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Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

forbes.com

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Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#31

Post by HALtheWise »

userbinator wrote: post #26
localhost wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really is a remarkable visualization! So much so that I had to compute it for myself - 27,000 liters of gasoline will move an average car 287,000 km assuming 9.4L/100km which is the average 2017 fuel economy for a "car, light truck, SUV" in the US.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles

Relatedly, fuel consumption can be measured in square meters: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/325733/why-can-f...

Yes, and the grandparent's calculation can be accomplished by simply dividing the fuel volume by the "area" of the car's efficiency (or multiplying if using MPG, which is inverse area)

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%283m%29%5E3*24.9mpg

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#32

Post by inflatableDodo »

ccsnags wrote: post #25

Lithium batteries aren’t green at all. Going to EVs just changes the impact on the environment. If we can’t solve the end of life issues with lithium batteries, we need to look at them as a technology adjacent to petroleum when it pertains to environmental impact. A true step forward would be an innovation of power storage itself, rather than the mechanisms around it. Build a better gas tank.

Recovery of cobalt from spent lithium-ion batteries using supercritical carbon dioxide extraction - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956053X1...

The Role of Sub- and Supercritical CO2 as “Processing Solvent” for the Recycling and Sample Preparation of Lithium Ion Battery Electrolytes - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314243271_The_Role_...

Graphite Recycling from Spent Lithium‐Ion Batteries - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cssc.2016010...

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#33

Post by HALtheWise »

ccsnags wrote: post #25

Lithium batteries aren’t green at all. Going to EVs just changes the impact on the environment. If we can’t solve the end of life issues with lithium batteries, we need to look at them as a technology adjacent to petroleum when it pertains to environmental impact. A true step forward would be an innovation of power storage itself, rather than the mechanisms around it. Build a better gas tank.

It seems likely that the end of life for vehicle lithium ion batteries will look roughly similar to end of life for vehicle lead acid batteries today. Namely, lead acid batteries are recycled at a rate of 99.3% in the US, making them the most recycled consumer good. The demand obviously doesn't exist right now because so few electric cars have reached end of life, but it seems like the transitioning the world to battery power will require a one-time investment of a bunch of materials (nickel arguably being the most important) then those same materials will just cycle around the economy for centuries.

https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/battery-council-inter...

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#35

Post by luckydata »

mises wrote: post #30
Diederich wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With existing infrastructure, for most locations, electricity is far easier to transport than gas. Even with some necessary scaling to support widespread car charging, electrical infrastructure is far more robust, redundant and safe than the gas.

Transport != store. I can transmit, assuming there's a sink on the other end (though loss is an issue over distance). Considering there is neither enough lithium nor enough cobalt to make a Tesla for every American, battery tech will be a huge bottleneck.

Who says that we don't have enough lithium?

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#36

Post by abhi152 »

kristianp wrote: post #34

The Forbes summary of the report it's covering says this only covers light duty vehicles and up to 40% of oil production. So still plenty of demand for oil for long haul ships and trucks I imagine.

Fuel used in Ships is very different from Gasoline.

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#37

Post by tzs »

HALtheWise wrote: post #31
userbinator wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relatedly, fuel consumption can be measured in square meters: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/325733/why-can-f...

Yes, and the grandparent's calculation can be accomplished by simply dividing the fuel volume by the "area" of the car's efficiency (or multiplying if using MPG, which is inverse area) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%283m%29%5E3*24.9mpg

Pico hectares are a good unit of area to use for this. For a car that gets N miles/gallon, for 1/N gallons/mile, that works out to 235/N pico hectares.

That results in nice small, but not too small, numbers for most current cars, around 50 pico hectares for a Humvee in the city to around 4 pico hectares for a Prius on the highway.

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#38

Post by jhoechtl »

inflatableDodo wrote: post #22
klwejchkwejrhc wrote: post #16

>renewable electricity has a short-run marginal cost of zero, is cleaner environmentally, much easier to transport and could readily replace up to 40% of global oil demand Hmm, not sure about that "much easier to transport" part. A cube 3 meters on a side can contain enough gasoline to power the average car for its entire lifespan. The gasoline is a liquid, it is relatively easy to move it between containers. Any tec…

>A cube 3 meters on a side can contain enough gasoline to power the average car for its entire lifespan. A cube 3 meters on a side can also contain almost 160,000 meters squared of solar cell wafers, given a common wafer thickness of around 170 micrometers. Assuming around ten square meters per car, that could keep nearly 16,000 cars on the road for decades. edit - to take this further, a standard shipping container…

> given a common wafer thickness of around 170 micrometers

> So that comes to under 14,000 shipping containers full of wafers, which could fit in one single ship delivery, for all of the vehicles in the USA.

Taking the thickness of 170 micrometers and extrapolating this measure of a solar waffer to the needs of US cars is just ... unreal. The OP came up with a serious relation. How many containers would be needed when you measue the thickness of handable solar cells, like 3mm?

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#39

Post by basementcat »

cylinder wrote: post #27
RickJWagner wrote: post #14

Great! Now all we need is an electric car that fits the economic footprint of a gas car and provides decent range. I'll take a performance model, please.

Which car runs on a gas?

Toyota Mirai, Honda Clarity, Hyundai Nexo just to name a few.

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#40

Post by tzs »

ccsnags wrote: post #25

Lithium batteries aren’t green at all. Going to EVs just changes the impact on the environment. If we can’t solve the end of life issues with lithium batteries, we need to look at them as a technology adjacent to petroleum when it pertains to environmental impact. A true step forward would be an innovation of power storage itself, rather than the mechanisms around it. Build a better gas tank.

Location matters a lot with pollution. A ton of pollution in the form of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere is generally going to have a much larger impact than, say, a ton of pollution in the form of a solid pile of toxic waste.

Does producing lithium batteries produce much pollution in the atmosphere or in lakes, rivers, and oceans, or is it more in the toxic pile category?

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