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

forbes.com

91–100 of 124 posts

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

#91

> “For a given capital outlay on oil and renewables, how much useful energy at the wheel do we get? Our analysis indicates that for the same capital outlay today, new wind and solar-energy projects in tandem with battery electric vehicles will produce six to seven times more useful energy at the wheels than will oil at $60 per barrel for gasoline powered light-duty vehicles, and three to four times more than will oil…

Coffin nail for small internal combustion engines is maintenance and life span. I think maintenance is around 5 to 10 cents a mile. And the engines only last 4-8000 hours. Maintenance on electric motors is nil. And the life span is 25-50,000 hours at least for industrial motors.

Kicker once price parity is archived gasoline powered cars will be more expensive to operate even if the cost of gasoline was zero.

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

#92

The entire article is 100% bullshit and has nothing to do with EV per se. All you need to do is look at general electricity prices, which have been going up, not down, especially in the countries that have the highest renewable rate (Denmark or Germany). https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Line-graph-of-average-el... Once electricity prices start collapsing and battery capacity issues are resolved, I'll start believi…

Germany always had very high electricity prices. Even if you eliminated the renewable surcharge it would still have higher prices than Belgium.

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

#93
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If oil demand falls a lot of tar sands and offshore and fracking and other hard to get oil will become uneconomical to extract, causing (paradoxically) supply to appear to contract too. The oil age could ratchet down via a series of price spikes and contractions just as it ratcheted up via price spikes and expansions.

I think new uses and new users will continue to abound, so I don't think humans will radically reduce their consumption. One evidence of this is just the sheer number of cars on the road these days. Human population is increasing, and an abundance of cheap ICE cars means everyone is driving to work at least in suburban areas. In the past, busses and bikes were selected because cars weren't economical for certain indi…

Where do you work? That is not the case at anyplace I've ever worked

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

#94
post #36

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.

Not sure what you mean? It still comes under the moniker "Oil".

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

#95

OPEC and the United States keep fossil fuels artificially inflated through constant wars and their barbaric sanctions against Iran & Venezuela. How much would a barrel of oil cost if they were allowed to sell on the free market?

Downvoted for not having amerikkkan hatred for Iran & Venezuela. My facts are indisputable. OPEC, Russia & 'murrica use war and famine to keep oil prices high. Prove me wrong.

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

#96

But all the small electric cars are just starting at the shamed price of 35/40k € ( Peugeot 208, VW ID.3 and so on). That is a huge barrier of entrance. At the same price, one can buy a BMW or Audi. We need an economic model to let the EV industry boom

Supply is constrained for nearly all electric vehicles right now, I wanted to buy a Golf GTE but VW haven't be accepting orders for a long time.

As supply increases I expect those prices will fall.

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the claim that we need fossil fuels for airlines and rockets raised frequently, but once we have widespread renewable electricity, what’s the barrier to creating fuel from air and water, using electricity? AFAIK, it’s not really fossil fuels that are needed for planes and rockets, but high energy density liquid fuels, and these can surely be created renewably once we have a renewable energy infrastructure. Or h…

Bio fuels for cars are unsustainable because you will need even more bio fuels to produce fertilizer and to power the farming equipment but if you merely use bio fuels for energy storage in aviation then most problems disappear.

But if you have enough energy, isn’t it possible to synthesise fuel directly using CO2 and H2O? No need to use biomaterial as feedstock... assuming the energy is renewable.

Maybe I’m overly optimistic?

Eg here is how to create methane https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140106094557.h...

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

#98
post #90
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And small electric planes are in fact beginning to show up. It is my understanding that going electric enables more efficient designs, and with those one or two decades of further battery tech development might actually get us large planes too.

That Israeli company Eviation is claiming their yet to fly electric plane will have a range of 500 miles. I'm reserving judgement till I see it. If they pull that off it's a line in the sand.

This electric aircraft gets 60 minutes endurance and is flying today (apparently):

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-04/first-electric-plane-...

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

#99
post #83

But all the small electric cars are just starting at the shamed price of 35/40k € ( Peugeot 208, VW ID.3 and so on). That is a huge barrier of entrance. At the same price, one can buy a BMW or Audi. We need an economic model to let the EV industry boom

Or you just tax fuel appropriately and suddenly the BMW or Audi isn't attractive anymore.

Fuel prices need to go up a lot for that. Over 100,000km an EV costs around €3000 - €6000 less to run than an efficient ICE. Increasing fuel prices will also mean people scrap perfectly good but inefficient older cars.

Governments need to make EV ownership more appealing (in my country you can drive in bus lanes, so avoid rush hour traffic), increase incentive payments, or charge higher taxes on new ICE vehicles.

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

#100
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One probably needs to develop and produce EVs in cheaper country than Germany. BMW and VW engineers earn ~100k € early, they are unionized and can’t be fired. As a result one gets ID.3 for 40k€. That’s already very expensive car for most Germans despite some pre-orders: https://electrek.co/2019/07/22/vw-zwickau-factory-electric-c... Last but not least: electricity. If you don’t have a garage, EV does not make sense.…

ICEs are affordable. Engineer wages don't seem to be the limiting factor. The problem is that the car companies don't want to invest into battery factories because they hope someone else pays the bill first.

You are right, Sono Motors in Munich did their development on shoestring budget. I was asked to join electric camper startup, they estimated their development budget under 2M€ using off shelf parts.
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