100% renewable power even just for EVs here.

There's a good EIA graph about halfway down on https://www.weforum.org/stories/climate-action/us-fossil-fue... that breaks it down.

For both transport and home heating you need to remember that the electricity is hugely more efficient in these roles. So not only is some of that electricity from a renewable source, you also need much much less electricity than you did liquid fuel in the first place because it was more efficient.

If the price were to drop all the way down to $10/barrel, demand would skyrocket.

The future where oil demand is so low and and will remain low even after low prices is much further ahead I'm afraid.

China is much more of a "fossil fuel country" than the US. They've got a ways to go to even catch up.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=stacked-di...

87.5% vs 83.1%

Renewables have to go up by 10x (or more, with electrification of all the things) everywhere pretty much in the coming decades.

Uh, that chart shows they source a greater percentage of their power from renewables than we do with the exception of nuclear and biofuels. Their wind, solar and hydropower bars are all wider, and they're building more nuclear.

They just don't have our easy-access shale fields. If it wasn't for fracking our coal percentage would likely be just as high

I think you're not telling the full story with that chart. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=line&stack...

Thorium Reactors?

Look closely at China, they are pursuing all forms of energy Solar, Wind, Gas, Oil, Nuclear and even new Thorium reactors (Courtesy of Oak Ridge, Tennessee) and all forms of batteries Lithium/Sodium ion they are not resting on their laurels anywhere they are willing to use anything, and are open to any solution that works.

https://www.neimagazine.com/news/china-refuels-thorium-react...

https://china-environment-news.net/2025/06/01/world-first-ch...

The Chinese are not limiting themselves to just one solution or two they are pursuing all types of technology all types of energy they seem to have an open mind is this where/becuase the oligarchs don’t get to call the shots in their system?

China installed mora solar than the US has in 2025. They're currently building 35 or so new reactors, at paces nobody else can. This will change quickly.

This is actually not the first major energy transition.

The world moved from coal to oil for transport and shipping fairly quickly due to the higher energy density and significantly easier handling of liquid vs solid fuels. Using pipes and tubes was a huge labor savings compared to having people shovel coal into a hard to control boiler.

Automatic mechanical stokers replaced people with shovels long ago. Nobody has shoveled coal in a boiler room since the era of the Titanic. Oil is still easier to handle in ships (or really any transport) though.

Were these ever particularly common on steam ships? They were definitely a thing on trains, but I thought they more or less only showed up as the transition to oil fired boilers was getting going anyway.

Even with mechanical stokers you still needed a dedicated fireman making sure the proper amount of coal was making it in.

Nothing like a modern liquid fuel engine where you can just drive yourself without manually adjusting the amount of fuel burn by hand.

Saudi Arabia can profit at those prices, but it can't sustain its living standards at those prices unless they pump like crazy. I recall reading that it was around 40 bucks a barrel where things would start looking not ideal for the princes.

Oil and gas is more valuable for other uses besides burning it up into thin air. Humans have just been pretty sloppy any country that has plenty of oil and gas won’t go broke.

There's a lot of rosy or false assumptions here.

For example, if every road vehicle became an EV tomorrow, global oil demand would drop from 100M barrels per day ("Mbpd") to... ~60M. And that assumes EV replacements for things we don't have EV replacements for yet, like long haul trucking. We also have avgas, for which there's no replacement, and global shipping.

But beyond fuel there's a significant range of non-fuel usages (eg industrial, plastics, construction).

There's another factor here too and that is that the oil economy props up the weapons economy. Nobody goes to war over a solar panel [1]. That sounds like a good thing (and it is) but you have to realize there are forces who like that oil drives war became war is a huge profit opportunity.

[1]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...

> In some countries it's well over 50%. China of course being one of them

As always with these stats, I like to check whether that includes plug in hybrids, and it does. Those are still mostly dependent on fossil fuels, although they use less. Pure BEV adoption seems to depend on your radius from Norway: https://www.autonergy.co/blog/global-ev-adoption-leaderboard...

(France should really be doing better, after all migration away from fossil fuels was a motive behind the Pompidou/Messmer nuclear buildout in the 70s!)

Wow. On mobile Firefox I have to use two fingers to scroll that site.

Yeah, that's some cursed JavaScript :-/

Thats personal vehicles. But if China is going full speed with electric trucks, that will be the fastest gamechanger. Diesel trucks run 300K miles, under 5mpg, consume a gazillion gallons. Electric truck fuel costs are probably 10%.

Its really sad that India is pro fossil fuel, it has an opportunity to follow China's strategy.

I don’t know what you mean by India is pro fossil fuel. It’s aggressively building out solar and has multiple nuclear reactors being simultaneously constructed. It would love to be an electrostate but is doing everything it can to satisfy its populations energy needs in the meantime which means they can’t just stop using coal and oil.

You will find Chinese electric trucks making inroads (heh) everywhere from UK and Europe (1) to Africa (2)

now that it's a proven business model in the centre of the these things, of course.

1) https://octopus.energy/big-on-batteries-octopus-and-catl-tea...

2) https://mybroadband.co.za/news/motoring/648661-electric-truc...

India is pro-coal (has local sources), but anti-oil (import dependence). It is only pro-coal because there's no other alternatives at cost/scale for baseload generation.

India is literally following China's "anything but oil and gas", which encourages renewables, nuclear and coal.

In fact, the Chinese coal lobby is partially responsible for the push for electric trucks. The alternatives are diesel and LNG - both competitors to coal.

Those numbers are from before Mr Trump decided to do his very best to convince the world to stop using oil. Which happened to coincide beautifully with VW group, Stellantis and Chinese firms having an all out price war on smaller EVs, which have until now been the underserved segment of the market. In Denmark it’s certainly not 36%, its probably closer to 90% of new cars being EVs, it’s simply financial suicide to buy a new ICE car here.

> it’s simply financial suicide to buy a new ICE car here

That's a result of tax policy much more than the fundamental economics of ICE vs EV. Petrol is highly taxed. ICE cars are highly taxed. EV cars are probably exempted, or at least taxed less.

Sure, but the fundamentals are moving in same direction, partly thanks to Trump. Electricity is getting cheaper and EVs have 90+ efficiency, gas is getting more expensive. You could also say that petrol is fundamentally way to cheap because so far it has been exempt from paying for all the damage it causes.

> Those are still mostly dependent on fossil fuels, although they use less.

I don't think the word "mostly" belongs in that sentence - "partially" might work.

It depends significantly on how far you drive - I know 4 people with Plug-in hybrids. They all use ~0 fossil fuels most of the time, and only have to fill their gas tank when they go on a longer driving trip (roughly every 4-6 weeks or whatever). Considering how fuel inefficient city driving is, it's enough to eliminate at least half, maybe 2/3 of their fuel consumption.

I had never considered the demand destruction effect of EVs on fuel like that. It makes sense though, because the biggest users will justify switching to electric faster because the payoff time is quicker.

>> They still import a lot

I don't think it's common knowledge how much they dropped imports since the Iran / straight of hormuz crisis.

Back at the start of that conflict there were a lot of breathless takes about what catastrophe was in store in a few weeks time, and what materialised was bad but not in anything like the same league as what was predicted.

The thing that wasn't accounted for in the analysis at the time was just how rapidly and by how much China could suppress its appetite for oil imports.

They had basically been planning for this shortfall for ever as a likely outcome of sanctions/blockades during an invasion of Taiwan.

Curtailing imports so much is a smart soft power move in not only does it ingratiate countries that would suffer most from the price spike but it could soften the resolve of Taiwan in showing that one of the largest penalties that would result from the invasion isn't nearly as punishing which in turn makes Taiwan's porcupine strategy less viable.

Along with US own goals like the thoroughly bungled and unplanned invasion, tariffs, corruption (both business crimes and more moral crimes like pedophilia or disregard for following legal process) it's made most of the west rate China above USA in favourability [latest Pew research poll].

All those EVs but demand is higher than ever.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271823/global-crude-oil-...

I'll be surprised if renewables overtakes oil for energy production anytime soon. I could see nuclear doing that, but I never can get past the challenges of maintenance and replacement costs for solar panels, turbines, and especially for storage.

I will be very happy to be proven wrong here over time though. New battery technology could make a big improvement. And I keep hearing that AI will give us answers to all our technical challenges and lead to an age of abundance where we all make a high income, so there's that too.

Are we using that much oil for energy? The leading non renewable power source now is natural gas or similar, which I didn't think interacted much with the oil market. So even without nuclear, if the future is natural gas pipelines for baseload oil would still be mostly a manufacturing and vehicle fuel deal.

My understanding is that the shift towards natural gas is largely because it is a very cheap byproduct of fracking (for oil). It happens to be "greener" when burned so gets green-washed also.

I wonder what would happen if oil demand was significantly reduced, thus reducing fracking.

Ah yes, nuclear is known for having cheap replacement costs, especially Fukushima was known for being particularly cheap.

Solar power is the worst, it gets more expensive every year.

Regarding batteries... It's over for sodium based batteries (the ones promising us cheap battery storage) because dry coated Lithium ion batteries are coming onto the market which means sodium batteries are an economic dead end.

Until we get dry coated sodium ion batteries of course. Not sure it's over.

> but I never can get past the challenges of maintenance and replacement costs for solar panels

Maintenance? Compared to fossil fuels that require a complex global supply chain just to burn the damn thing you spent so much effort digging up? And large, complex power plants with a large number of moving pieces and complex machinery? Which also require big water supplies?

Solar is the most modular, easy to install, scalable, and cheapest energy source on the planet. And dare I say most reliable, because it practically doesn’t need any major scheduled or non-scheduled maintenance over several decades, other than cleaning it like a window. And get this, once it’s installed, what are the operating costs? They just sit there, on land (which could be taken from ethanol production), any give you free electricity for 30+ years.

Other power sources seem and overly complex in comparison, and it especially seems crazy to use anything that relies on finding, digging up, shipping, and then burning fuel, when such an alternative exists.

Current battery technology is very solid, increasingly cheaper (solar+battery already cheaper than most others), and only getting better.

> One consequence of the transition to renewable energy and electrified transport, is that oil imports will start to decline

Unless Jevons Paradox. Cheaper energy might mean more oil use. 1) Never underestimate the world's hunger for energy; renewables and electrification have huge disadvantages (you can't get close to the energy density of gas/diesel). 2) Oil is used for most products. 3) Even if its use declined, that would raise the price without making it less important.

EVs don’t need renewables. What makes them attractive despite the bad marketing in the West is that they can be powered by anything that can create electricity, like coal; which is something China has a lot of

The transition to EVs is key to the national security of many countries that currently do not have energy security like China and even most if not all member countries in the EU.

China doesn't have a lot of coal, at least not relevant to their energy requirements. They still have to import a huge amount and remain vulnerable from an energy security perspective.

https://www.iea.org/countries/china/coal

>"remain vulnerable from an energy security perspective" - not while having Russia close by.

Russia is a big place with limited internal transportation. Land routes from Russia can only supply a fraction of China's fossil fuel import requirements. Much of it still has to come via vulnerable merchant ships. China still lacks the capability to protect their sea lines of communication, although that might change in a few years.

The other thing to keep in mind is the Chinese, quite reasonably, don't have a lot of faith that the Russian government they make deals with and invest in now will be the same one honouring those deals and investments next decade. Russia has a lot of risk, a lot of problems and not a lot of cash.

I think what's missing here is the second order effects. refiners will adjust their crack, use blending etc but that's just a rounding error. you're still going to have demand for the other ~60% of the barrel, so refiners are going to have ~40% of the barrel to find a market for, EV's are going to look a lot less appealing when gallon of gas is <$1 (or ~$8 an mmbtu), and when its that price, people will find all sorts of uses for it (that's like ~1/2 the price of europe/parts of asia), all of a sudden people are going to be burning gasoline for power etc.

it'll be a roller coaster for sure, but i think there are going to a lot of interesting substations and knock on effects.

A lot of especially the US market needs high oil prices to justify production cost. Some refiners might actually reduce capacity rather than sell below cost levels or at lower margins.

The reality is probably going to be lots of price uncertainty (even more than today) and increasingly flaky supply chains as refiners and oil producers gradually reduce capacity to keep prices high enough to stay in business. As that happens, investments in refineries become more risky as well. Because if you can't rely on lucrative fuel sales anymore, that's a big problem for long term viability of a refinery.

Before cars started burning petrol at scale, refiners were occasionally dumping fuel in rivers. It was just a worthless by product. All the money was in things like kerosene.

ICE use will drop slowly, and then all at once. Because gas stations will go out of business and it'll get harder and harder to refuel them.

People will keep burning oil as long as it makes economic sense to do so.

https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...

Meanwhile everyone is being confused with AI-slop.

What's good in electric cars? If a large power plant is destroyed how are you going to charge your electric car to escape?

You can have solar panels and batteries right at home. You can't have an oil rig at home.

What are you afraid of happening?

This is such a perverse and anxious fear imo

A reasonable scenario might be a cyberattack taking down large portions of the grid for a prolonged time. It's not impossible to achieve something like that, Stuxnet proved the concept of corrupting PLCs driving powerplants ages ago.

Alternatively, even outside a cyberwar scenario, bad weather has been shown to take down power grids for entire regions for days, sometimes weeks.

If they've taken down large portions of the grid for a prolonged period of time you're also not going to have much gasoline left.

> bad weather has been shown to take down power grids for entire regions for days, sometimes weeks

Once again, as someone who actually lived through those scenarios multiple times, when the gas pumps go down you're usually shit outta luck on getting gas.

When the grid goes down for days, the gas you have in your gas car + any random fuel tanks you have in your garage is what you have. Don't expect anything else unless you plan to take it at gunpoint.

Meanwhile the oil supply system is immune to outside threats

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

https://shippingtelegraph.com/shipping-news/adnoc-reports-15...

https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/08/1168121

If you're talking about "outside threats to oil supply" then this has to be a major and current example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_Russian_fuel...

We can find many examples of "Russian oil refinery damaged by Ukrainian drone strike" e.g. today https://www.kyivpost.com/post/82326

> repairs potentially taking up to six months. The strike adds to Kyiv’s escalating campaign against Russia’s oil industry and a growing fuel crunch across the country.

But search again tomorrow and there will be new examples. Refineries and other oil infrastructure are large, located in well-known fixed locations and are highly flammable. This campaign demonstrates what a weak spot they are for a petrostate.

> bad weather has been shown to take down power grids for entire regions for days, sometimes weeks

Where I live, we have typhoons which depending on the direction they arrive in can result in all the gas stations being out of gas for 2+ days. Meanwhile the grid keeps on ticking.

Are u serious? If ur oil refinery is destroyed how are you going to pump oil to your house?

You can buy it on a black market unlike electricity.

Yes, buy crude on the black market and build your own refinery. Or you can run your own DIY fracking rig in your backyard. There must be some yt videos.

Are you suggesting we plan our global energy infrastructure based on attributes like "how well it fares in a post-apocalyptic barter economy"?

Are you thinking that there are no wars and power plants do not get destroyed? If you live in a non-nuclear country the chances are non-zero and it is not smart to depend on large, centralized, easy to destroy power plants. It actually dumb to build those large plants instead of decentralized smaller plants.

For example, a president of a certain country threatened to make a "power plant day" in another certain country.

Why are power plants considered centralised but the extraction, transport and refining of oil isn't?

With the renewable power revolution, do you think solar panels and batteries are going to be more or less centralised than oil extraction, transport and refining?

Are you familiar with how easy it is to repair the electrical grid after damage, compared to what happens to oil wells whose operations are stopped?

> Are you thinking that there are no wars and power plants do not get destroyed?

OK, but is the argument that oil refineries don't get the same treatment in war? They're also "large, centralized, easy to destroy". In fact highly flammable. It has been happening, not theoretically but actually.

> If a large power plant is destroyed how are you going to charge your electric car to escape?

Solar panels and home battery storage. This is also going to seriously screw over electrical grid and especially powerplant operators... residential will, at least in suburban and rural areas, not need a grid any more except during prolonged phases of low solar yield.

I hope its strictly an American fantasy to think you're driving out of anywhere when something like that happens.

Buy a bicycle.

I know I have a problem with "suspension of disbelief" but I find it always weird in those dystopian movies where they all drive monster trucks on an apparently endless supply of scavenged fuel and spare parts. But I'm positive exactly this Hollywood spirit is what fuels (pun intended) most of those hyper-optimistic answers.

I love disaster movies and they ocassionally lean into the idea of traffic being kind of bad in the event of a disaster. Deep Impact had a protagonist escaping biblical level tsunamis on a dirt bike.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoBikesInTheApoc...

In Phoenix we all live in the shadow of the Palo Verde nuclear generation plant. And once on the radio I heard some pundits discussing contingencies if PV should glitch out and have a life-threatening disaster. And they matter-of-factly said, "you're gonna be walking." And that would be the truth; in a full-scale evacuation of a city like Phoenix, the freeways are not built to accommodate traffic like that, and yours truly has no car anyway, so I would be packing light and walking in the opposite direction, and/or ignoring the orders, to meet whatever fate awaits.

But I bet there would be a lot of bicycle and vehicle theft going on, in such an event.

Following Hurricane Sandy, many were left without power and ultimately even gas was strictly rationed. So it's not out of the ordinary to imagine an event like that happening.

https://www.nj.com/news/2012/11/sandy_gas_ration_12_counties...

This is a good point, Florida EV drivers have already found that EVs are more resilient in a natural disaster because the grid infrastructure supporting the fast chargers comes back online much faster than service is restored to gas stations.

EVs that have Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) capability are also useful in a natural disaster: You can use the EV as a big battery on wheels to power some electrical appliances - e.g. keep a fridge going or a light on, until the grid is back.

This is a good point for sure. I can run my house for most of a week off my Lightning. I wish my Model 3 had the same ability, maybe some day this will be a standard option on all EVs. It's such an obvious use case for a huge battery on wheels.

Strictly an American fantasy, that you're left on your own in the face of any kind of disaster.

AFAICT americans are left on their own in the face of any kind of disaster. But, to be fair, in Europe we don't (yet) have the kinds of disasters that they have, so I can't say if europeans are left on their own or not.

Oh yea, that's what I meant, sorry for not being clear.

And we do have all kinds of disasters, but the state not only effectively intervenes, but also supports the aftermath and reconstruction. In America there are some crazy examples of towns just being left straight out abandoned afterwards, because tehre's no such thing as government reconstruction support.

There is no need of large powerplants. Thats the legacy grid, only to make Warren Buffet rich. New grid (that needs to be built) will have solar panels, BESS + EVs for storage, either off-grid or a small community grid. The new grid is distributed and indestructible.

It’s always charged. You plug it in when you get home and it’s ready to go when you leave.

How are you gonna use the electric gas pump in that scenario? The electric car guy just needs a few solar panels.

What's good in Gasoline cars? If a refinery is destroyed how are you going to fuel your gasoline car to escape? It's not like you can charge it from a standard wall outlet or rooftop solar like a regular EV.

* Ask the people in Crimea how they are dealing with this exact scenario.

* Petroleum refineries are large, fixed, and highly flammable by nature.

I did a lazy ask google, and it thinks less than 3% of crude oil is used for energy. The vast bulk of oil being used: 'transportation (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel), heavy machinery, and non-energy uses like asphalt and plastics rather than power plants'.

That is of course, one of the big problems of 'going green' - electricity production is low hanging fruit and understood by the general public.

When that's 'solved' (solar, wind, geo, nuclear), how do we solve the other 97%?

Oil really isn't going anywhere. It will be a slow tail, perhaps too slow to stop emissions.

https://www.iea.org/world/oil

We knew how to make synthetic hydrocarbon one hundred years ago. Nazi Germany used the Fischer Tropsch process to make synthetic fuel after the Royal Navy blockaded their oil import. The only reason we're still digging up fossil fuel is because it's cheap. According to some calculation, green hydrocarbon from atmospheric CO2 and electrolytic hydrogen could be commercially viable when fossil petroleum reaches $200/barrel , which is really not that far off.

Around 50% is used for road transport, though, which is poised to be replaced and was one of the parent poster's main points.

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