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How big oil will die

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Re: How big oil will die

#61

Post by blkhawk »

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…

- I did the math on the battery issue that based on some figures I had for energy cost of battery production including mining of resources. I went with a figure of around 110mj of energy per 1kwh of battery. The result was an estimated ~24k km break even point when comparing a model S to a similar sized Volvo. The battery energy costs go down by about half if they are produced only using renewables.

- Actually all the emission reducing technologies adds complexity and lowers the efficiency. This increases cost.

- gas stations will be less convenient when there is no gas. otherwise a great argument for fossil powered cars.

- that is why we have batteries.

Re: How big oil will die

#62

Post by diafygi »

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 thing you have to remember in energy and transportation is that capital costs are high, and margins are thin.

What do you think happens when a new innovation comes in and takes 20% of your market share? This is what happened in oil with fracking. Venezuela collapsed and everyone else is on the brink.

Replacing 20% of IC cars would be just as catastrophic for oil incumbents as fracking.

Re: How big oil will die

#63

Post by briantakita »

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…

> It also needs zero fancy charging infrastructure. Have a regular US household power outlet anywhere in your garage or home exterior? Then you have everything you need to charge it up every night.

There will be significant additional load on the Electric grid. This will require the electric grid to be overhauled around the country. Couple this with "smart grid" mandates & you have yet another channel for government control via bureaucracy & regulation. Denizens of cities tend to be more numb to government control & people in more sparsely populated areas tend to be more willing to demand/defend freedom & liberty.

There are many new properties that need to add utility poles. Don't forget power loss over distance.

The big advantage of Gas is you can transport/store the product without the product losing energy.

> We could easily eliminate 50+% of US personal vehicle emissions, simply by putting 2013-era PHEV technology into every single car /SUV / truck, and getting people to plug them into regular 120V US household outlets overnight. Even rural folks would benefit greatly from getting 1 or 2 free "electricity gallons" every night.

Living in Tennessee, it's difficult to ignore the power lines everywhere in otherwise abundant greenery. Electric cars will only add more power lines & infrastructure.

Re: How big oil will die

#64

Post by maxsilver »

pilom wrote: post #47
maxsilver wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Right. I don't necessarily disagree with any of that. I'm just trying to fight the notion that EV's "won't help rural folk", or that electric cars are not compatible with rural life.

If anything, rural and exurban folks will have the most to benefit from electric vehicles and PHEVs (even without any charging infrastructure), since they end up driving more miles on average than city residents.

Re: How big oil will die

#65

Post by sndean »

Animats wrote: post #22

That's from May 2017. It costs less to make an IC engine than to make an electric drivetrain. Replacement cost for a Tesla drivetrain is about $6000 - $15000. Replacement for an volume-product automotive engine is about $2,250 to $4,000. Detroit put a lot of effort over the years into making engine manufacture cheap.

Interestingly, replacing the Nissan Leaf's worn out battery will cost ~$6000. Looking up the price of a Nissan Leaf I could buy from the closest car max: it'd cost ~$8000.

I wonder if vehicle manufacture (not necessarily battery) is going to be cheap enough to simply throw out your car whenever the battery dies?

Re: How big oil will die

#66

Post by xexers »

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 vast majority of people are living and travelling within cities. You're talking about a small problem that's getting smaller every year. See this chart:

http://www.writework.com/uploads/12/122436/english-chart-ill...

Re: How big oil will die

#67

Post by khn1 »

There is a major blind spot that the author fails to address: All vehicles (ICE or EV) have a heavy dependence on petroleum products such as plastics, lubricants, and synthetic rubber. While I believe that EV's are the future, I do not think their success implies the fall of Big Oil.

Re: How big oil will die

#68

Post by forgotmysn »

nsp wrote: post #32
forgotmysn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you link to or provide a little more info on the "boom-bust cycle that early fossil went through"?

This is probably more than you want to read, but The Prize by Daniel Yergin is a stellar history of the oil industry from 1800s-1990s https://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money-Power/dp/14391...

Oh perfect, thank you. I've read Sinclair's Oil, but that's about it.

Re: How big oil will die

#69

Post by leereeves »

function_seven wrote: post #8
saagarjha wrote: post #4

I can see this playing out, but not as quickly as the author suggests. Cameras and cellphones last a couple years at the most, and are much easier to replace, than a car is. Sure, everyone wants a self driving car, but not everyone can switch just like that.

The argument that counters this is that hailed rides will be cheaper than driving what you already have. You don't need to make a new purchase to switch. Even if you have a recent model sitting in the driveway, you may choose to save money by hailing a car rather than driving your own. I don't know if it'll play out like that, but the article is pretty convincing.

Why would a car owned by someone else be cheaper than the same car owned by you?

The obvious answer - dividing the cost of the car over more miles - doesn't seem right to me. Driving more miles doesn't generally increase the useful mileage lifespan of cars, it just wears them out more quickly.

Re: How big oil will die

#70

Post by alliao »

hyperbovine wrote: post #52
alliao wrote: post #46

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...

Cars have been shipping with sensors and computers since the 80s. When was the last time you heard of somebody's ECU failing? What's that, you've never heard of an ECU before? :-)

ECU is pretty basic though and they do fail, I guess they all have a designed lifetime.

The thing is the more complex these things become the higher probability they fail. A machine made of 10parts each with 1% of failure rate per annum doesn't just add up to 10%...

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