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Bloomberg Predicts EVs Cheaper than IC Engine Cars Within 10 Years (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: With the price of lithium-ion batteries continuing to plummet, already dropping 65% since 2010, electric vehicles will become cheaper to own by the mid-2020s, according to a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The report also forecasts that sales of EVs will hit 41 million by 2040, up from 462,000 in 2015. By 2040, EVs will make up 35% of new light-duty vehicle sales, even if the price of crude oil goes back up from $33 today to $70 in the future. The adoption of EVs will displace about 13 million barrels of oil per day by 2040, when the clean-energy cars represent about one-quarter of cars on the road.
"Even if the proce of oil goes back up"???
Huh?
I think EVs are a fad and in 10 years, we'll be saying things like "Man remember Teslas??"
EV batteries last a couple of thousand cycles at the most. Which might be 5 or 10 years worth of driving. After that they are recycled into stainless steel pans and other items that aren't batteries. It seems that Lithium ion batteries are harder to recycle back into batteries than for example lead acid or nickel iron (both impractical for powering cars).
So instead of eating into the world's supply of hydrocarbons we're eating into the world's supply of Lithium and a couple of other elements that there isn't all that much of once you start producing 10s of millions of cars. Great progress.
Of course there are ways of getting these metals in plentiful supply from seawater, asteroids and other sources but as with super-efficient solar panels, they're always 10 years away.
They don't let the media report on all of the deaths because it would hurt their hero Musk.
So you are saying that as batteries become cheaper, cars which run on batteries will become more affordable, and thus more popular...
Now tell us something useful.
The problem there is shit motor controllers, not the battery chemistry.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
So many engineers have already died in the war against electric cars.
Went to Catalina Island for a few days this week and on the way there, saw a sign that is repeated on this website: "Due to the lithium ion batteries Hoverboards are ILLEGAL to transport upon Catalina Express." Disregarding cameras, cell phones, watches, pacemakers, blah small electronics etc, anyone who has been to Catalina knows cars are scarce there (it's a 30 year waiting list to get a car permit) and everyone drives golf carts - which more and more use large lithium ion batteries now. I thought the sign to be really funny, yet sad (obviously). Hoverboards aren't banned because of the lithium-ion batteries, they're banned because they're 90degrees off and they're not hovering. Errr...they're banned because they were very cheaply manufactured, and have safety problems.
This. The media refuses to report on people constantly dying in fires started by those things.
At the drive thru where I work, someone almost died when one of those Prius pieces of shit caught fire last week, but the media refused to report on it.
Due to the comparatively huge "green" tax on IC cars, together with the VAT exception of EV's, EV's are cheaper than IC cars in Norway.
For example a VW e-Golf vs Golf.
(ref. http://www.volkswagen.no/no/models/golf/utstyrsvarianter.html)
So... if you need a second car in the family, you're nuts if you buy a new IC car. :-P
I'm a libertarian, who will most likely vote for Trump
Fuck you, asshole.
I don't respond to AC's.
Pick one.
I'm just glad a petrol powered car has never caught fire before.
- Chuq
So who's the bigger fool? Analysts who make SWAGs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_wild-ass_guess) about what the future will look like 25 years from now? Or the people who believe them?
When gasoline went above $3/gallon, people bought less SUVs, sales of smaller cars, and Prii went up. I think the price of gasoline will have to go higher next time (above $5/gallon), before cars like the Nissan Leaf become popular.... Keep in mind there are different cars, like the Elio, and CNG cars, which would be competitors to electric cars. Also, Lithium ion batteries have been the dominant battery type in consumer electronics for the last 2 decades, electric motors have been a big market for about a century now, power electronics have been produced in large quantities as well... The $30k Nissan Leaf is an impressive achievement. I wouldn't expect further, giant cost reductions.
The Nissan Leaf is one of the cheapest cars you can get that can blow away most other cars when accelerating from 0 to "legal in-town speed."
.)
If your commute involves stop lights and changing lanes, it is super fun to drive and a bargain. The general public still seems oblivious to its acceleration, which adds to the fun when you quietly blow past them when they try to cut you off in a "funny looking car" (while their ICE wails in futile protest. .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Because obviously outright fascists are better than soft corporate lickspittles, oh sorry was he supposed to have a point? the number of people better than trump includes at least 60% of the population probably 70%...
fail
Have you ever heard about Ford Pinto?
It's true I was murdered by the Republicans.
I need fuel to burn to go far. Elecar is for pussy man with shopping list from wifey.
Lot is? Lot was? Something belongs to the lot?
I predict that in ten years half the cars on the road today will still be on the road. I recall reading that the half life of a typical automobile is ten years or so, maybe as low as eight. So, even if the only factor in buying an electric car for the public was price we'd still be a long way from moving our national vehicle fleet off of fossil fuels.
I predict that in ten years the price of gasoline will be within 10% of what it costs now, not in dollars but in hours per day that the average working person works in a day/week/year. Dollars are a poor measure of wealth, productivity, or value. The value of a dollar is based much on what the government decides it does through mechanisms like a minimum wage, interest rates, and government bonds. What does not change much is how much is how much time a person is able to provide productive work in their life. Put the price of bread, gasoline, milk, or whatever is worth in hours worked and you have a measure that can hold up through time. There is a lot of oil still in the ground and we'll keep finding ways to drill for it.
I predict the government will still be transferring money from the poor to the wealthy so that they can buy shiny new four door penises... I mean electric vehicles. Who buys electric cars? It's not the plumbers, carpenters, and farmers in this nation. It's the DINKs (dual income, no kids). People with a lot of money to spend but not a lot of miles to carry tools, building material, salable goods, or kids. We'll be taxing those "rich" farmers that make $250,000 per year but have $240,000 in expenses to send their kids to college, put a new roof on the barn, and fix the "gas guzzling" truck used to haul livestock to market.
I'm sure second hand electric vehicles will make it to market for those less wealthy to buy, but then isn't this the "trickle down economics" that Reagan was pilloried over?
I predict that in ten years we will start to see a renewed interest in nuclear power. While this might seem like a way to make electric cars cheaper it has other benefits too. Cheap electricity means cheap aluminum, because aluminum refining is such an energy intensive process the price of aluminum is closely coupled to the price of energy. Cheap aluminum opens the door to lighter, cheaper, and more energy efficient vehicles. This benefits both EVs and dinosaur burners. A gas car has a large portion of its weight in the frame, engine, and body panels which are often made of steel, if made from aluminum that car gets much lighter. A big part of the EV weight is the battery, which does not benefit from cheap aluminum since they are not currently made from steel.
A huge problem with batteries is recharge time. Range limits alone would not be an issue if it only took five minutes to "refill" like a dinosaur burner. If for some reason my prediction on continued cheap oil fails then I have another prediction. I predict that we'll see cars fueled from ammonia, liquified/compressed air/nitrogen, or even wound up springs before electric cars win out. Assuming nuclear power makes gains in ten years (which I think is more like twenty) then what we will likely see is synthesized fuels. Synthetic fuel could be hydrocarbons, which is good for keeping some very expensive commercial airplanes flying. We could see synthetic ammonia as a fuel.
In warm climates liquified air can have longer range, shorter refuel times, better performance, and cheaper construction than anything electric. A bonus to driving a liquid air car on a hot day is that the faster you drive the better the air conditioning works.
In cold climates electric vehicles use a lot of range to heat the cabin. Liquid dinosaurs will reign in powering vehicles there. If we get enough nuclear power on line in ten years then synthesized fuels become viable.
If we are going to see a big shift in how we turn energy into transportation then we need to look at scales of thirty years. A typical commercial jet plane, ship at sea (cargo or military), and ma
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
about 250,000 regular gas cars catch fire each year.. funny how that's not an issue.
There isn't a single manufacturer that has any sort of a road-map for a 20-25 years time-span. When the manufacturers themselves don't even have the faintest of plans laid down, this prediction of where the market will be heading is a wild speculation at best
one of those Prius pieces of shit caught fire last week, but the media refused to report on it.
Obviously, the Prius is part of a Republican conspiracy to kill Democrats. That explains why Republicans never drive them.
His popularity is linked to the worsening situation and hopeless future of the white male lower and middle classes. White men have always had it better than other people of the same prosperity level and now they don't. This would be bearable if they where getting more wealth along with the country as a whole, but only the rich are benefiting from the current growth, if anything the poor and moderately wealthy are getting poorer in absolute as well as relative terms. So unlike previously disadvantaged groups within the lower and middle classes, who see rises in status offsetting static or decreasing wealth, things are only getting worse for white men, and this has lead to a backlash.
The solution to this is not to perpetuate sexism and racism under the guise of standing against "SJWs" or "political correctness" but to stop taxing the rich less than the poor in percentage terms and start engaging in actual "leftist" economic policies. Then people do not feel afraid of the apparently inevitable decline of everyone they know and care about, and don't need to lash out either. Hillary is too right wing to do this though.
Or we could just hand all the productivity gained from technological advances to the rich investors, while stripping jobs and wages from the poorer spenders who keep things moving, until the economy implodes due to customer shortage. Meanwhile beating on the most disadvantaged classes will help to vent the sense of impending doom the steady decline of everyone but the turbo rich causes.
The gains we've made in battery technology have been to improve on the cost, size, and weight of pretty much the same chemical reactions. At some point this technology will hit some very real limitations on improvements that can be made to battery technology. I wonder if we have not met those limitations already.
Like many technologies humans have made and improved upon over time the limits of physics start to come into play. At that point any gains start to come at a cost somewhere else. We might be able to make a battery that stores more energy but at the tradeoff that it stores it for a shorter amount of time, as a potential example.
I'm sure we'll see prices lower due to economies of scale but I think we've got about as much as we can from battery technology.
The one problem that is not likely to be overcome easily is the recharge rates of a battery. The faster a battery is charged the hotter it gets. The hotter it gets the more energy is lost as heat. If it gets too hot then it can be damaged.
A battery swap technique might work to address this problem on recharge rates but then we are back to the same problem as EVs have now, a shortage of places to recharge. A typical EV may have a means to plug into a common household outlet but that gives a very long recharge rate. A less common way to charge would be a plug much like one would see for a household oven or clothes dryer, those still take a long time to charge. A quick charge station will need a new kind of electrical plug and/or a battery swap mechanism. The cars would also have to support either, likely in addition to the common household charging plugs for the owner to charge at home, work, or wherever.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Have you ever heard about Ford Pinto?
The Ford Pinto ran on Lithium Ion Batteries?? Wow! #FordWasLyingToUS!
You're listening to bloomberg? Come on... You can't STILL be this stupid.
"In the next few years, the total-cost-of-ownership advantage will continue to lie with conventional cars, and we therefore do not expect EVs to exceed 5% of light-duty vehicle sales in most markets -- except where subsidies make up the difference," Morsy said. "However, that cost comparison is set to change radically in the 2020s."
Subsidizing the dinosaur burning car industry is "corporate welfare" but subsidizing EV ownership is... what exactly?
I had my liberal friends tell me that the big automakers in the USA had to be bailed out years ago because those companies were "too big to fail". Now we have to subsidize EVs to compete with these companies. I say we would have had a lot more EVs on the market if we allowed the dinosaur burners to go out of business so that the EV makers could have bought up the factories at fire sale prices, re-tooled them to make EVs, and re-hired all those factory workers.
The problem is that EV makers don't seem to hire union labor. Funny that, we'll bail out the unions at the expense of the EVs. It will be interesting how this dynamic will play out. Liberals want to see the makers of dinosaur burners keep union workers working. Liberals also want to see the makers of those same dinosaur burners go out of business.
Get some popcorn, this is going to be a show as the liberals eat their own kind.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
On this site IC typically means integrated circuit instead of internal combustion. The former sounds pretty good, an engine with no moving parts.
I think it's doable actually, wrap the "rails" from a maglev train around the inside of the wheels. Use SCRs to electronically control the electro-magnetic field for propulsion... and there you go, and integrated circuit engine with no moving parts except the wheels.
This report is actually somewhat pessimistic, and makes the assumptions that the observed rate of cost reductions in lithium automotive batteries over the past decade will slow considerably. In recent years the rate of cost reduction has actually been increasing and stands around 14%/year over the past 3-4 years.
Their estimate of "average" cell prices is also somewhat high at $300/kWh for 2016 - Tesla is estimated to be in the $180-$200/kWh range today, and GM is getting a cell-level price of $145/kWh for the Bolt.
The crossover point for an equivalent--to-ICE performance BEV is two years ago for > $70k-class cars, likely to be 2018 for $35k-class cars, and 2020-22-ish for $20k cars. CUVs and Trucks may take a couple years longer as they need 30-50% more battery capacity to cover the same distance, aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance being real things...
CAPTCHA: Crucify. Seems fitting.
This is why we need a "None of the above" option where the election is pushed 2 years and none of the candidates from the current cycle are allowed to run again.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Won't Electron Volt cars still have Integrated Circuits ?
Just out of curiosity, when did the majority of commentators here become such utter tech-luddites?
Electric cars today are where digital cameras were in about 2000. Pricey compared to a film camera. Decent enough for general consumer snapshot use. Batteries didn't last long, and "not about to replace film for professionals anytime soon" according to the pundits...
EVs will be cheaper than ICs in 2 years.
To be fair, it's possible to put out a petrol fire. A lithium battery fire on the other hand, there's pretty much fuck all you can do about it.
Bloomberg is being very conservative on the date at which electric vehicles will replace liquid fueled vehicles. I also doubt that lithium ion will be the winner in the advanced battery contest.
Lot's of Li-powered cars already have. I don't understand why you Republicans hide the truth about how dangerous they are. Your kind puts profit ahead of people.
Okay, as a Republican, I'm sort of torn on this. Yes, I want the environment to be destroyed and for the world to choke in smog, but I also want to lovingly protect our billionaire businessmen and cartels who are producing these ultra-dangerous battery powered cars that may catch on fire. (nice!) The probably is that these things might inadvertently save the environment. (noooooooo!)
Maybe we can figure out a way for these electric cars to burn oil in some secondary capacity... Then they'd be perfect!
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
This is a comment stemming from unadultrated penis envy. Marx was a bum.
You know this only happens for the top 0.1% of income earners in the country, and that taxing them at a higher rate would not yield significantly more revenue for the US government?
The carried interest loophole definitely needed to be smoked out. That leaves muni bonds and capital gains taxes. (Interest on muni bonds is tax exempt based on municipality residence.) Since muni bonds fund public infrastructure projects, do you really want to cut the tax exempt status on those, or do you want to continue to let the 0.1% fund infrastructure projects? Capital gains taxes are 15% for lower income brackets and 20% for higher income brackets, so it seems like that's ok?
I don't disagree that there are some systemic problems in society - like there always have been and always will be, and it's worthwhile to try to fix them - but let's look at some correct facts and figures before deciding which group of people to behead first.
Have you ever tried to put out a carbequeue?
I don't think you've even seen a car on fire to think you can put it out - fire departments don't even try. If there is somebody inside the car, they'll work at getting them out, but they generally just keep people back and wait for the fire to go out.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
"By 2040, EVs will make up 35% of new light-duty vehicle sales, even if the price of crude oil goes back up from $33 today to $70 in the future."
35% of new sales even if the alternative is more expensive? But I always prefer the most expensive option when all else is equal.....
I have to admit that I've warmed to the idea of an electric car, but it's not really ready for prime time (i.e. the 99%) yet.
Come see me when I get the same range as a gas-powered car, I can charge it relatively quickly (15 mins, tops), the number of publicly available charging stations is within a reasonable parity with gas stations, and desert heat won't destroy the life of the storage medium.
Until then, it'll take a hell of a lot more than price parity to get me in an EV... Like a Tesla Roadster for $25K. (Not gonna happen.)
Think about how cheap electronic stuff from China can be. Take out the shock absorbers and replace them with electromagnetic devices. Take out the brakes (apart from maybe a single use emergency brake) and use regenerative braking with reverse power for low speed braking. You are left with the most reliable moving parts, which cuts down on costs. The determinant is cheap battery manufacture at high economies of scale.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
They absolutely do try to put petrol car fires out, because they melt the tarmac underneath, and end up needing the road to be resurfaced if they don't get put out. They're relatively easy to put out - just need to throw foam at it.
Meanwhile, with lithium:
1) The fire burns hotter (around 600C rather than 450-500ish for petrol)
2) There's basically nothing you *can* put on it to put it out. Water will react with it, nitrogen will react with it, CO2 won't smother it, foam will react with it, dry powder can't smother it. About the only way you can put out a lithium fire is to bury it in sand, and that requires several dump trucks to somehow get near a 600C fire, and even then, you get a big blob of glass to clear up off a highway.
Fuck you, asshole.
(Score:3, Insightful)
Fascinating!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Wrong. Class D extinguishers are meant specifically for metal fires like thermite.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Also, what will television shows do with electric vehicles? They can't very well have them go up in a fireball like gasoline ones. Maybe an electrical storm?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Sensible countries have this already.
They also give representation to the "losing" side despite having "lost" because, amazing as it is, democratic political powers are still supposed to support and acknowledge their base, not just 51 % of it.
The US's system is 1.0 beta and it shows.
You forgot this: /s
The amount of lithium available isn't the problem at all - it's more like the will to use it.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
A selection of random vehicles that just happened to be easy to find apples-to-apples 0-30 numbers for:
2015 Subaru WRX: 0-30 in 1.7, 0-60 in 5.1
2015 Volkswagen GTI: 0-30 in 2.3, 0-60 in 5.8
2014 Chevrolet Impala LT: 0-30 in 2.4, 0-60 in 6.0
2014 Volkswagen Jetta SE: 0-30 in 2.4, 0-60 in 7.3
2015 Ram 1500 Laramie Longhorn Limited 4x4 Crew Cab: 0-30 in 2.4, 0-60 in 7.4
2014 Mazda 6 Grand Touring: 0-30 in 2.5, 0-60 in 7.0
Nissan Pathfinder LE 4x4: 0-30 in 2.5, 0-60 in 7.5
2014 Kia Forte EX: 0-30 in 2.6, 0-60 in 7.3
2014 Mazda 3 i Touring: 0-30 in 2.7, 0-60 in 7.6
2014 Chevrolet Spark EV: 0-30 in 3.2, 0-60 in 7.9
2013 Nissan Leaf SL: 0-30 in 3.4, 0-60 in 10.2
In other words, unless you only "race" 1990's SUVs and minivans, actually you just drive like an arrogant jerk with a superiority complex and delusions of persecution.
Also, what will television shows do with electric vehicles? They can't very well have them go up in a fireball like gasoline ones. Maybe an electrical storm?
Rather like the control panels on the U.S.S. Enterprise, etc.
Despite the fact that primitive 20th Century control circuitry generally operates off low power levels, leaving the heavy lifting (sparky) stuff down in the Engine Room.
Don't be upset. It's absolutely essential to burn petrochemicals. It is a well-known fact that only petrochemicals create jobs.
And we wouldn't want to interfere with job creation, would we? Where would American business be if it couldn't export jobs to China and India?
I'm not all that big a fan of EVs, but I feel compelled to mention that gasoline and diesel powered cars have been known to catch on fire as well.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Yes I know it's sarcasm above but it's worth looking up the number of wells running in the USA versus two years ago.
The Saudis have won.
The attempt at energy independence via shale etc failing due to the Saudis dumping oil has resulted in a lot of people getting driven out of business and a lot of jobs lost because they cannot compete against a cartel that has already paid for a lot of infrastructure and could afford to drive the oil price down to rock bottom for a while. It's a kingdom showing that an entire wealthy country under autocratic control can tell capitalism to fuck off and die - a ridiculous situation but that's why the jobs are gone and your post is a bit out of date.
Back to the main topic, having things such as electric cars in the mix puts us less at the mercy of foreign powers. If we do nothing it's not just the Saudis but the Iranians and Russians could have us by the balls in the long run.
> Also, what will television shows do with electric vehicles?
I imagine that for the first three or four decades of general EV use, "Hollywood" will do exactly what it does with conventional vehicles. Load the vehicle up with pyrotechnics and touch them off at the dramatically appropriate moment. Eventually, they may work out something else, maybe even something more realistic. But we're talking entertainment here, not reality.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
A well educated brain twitches each time it perceives the "catch on fire" concoction. Something can "catch fire" and "be on fire".
The car companies will switch to renting the batteries, like Renault for example does it with the Twizy car.
Somebody crashed my Smart car (2. car in the family) and I wanted to buy a Twizy, but 50€ a month is too much, with my Smart I put gas for 25€ in it and I drive for 5-6 weeks, so this would cost me more than double the amount. So I bought another Smart.
I wait for the day that they claim that building your own battery will violate their 'copyright'.
This seems to get more common, I just read an article about the new Alexa movie camera (The Revenant f. ex) which can't be bought as well, the studios have to rent it for 2500€ a day. (It's a German company)
The attempt at energy independence ... jobs lost because they cannot compete ... can tell capitalism to fuck off and die ...
I think you're confusing some goals. Energy independence isn't very capitalistic. The market pricing out a subset of competitors IS very capitalistic.
That doesn't mean I think any of that is "right", but that's a different matter. We, the people, have allowed this to happen.
I still don't see it happening that fast. Sales have slowed and cheap oil brings a renewed interest in big vehicles. At least in America, and many countries who may benefit from EV don't have the infrastructure to support it. Sorry, you can't just build them and buyers will come.
why not ? they're cool.
You know we have a libertarian candidate to vote for, right?
The longer that people pretend that elections are a choice between "two people" despite numerous candidates, the longer those two people's parties will have a stranglehold on our politics.
The Saudis won today sure but oil is a long term thing and the price of it ever creeps up above $50 a barrel means that those shale reserves can be reopened. Saudi doomed itself to long term failure its oil reserves won't last another 30 years as long as Saudi is the dominant producer. Once those reserves run dry they have nothing else to fall back on. Where as the USA us lots of things to fall back on and once the price goes up we have reserves.
Same goes for all sorts of rare earth metals. We use things break them and toss them in land fills when the price gets right we will extract those again and make a killing.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Class D fire extinguishers are holy shit toxic and very expensive.
Saudi Arabia thus has complete control about the oil price because they can sell at prices that would bankrupt everyone else and still make a profit. And Saudi Arabia waited long enough for enough companies to invest much money into shale oil and only then lowered the oil price to drive them out of competition when much of the money was burnt, but not much revenue yet generated. Investors for the next future will be very wary to ever invest in alternative oil sources again.
I sold something on Craigslist.com to a guy in the next town, about 15 minutes away via highway. He said that he would pick the item up right away, but he had to charge his car first (a Leaf) which would take an hour or so. That sounded comically backwards to me.
You do know that a Prius doesn't use lithium batteries, don't you?
Why not? Winters can be a bit nippy up here in Vermont and the prospect of freezing my derierre off for hours while I nurse the battery (which produces no waste heat and doesn't work so well in really cold weather anyway) on my occasional visits to civilization doesn't appeal. Might consider a hybrid when and if my 17 year old Camry dies.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Class D fire extinguishers are holy shit toxic and very expensive.
So are standard hydrocarbon extinguishing foams. The ones that work anyway. The synthetic shit can't handle any level of alcohol including the 10% ethanol in your fuel tank.
I don't know what gives here.
The folks on (the late) Oil Drum were assuring me that the Saudi's were running out of oil?
They're relatively easy to put out - just need to throw foam at it.
I see you've never put out a car fire before. The wonderful thing about car fires is that a car is a very three dimensional object. Foam's use case is to smother a fire and prevent oxygen which makes a car pretty much the worst case scenario for a foam extinguisher. Also given the length of time and amount of foam a typical extinguisher can expel you're left with only one choice in a fully engulfed car fire scenario: Call the fire brigade and have them bring foam injecting branches and them cover the car in a metric shitton of foam. Real bonus points if the mag wheels catch fire in the process.
The idea that a lithium battery with it's VERY limited amount of fuel is harder to put out than the petrol car fire is absurd. Lithium actually has the nice benefit that by the time the fire department shows up they can just put water on it. It burns very bloody quickly and while a litre of fuel in a softdrink bottle can burn for a good hour a lithium battery pack the same size will vapourise itself within a minute or two.
Oh and lithium can be put out with Class-D, but it has the same problem in a car as foam does. It doesn't work very well on 3D surfaces, and doesn't provide any cooling so fires will re-ignite themselves after you put them out when they come in contact with air again.
It's not that the Saudi Oil would be cheap because the infrastructure is already in place. It's because you don't need much infrastructure at all to get it. The cost to get one barrel of crude ready for shipping in Saudi Arabia is about $3. Texan oil from oil wells cost about $16, shale oil and oil from oil sands about $60.
Saudi Arabia thus has complete control about the oil price because they can sell at prices that would bankrupt everyone else and still make a profit. And Saudi Arabia waited long enough for enough companies to invest much money into shale oil and only then lowered the oil price to drive them out of competition when much of the money was burnt, but not much revenue yet generated. Investors for the next future will be very wary to ever invest in alternative oil sources again.
Indeed! Good analysis. I think on this every time I still see those EnergyTomorrow.org spots talking up how we are soon going to be energy independent, (hooray!).
The game was well played by the Saudis. Kudos to them.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
In the US, seventeen gasoline cars catch fire every hour, amounting to 150000 cars catching fire per year. Here comes the new wave of electric car trolls.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I've followed EV development with interest, but the larger ecosystem needs to be sorted out. We need to generate electricity to charge EVs, and we need to distribute it where it's needed. Here in British Columbia we generate almost all of our electricity with hydroelectric dams, so I'm not worried about the carbon footprint.
I'd love to drive an electric car myself, and a Nissan Leaf would cover 98% of my driving. But I live in an apartment building, there are no EV facilities, and in the absence of incentives or legal requirements, the owners aren't interested in changing that.
...laura
The Saudi's haven't "won". They've just prolonged the inevitable. Which is really good for stability in the middle east in the short term. In the long term 70% of our oil is used for transportation. If we didn't use oil for transportation we could easily produce the requisite amount of oil domestically. At the peak of the shale boom we produced nine million barrels per day. The US daily consumption is 23 million barrels.
One of the "beats" at the Oil Drum was that of (at the time) 85 million barrels per day world oil production, 10 million came from Saudi, and fully half of that or 5 million barrels per day was from a single province called Ghawar.
It was said that the Saudis used to be able to drive down the price of oil at will by "turning up the spigot", but their prized oil field was "drying up" because they were water flooding it to maintain production. Although the Saudis "hold their cards close to the vest", it was said that the "water cut" -- the amount of water they had to separate from the oil they recovered on account of the water flooding to wring more oil production -- was increasing to alarming levels.
One of the main themes of the Oil Drum web site was that oil wasn't just about "reserves" or how much you had in the ground, it was also about how fast you could produce it, and also how fast you could produce it without wrecking the reservoir and leaving the remaining oil unrecoverable.
Limit to how far (the Saudis) can push (a price war)? The Oil Drum people were arguing that they didn't have the production capacity anymore to do what they are doing right now.
I'm a libertarian, who will most likely vote for Trump
Good on you sir! He looks like the best choice we're gonna have.
Just had to say that.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
It took well over a decade of work before they were viable in the first place. It will take less next time but it will still take years. It's not turning on a switch, it's assembling a group of people and equipment after securing the funds to do the task. Getting the funds is going to be difficult due to the previous failure.
I keep hearing that a lot but have not seen it in the last three decades. Even relatively trivial operations such as extracting from a coal fired power stations' ash dam do not seem to be happening.
It's not confusion it's why the shale companies got some government help in the early stages. While some may scream "corporate welfare" it was a manifestation of a policy to not be so much at the mercy of the actions of other nations.
It's often not expressed so plainly because Carter did so and lost in a landslide.