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How big oil will die

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Re: How big oil will die

#151

Post by jaggederest »

russdill wrote: post #71
function_seven wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think hailed rides can replace a daily commuter as easily as the author suggests. If everyone were to replace their daily driver by hailing a self driving EV, there would be massive surge pricing as most people would be commuting around the same time.

It's already close to that cheap, where public transit is relatively expensive and rideshare is relatively widely used and thus cheap. As soon as you take human drivers out of the scenario it gets even cheaper, of course.

Re: How big oil will die

#152

Post by monodeldiablo »

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…

Speaking as someone who's worked in renewables and utilities, I can tell you that the exact opposite is true. Having a reliable load at night would flatten out the demand curve for electricity, making the grid significantly easier and cheaper to manage.

Those utility poles and power lines you worry about are there to handle peak load, which won't be impacted at all by EVs, which will charge predominantly at night.

A solid mix of renewables -- hydro or geo for base load, with solar for peak load and wind to top off intermittent and nighttime demand -- is most efficient when the demand is relatively stable. No more need to shunt perfectly good electricity into the ground just because it's night.

And boy oh boy does it make the grid economics of distributed solar better. If most of your home's solar production capacity is being soaked up by your car, the grid and utility doesn't need to support big buy/sell cycles on sunny days. Electric cars would stabilize pricing and are probably the only way SmartGrid can realistically work.

Unlike refrigerator compressors or clothes dryers, electric cars have a smooth rate of draw and, as small industries pop up to parasitize the big battery in your EV, we'll increasingly see EVs as a home's store of electricity. This will be good for the system in the same way that per-home cisterns dramatically reduce demand on the water systems here in Southern Europe.

Re: How big oil will die

#153

Post by monodeldiablo »

russdill wrote: post #71
function_seven wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think hailed rides can replace a daily commuter as easily as the author suggests. If everyone were to replace their daily driver by hailing a self driving EV, there would be massive surge pricing as most people would be commuting around the same time.

Surge pricing can be flattened out by making these autonomous vehicles convertible and capacious. During peak commute load, they function as high-density passenger vehicles. During low commute load, they function as light freight vehicles -- courier services, delivery services, even mail.

I could even see someone like Amazon running their own fleet of delivery vehicles and offsetting the maintenance and management costs by letting the vehicles run in "taxi mode" (with flip-up seats) during commute times. Think AWS for vans/light trucks.

In such a scenario, they wouldn't even need to necessarily charge market rates to commuters. They could offer the service below cost and still make money, as their primary profit driver would be their delivery services.

The sheer number of parties that stand to gain from this makes it almost inevitable, to my mind.

Re: How big oil will die

#154

Post by monodeldiablo »

School-Cotton wrote: post #2

First of all, over a quarter of oil is used for things other than transport; second, it's gonna take quite a bit longer than this article predicts for oil used in transport to ramp down.

The author isn't saying that all uses for oil would be eliminated. It doesn't need to be. It will take far less impact to ruin the oil industry.

They've made huge investments in production -- with 25+ year timelines -- that they'd be unable to make payments on if their incomes fall a mere 20%. And if the market for refined oil shrinks by even 10%, the glut of excess supply will drive prices down enough to put a number of companies deep in the red.

Oil is currently profitable because of its huge scale, high demand, and generous government subsidies. Upsetting any of those variables threatens the industry's already thin margins.

Re: How big oil will die

#155

Post by nateburke »

The OP is operating in a peacetime mentality. Oil's killer app is war:

Can a fleet of fighter planes run on electricity, currently? No.

Has the Army committed to having 100% of their fleet of tanks running on electricity by 2025? No.

Can you run a supply chain to the front lines of a ground war with electricity? Technically yes, but it's only a matter of time until your wire infra gets cut/bombed.

So I completely agree with the OP, assuming a general absence of armed, land-based conflict in the next 20 years.

That said, think about why the US even _has_ a highway system and domestic airlines. There are two main weaknesses of building transportation infrastructure on rail, from a central-planning perspective:

1. You can shut down an entire country's economy by bombing the rail infrastructure (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%27s_March_to_the_Sea, viewing the seceded South as a "country" here...), less so with airfields and asphalt highways.

2. There is no consistent demand for continued production of railroad infrastructure, once it is built, which makes mobilizing production in times of great need (e.g. war) slow and difficult.

How this relates to the OP's argument re: electric cars:

1. While battery technology will continue to improve, the main means of transporting electricity is still the power plant + electric lines, which is relatively fragile compared to oil barges/tanks on trucks + highways. You would need to destroy every oil tanker and truck in America to shut down the energy distribution system -- a much harder task than bombing every power plant -- power plants can't move.

2. With gas-powered cars (and planes, though to a lesser extent), you can keep the production running all the time making civilian vehicles. Turning all those Ford F150s and 737s into tanks and bombers is difficult, but it is way easier to do so if you don't have to build the factories FIRST.

Re: How big oil will die

#156

Post by FrozenVoid »

nateburke wrote: post #155

The OP is operating in a peacetime mentality. Oil's killer app is war: Can a fleet of fighter planes run on electricity, currently? No. Has the Army committed to having 100% of their fleet of tanks running on electricity by 2025? No. Can you run a supply chain to the front lines of a ground war with electricity? Technically yes, but it's only a matter of time until your wire infra gets cut/bombed. So I completely agr…

>Can a fleet of fighter planes run on electricity, currently? No. >Can you run a supply chain to the front lines of a ground war with electricity? Yes, with cheap solar power and favorable weather condition(alternatively recharge locations which would recharge or repair drones.) Solar powered drones would be more cost-effective than oil-based armies. Air/ground units greatest cost is protection of humans inside, making them expensive and energy hungry. Once the human factor is out, there is no point on being dependent on dense energy sources such as oil or static infrastructure such as rails and roads. The ideal fighting unit is cheap and self-sufficient: something like solar-powered aerial drone armed with particle beam weapon(e.g.ion beam) or area-denial beam weapon powered by wind/solar/hydro. Renewable energy is the future of warfare, like it or not.

Re: How big oil will die

#157

Post by vvanders »

chrissnell wrote: post #143
vvanders wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diesel motors can be significantly less expensive to maintain and operate, even more so as the reliability of emissions-reducing technology is improved. Source? As someone who owns two diesels(1.1L 2cyl and 3.0L 6cyl) and an EV the oil changes alone make your argument invalid. You know what my highest per-mile operating cost is(including electricity)? Tires. Look, I love the simplicity of the diesel as much as anyo…

When were your diesels built? The new (last five years or so) engines are amazing--they've really come a long way with the emissions systems. I own two diesels: a 1987 Land Rover Defender 110 with a 300Tdi (no emissions controls, ridiculously smokey) and a 2017 Ram 2500 with the 6.7L Cummins turbo diesel (cleaner than I'd ever imagined).

I think you may have mis-read my reply. I was talking about operating costs, not emissions.

The 3.0L ecodiesel was built last year and yeah, it's much cleaner than our '81 1.2L which is pre-emissions.

The thing is the new engine is full synthetic(only approved oil) so combined with the ~$30 Wix filter an oil change runs ~$110 every 4k. The only maintenance item on our EV was a coolant change at 50k, something you'd have to do on a diesel as well.

Re: How big oil will die

#158

Post by gnaritas »

badminton1 wrote: post #145
gnaritas wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on HN, please don't assume only you understand the complexities of the world. Everything is more complicated than one simple thing, but you don't get to level that critique after claiming the value comes from oil. We're obviously talking about primary driver of value and for every fiat currency its primary value is in its tax base, not in any commodity backing. The values between currencies fluctuate short ter…

You are downplaying the role of energy as just a mere commodity. Every single economic activity requires energy. Motorized vehicles in their majority use fossil fuels. By restricting oil trade to a specific currency, the US has a share of every productive activity involving motorized vehicles.

And back to moving the goal post. The discussion is about where the dollar's value primarily comes from, not about whether energy is more than just a commodity never mind that energy != oil as oil only makes up about ~4% of world energy production. The value of the dollar does not come from oil, it comes from tax payers, that's the truth; deal with it.

Re: How big oil will die

#159

Post by chrissnell »

vvanders wrote: post #157
chrissnell wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When were your diesels built? The new (last five years or so) engines are amazing--they've really come a long way with the emissions systems. I own two diesels: a 1987 Land Rover Defender 110 with a 300Tdi (no emissions controls, ridiculously smokey) and a 2017 Ram 2500 with the 6.7L Cummins turbo diesel (cleaner than I'd ever imagined).

I think you may have mis-read my reply. I was talking about operating costs, not emissions. The 3.0L ecodiesel was built last year and yeah, it's much cleaner than our '81 1.2L which is pre-emissions. The thing is the new engine is full synthetic(only approved oil) so combined with the ~$30 Wix filter an oil change runs ~$110 every 4k. The only maintenance item on our EV was a coolant change at 50k, something you'd h…

That's a different story than my Cummins, which gets an oil change every 15K miles and uses regular 15W40 dino oil. Other than fuel[1], I've only spent about $115 in the first year of ownership and only because I took it to the dealer for an oil change instead of doing it in my garage like I do my other diesel truck.

[1] 15-17mpg...not bad for a 10,500 pound truck

Re: How big oil will die

#160

Post by vvanders »

chrissnell wrote: post #159
vvanders wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may have mis-read my reply. I was talking about operating costs, not emissions. The 3.0L ecodiesel was built last year and yeah, it's much cleaner than our '81 1.2L which is pre-emissions. The thing is the new engine is full synthetic(only approved oil) so combined with the ~$30 Wix filter an oil change runs ~$110 every 4k. The only maintenance item on our EV was a coolant change at 50k, something you'd h…

That's a different story than my Cummins, which gets an oil change every 15K miles and uses regular 15W40 dino oil. Other than fuel[1], I've only spent about $115 in the first year of ownership and only because I took it to the dealer for an oil change instead of doing it in my garage like I do my other diesel truck. [1] 15-17mpg...not bad for a 10,500 pound truck

Even ignoring the oil change(15k seems like a huge interval, 5x what I did on traditional oil) you're still spending ~$0.17 per mile @ $2.80/gal.

For our 5k lb EV right now I'm paying $0.07KWh at about .3KW/ mi for a total of $0.023/mi(hence why tires cost me more than electricity, they're about $1k/35k mi or 0.028/mi).

Even our Ecodiesel that gets 28MPG still costs almost 10x to run per mile compared to our EV(which has similar weight) before you even factor oil changes.

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