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All Fossil-Fuel Vehicles Will Vanish In 8 Years, Says Stanford Study (financialpost.com)
Stanford University economist Tony Seba forecasts in his new report that petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will no longer be sold anywhere in the world within the next eight years. As a result, the transportation market will transition and switch entirely to electrification, "leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century," reports Financial Post. From the report: Seba's premise is that people will stop driving altogether. They will switch en masse to self-drive electric vehicles (EVs) that are ten times cheaper to run than fossil-based cars, with a near-zero marginal cost of fuel and an expected lifespan of 1 million miles. Only nostalgics will cling to the old habit of car ownership. The rest will adapt to vehicles on demand. It will become harder to find a petrol station, spares, or anybody to fix the 2,000 moving parts that bedevil the internal combustion engine. Dealers will disappear by 2024. Cities will ban human drivers once the data confirms how dangerous they can be behind a wheel. This will spread to suburbs, and then beyond. There will be a "mass stranding of existing vehicles." The value of second-hard cars will plunge. You will have to pay to dispose of your old vehicle. It is a twin "death spiral" for big oil and big autos, with ugly implications for some big companies on the London Stock Exchange unless they adapt in time. The long-term price of crude will fall to $25 a barrel. Most forms of shale and deep-water drilling will no longer be viable. Assets will be stranded. Scotland will forfeit any North Sea bonanza. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Venezuela will be in trouble.
"Only nostalgics will cling to the old habit of car ownership."
But In Europe, the average age of new car buyers is already over 50, has been climbing for years.
Young people are no longer fascinated by the iron cages stuck in traffic.
Not arguing about the time frame - seems optimistic to me - but:
Many of these vehicles will be able to adequately charge at home, at night, when the grid is considerably unloaded as compared to the day - it's a perfectly reasonable scenario. Most of us rest at night. Most of those vehicles won't be going on long trips on any given day, and so most of them won't even need that much of a charge. You'll see charging stations where you're used to seeing parking meters in cities and towns, too.
The idea that there's insufficient infrastructure to handle a fleet composed of mostly electric vehicles is almost entirely wrong. And for the high-charge, long-haul requirements, those waystations can be built the same way: pick up energy at night, hand it out 24/7. Most of this is just engineering.
The real problem right now is batteries, or energy storage in the car. Expensive, short-lived, toxic, heavy, and simply not enough of them. When and if that's solved, EVs will come into their own. Not before. Right now they are a wealthy person's toy. 30 grand for what amounts to a VW bug, only with less Hitler.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I see a lot of people confidently asserting opinions here without actually giving arguments refuting much of anything in the source article. So let's do some basic cost calculations. Let's say that your electric car has a capacity of 85kWh. That capacity with the very heavy Tesla Model S will give you an approximate EPA range of 426km (265 miles). If your electricity cost was $0.15/kWh, that means the cost to charge your car fully from empty would be $0.15/kWh x 85kWh = $12.75. Since you would seldom fully empty your car battery fully, you would typically charge less than this, and it is likely the EPA range does not bring the battery to full empty. Even so, I will assume the price of driving the range of 426km would still be $12.75 (charged from the charger in your garage...fully charged when you get up). This gives an electric cost of $12.75/426km = $0.0299/km.
Now let us consider a gasoline car. I'll assume an optimistic 10L/100km. That would mean that driving 426km would use 426/100 x 10 = 42.6L of gasoline. Gasoline costs $1.32/L where I live, but let's give it a cheaper price of $1.11/L. This would give a cost for driving 426km of 42.6L x $1.11/L = $47.29. The cost per km would be $47.29/426km = $0.111/km. In other words gasoline costs $0.111/$0.0299 = 3.7 x more or 370% more than electric per km! Electric cars are simpler. The battery technology is constantly improving. There are Tesla electric cars that have driven 200000 miles with no battery replacement (the car linked to here did have its battery replaced at 200000 miles, but it actually had most of its range, and it is likely Tesla wanted to examine the battery). Recent improvements in battery technology promise batteries that will last the life of the car. The announcement referred to here was in reference to an increased voltage battery chemistry that showed 92% capacity remaining after 1200 charge cycles. If your car has a range of 230 miles per charge cycle, than that would allow the car 230 miles x 1200 = 276000 miles and still have 92% battery capacity! For most of us, that would be longer than the lifetime of a fossil fuel car.
The cost of the cells is already dropping precipitously. The trend shown over the last few years is going to continue. There is no such trend in gasoline cars. Costs are for fossil fuel cars are going up. Electric cars will appear at lower and lower points in the market, first in the used market, and later in the new car market. In the end, electric cars will be the only economical choice. It is simple physics and economics. You can deny it all you want, but in the end, physics will win. Steam won over horse transportation because it was cheaper and better. Gasoline won over steam power because it was cheaper and better. Electric will win over gasoline because it is cheaper and better.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Journalism is dead.
BEGIN RANT; What is it with you people and declaring things dead? BSD has been dying for decades and you still haven't got the clue. God has been dead for a freaking century. Right now “X is dead” should be read as “X has suffered a bit, maybe”.END RANT;
It's pretty much now all speculation, opinion via "expert" talking heads, rumor-mongering, agenda-advancing, "awareness-raising", etc.
Did you snowflakes grew up in a loving, trusting households where everyone was perfectly honest and really well informed about all the topics they talked about? I'm sorry to inform you, but people have made shit up for quite a while. The Financial Post article doesn't even claim that the author is right, just reports on what the author says, and it is clearly a speculation. If you want an expert panel discussion, there are plenty of those. If you find that even those are speculative, I'm sorry, but all discussions about future are speculations.