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How big oil will die

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Re: How big oil will die

#41

Post by pm24601 »

nnfy wrote: post #15

OP does not understand that he is far more enthusiastic about his Prius than the rest of the world. Too much of this article is based on unsubstantiated, overly optimistic predictions, and the reasoning is regularly fallacious. Two examples: 1. OP lists expensive repairs for combustion vehicles, then suggests that because said parts do not exist in EVs, that EVs are cheaper to maintain. This is nonsense, first of all…

1. Electric motors are cheaper to maintain. Railroads worldwide know this. ( random article: http://www.american-rails.com/support-files/locomotive_opera... )

2. Not correct - OP is pointing to current Priuses that have exceptionally long lived batteries "Current estimates for the lifetime today’s electric vehicles are over 500,000 miles." and "But today there are anecdotal stories of Prius’s logging over 600,000 miles on a single battery."

3a. Maybe there is sentimental value to a Mustang... but that crappy car with headliner coming down? .. no..

3b. Utility as in always available, possibly. However consider just the case of a family going from 2-3 cars to a single car. (Which is what my family has done) That alone could halve the number of cars purchased.

Not smug -- futurist is predicting future.

Re: How big oil will die

#42

Post by PeterisP »

nnfy wrote: post #15

OP does not understand that he is far more enthusiastic about his Prius than the rest of the world. Too much of this article is based on unsubstantiated, overly optimistic predictions, and the reasoning is regularly fallacious. Two examples: 1. OP lists expensive repairs for combustion vehicles, then suggests that because said parts do not exist in EVs, that EVs are cheaper to maintain. This is nonsense, first of all…

It's funny that you claim that "most of the parts listed almost never require repairs" when the list explicitly is the top 10 most frequent actual repairs that were performed in 2015.

Also "they may require specialized equipment to maintain" is a guess that's not true, while everything requires particular tools, repairing and maintaining electric drivetrains requires less specialized equipment than ICEs.

Re: How big oil will die

#43

Post by chao- »

I want fewer fossil fuels as much as the next guy, and while the core argument about ICEs is beyond my expertise, the data the author presents seems to support it so that's pretty neat. However, I take issue with the article's casual conflating of oil with all fossil fuels, and fossil fuels used for transportation with all uses of fossil fuels.

It signals a lack of awareness when the author writes things such as:

>The pipeline was built at a cost of about $7 billion ... Keystone XL will go down as the world’s last great fossil fuels infrastructure project.

Without even straining my memory, I recall that Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass Terminal opened in the last year. It cost about as much to build as the $7 billion quoted here, and they are planning another now at a higher projected cost [0].

Overall I agree with the author's proposed trajectory and order of events involving self-driving cars, fewer used car sales, and so on, but differ on the time scale. I figure things will progress at one-half to three-quarters that speed, at fastest. I don't think the "simple" argument of "people will select the cheaper option" is as simple when it comes to automobiles. A combination of inertia, identity and utility are going to make it slow going.

Not only am I "not a car guy", I actively dislike the task of driving. So it took a long time for me to really get why people identify with their vehicles, but now that I do, I can see how limited my eco-progressive perspective of "Everyone would prefer to live a car free life just like me!" was. I still arrogantly think everyone else will come around, but it's going to take longer than the author, or younger me, thought it would.

Definitely the generation born after the self-driving car is widespread will be the ones to complete the job. I don't think that timeline plays as cleanly into the oil (or fossil fuel) narrative that this article sets up, though.

[0] http://wgno.com/2016/12/21/8-5-billion-natural-gas-plant-and...

Re: How big oil will die

#44

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

chrissnell wrote: post #25

This article makes a number of flawed assumptions: - It neglects the environmental impact of battery production. - Diesel motors can be significantly less expensive to maintain and operate, even more so as the reliability of emissions-reducing technology is improved. - Battery charging is nowhere near as fast or convenient as a gas station. - Electricity must come from somewhere. Few places have steady wind and none…

1. Battery production, like any production, has an environmental impact - but the motivation for battery-electric vehicles is to eliminate local environmental impact (e.g. urban centres). If all of the pollution happens at a single source then it's easier to contain, reduce, and eventually eliminate.

2. Diesel fuels are still very dirty - and the reliability of petrol engines is not a big-enough problem to justify switching to diesel engines - and ICE cars have far more moving parts compared to BEVs than just the engine.

3. Tesla did look into fast battery-swap stations that can swap a battery in less time than it takes to fill a gas tank - they stopped further development due to a lack of consumer interest: users are perfectly happy to charge at home overnight, when the car's aren't being driven anyway, and when electricity is often cheaper at night. As more use-cases switch to electric there will be an impetus to adopt battery-swapping, but it remains an option.

4. 24-hour solar is possible with energy-storage, which is what Tesla is looking into, but again, the point of BEVs is to first eliminate local pollution, then make it easier to eliminate energy source pollution thanks to the fungibility of electricity and centralisation of pollution sources.

Re: How big oil will die

#45

Post by lzlarryli »

pilom wrote: post #28

Every time I see someone make the argument that "all cars will be electric by 20XX" I feel like they are incredibly sheltered from rural life. The US is HUGE! Sure the majority of commuting could be replaced by electric cars but I've seen no evidence of them being able to replace ICEs for the "I want to go skiing/kayaking/hiking (pick an activity where your car sits on the side of the road all day) 2 hours away and r…

One consideration is that if fossil fuel cars drop to a very low level in cities, the spending put into maintaining the fossil fuel infrastructure might become unsustainable. That would in turn drive up the price in rural area as well. In the end, it is very expensive to maintain parallel infrastructures as such and densely populated cities (unfortunately maybe) drive the trend of which infrastructure is going to win.

Re: How big oil will die

#46

Post by alliao »

And this is how car manufacturers going to make up the revenue loss of the new much more reliable electric drive train.

AI + Autonomous driving.

Both of these requires sensors, and silicon. Both hates abuse from vibration and heat/cold cycle, in short, they will fail.

So instead of paying for things that would break in the old car, why not pay for things that only exists in the new car.

It's not hard...

Re: How big oil will die

#47

Post by pilom »

maxsilver wrote: post #39
pilom wrote: post #28

Every time I see someone make the argument that "all cars will be electric by 20XX" I feel like they are incredibly sheltered from rural life. The US is HUGE! Sure the majority of commuting could be replaced by electric cars but I've seen no evidence of them being able to replace ICEs for the "I want to go skiing/kayaking/hiking (pick an activity where your car sits on the side of the road all day) 2 hours away and r…

Electric cars can have ICE's strapped onto them, and it works really well. The Chevy Volt, for instance, is perfectly designed to handle the situation you described. It gives you 52ish miles of all electric range, so you can commute and grab groceries and do all of your normal driving on pure electricity. And for various road trips, it still gets 40-ish MPG for hundreds of miles without any electricity needed. It als…

I agree wholeheartedly with you and my next vehicle will be a plug in hybrid. That said, that isn't what the author is saying. He's saying that all private cars will go away because it will be so much cheaper to just call a self driving electric and I don't see it happening because people will never call a self driving car to the trailhead of a 14'er. It is just so much more convenient to have your own (PHEV).

Re: How big oil will die

#48

Post by pm24601 »

pilom wrote: post #28

Every time I see someone make the argument that "all cars will be electric by 20XX" I feel like they are incredibly sheltered from rural life. The US is HUGE! Sure the majority of commuting could be replaced by electric cars but I've seen no evidence of them being able to replace ICEs for the "I want to go skiing/kayaking/hiking (pick an activity where your car sits on the side of the road all day) 2 hours away and r…

The US rural population is 15% of total population and declining ( "About 46.2 million people, or 15 percent of the U.S. population, reside in rural counties, which spread across 72 percent of the nation's land area" https://www.yahoo.com/news/census-rural-us-loses-population-... )

Next rural population has plenty of vehicles that use gas that could be electric. For example, 4wheel ATVs. A farmer that has an electric ATV could power the ATV with a solar array. Or an electric tractor, water pumps, etc

Lots of opportunity to take ICEs out of the mix. Not just the pickup truck.

Re: How big oil will die

#49

Post by badminton1 »

gnaritas wrote: post #26
badminton1 wrote: post #6

Not many people know the relationship between oil and the US dollar. The golden age of the US dollar was the Bretton Woods system, where every currency was backed in dollars and dollars were backed in gold. There was however no obligation for the Federal Reserve to accept audits of any kind to validate there was enough gold. Therefore the US could print money at will (and it did), until countries such as France start…

The dollar doesn't get its value from oil, it gets its value from being the sole currency accepted for your tax bill, i.e. its value derives from its tax base. That is why fiat works, it's what "by fiat" means, and why commodity backing is not necessary. The dollar has been a far better currency since gold backing was removed. Gold was and is a terrible currency.

It is more complicated than that.

There's the relative value among different currencies (exchange rates).

Re: How big oil will die

#50

Post by emmanuelindex »

Why self driving cars should only be electric vehicules? And if the price of oil is going down due to electric vehicules it will make people even more happier to use their already amortized vehicules. And don't forget that a large part of electricity comes from oil in the US.
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