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How big oil will die

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Re: How big oil will die

#81

Post by trhway »

briantakita wrote: post #63
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…

> 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…

while i think you're incorrect on many points, i'll address one for example:

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

the cost of transportation and infrastructure like for example gas loading terminals and gas stations is higher for gas than electricity. That is the "loss of energy".

Re: How big oil will die

#82

Post by [deleted] »

khn1 wrote: post #67

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.

[deleted]

Re: How big oil will die

#83

Post by ricw »

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…

This is one of the oddest false beliefs about electric cars. 1) they already have the 300+ mile range for the 4 hour round trip, 2) electricity is totally abundant anywhere. Far more so than fossil fuels.

Building charging stations is really really cheap, because the infrastructure (electricity) already exists everywhere. The reason they aren't everywhere as yet is because there are still relatively few electric cars.

I predict the opposite opinion will be prevail very soon: people will wonder why others even bothered wasting time refuelling their car and spending loads of money.

Re: How big oil will die

#84

Post by wmf »

khn1 wrote: post #67

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.

~60% of oil is used for transportation fuel, so there will be a big impact if that goes away. Oil reserves will also last much longer once oil isn't needed for transportation.

Re: How big oil will die

#85

Post by bmelton »

chao- wrote: post #43

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: > T…

And of course there's people like myself -- I love cars, but I actively hate commuting. Not because I mind the driving, or the traffic, but because it's time I'm getting nothing done.

If I lived in or near a bigger city, some of that would be offset by mass transit, but even mass transit comes with a lot of wasted time -- walking to the platform, waiting for the train, driving/walking to the station, what have you. But a self-driving car, or a car I can call on-demand solves all of that. I can walk out of my house, get into a car, and read, catch up on email, or get work done during my commute.

I'll probably still have a car for leisure. I currently have a Jeep that I use for wilderness / beach / outdoor trips, and I can't see that changing any time soon even though I have a gas-electric hybrid for commuting, but if my daily transit needs can be met by a self-driving, plug-in electric, it's a massive ecological benefit while actively increasing my daily productivity and quality of life.

I agree with you that the 100% coverage the author imagines is a LONG, long way off, and I imagine that even of people who feel more like you do, the idea that they're going to start replacing perfectly good cars with expensive replacements is unlikely outside of the top 10-20% of earners, but if enough people like me switch over a significant portion of our driving patterns to those described in the article, it'll be a huge win.

Re: How big oil will die

#86

Post by all_usernames »

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 is HUGE!

India and China beg to differ -- and they will have an even more HUGE impact on big oil in terms of uptake of EVs.

Re: How big oil will die

#87

Post by dbaupp »

khn1 wrote: post #67

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.

The amounts differ by an order of magnitude, or maybe even two. E.g. the EIA says 9.3k barrels/day is consumed as motor gasoline (more than half of all consumption of finished products, and the next largest categories are also burn-the-oil, possibly including 3.6k barrels/day of diesel fuel) whereas only 323 barrels/day go to petrochemical feedstocks. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbblpd_a.h...

Re: How big oil will die

#88

Post by andy_ppp »

pilom wrote: post #60
jaggederest wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two hours of driving is half a Tesla's capacity, so that scenario is already solved. It's not going to get any less solved over time. People will own cars individually for the same reason that people own horses now - they enable a specific kind of activity, or a native appreciation for the object in itself. Certainly motorsport is not going to die any time soon. What percentage of automobiles are used for touring and…

A Tesla model 3 has a listed range of 220 miles and it declines in winter and with hills. Therefore I doubt one could actually go from downtown Denver to Vail (~95 miles) for a day of skiing and back in a day without charging at the resort. It certainly couldn't make it from Denver to Salida, CO (~140 miles) for a day of white water rafting without charging during the day. Sure businesses could install chargers in th…

I thought the article was arguing that electric self driving cars will remove the need for charging and owning, you'll just call a vehicle and it'll drive the route your talking about for roughly sixteen bucks each way. It probably won't be the same car but that's not a problem really.

Re: How big oil will die

#89

Post by andy_ppp »

I did some quick maths and at 16 cents per mile this looks like it would make around 500bn in revenue per year if all journeys in America were converted to electric self driving uber over night! Maybe Uber will succeed after all!

Re: How big oil will die

#90

Post by trhway »

pilom wrote: post #60
jaggederest wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two hours of driving is half a Tesla's capacity, so that scenario is already solved. It's not going to get any less solved over time. People will own cars individually for the same reason that people own horses now - they enable a specific kind of activity, or a native appreciation for the object in itself. Certainly motorsport is not going to die any time soon. What percentage of automobiles are used for touring and…

A Tesla model 3 has a listed range of 220 miles and it declines in winter and with hills. Therefore I doubt one could actually go from downtown Denver to Vail (~95 miles) for a day of skiing and back in a day without charging at the resort. It certainly couldn't make it from Denver to Salida, CO (~140 miles) for a day of white water rafting without charging during the day. Sure businesses could install chargers in th…

>that doesn't help someone going to climb the tallest mountain in Colorado (115 miles) who will park at the trailhead.

just command the car to go on its own and charge at the nearest charging station while you're enjoying the trail :) This is just one illustration how two tech advancements - self-driving and EV - happening simultaneously would help each other and would result in practical revolution.

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