When will oil demand start declining due to EVs?

[Capt. Lauren Dowsett + 8]

Electric Cars?? WHY? What the hell powers the generator that supplies the electric to the "plug"?????????? Crude oil will be around for perhaps 200 years!!  Get used to it tree-huggers!!  The combustion engine is very, very efficient!!  In a few more years with technology growing in leaps & bounds the EV car won't even compete!!

Now natural gas as a fueler!!  It burns almost pure clean!!  Very little wear on the engine & the oil almost lasts forever!!

Get real tree-huggers you depend on "fuels" for 99% of your living!!!

Capt. Lauren Dowsett

[PeterfromCalgary + 60]

On 6/14/2018 at 1:25 PM, GCMS Guy said:

 

Good point!   I limited my post to costs which are easy to quantify but EV buyers will face a lot of other hidden costs down the road.

Replacing batteries is probably going to be very expensive.   Batteries needing replacement shortly after the warranty expires is definitely a strong probability which buyers should consider but which I was unable to find figures for.  

Furthermore, not only will government subsides probably end (depending on who is elected in the future) but governments will also have to find a way to make up for lost gasoline tax revenue and pay for the additional wear on roads due to heavy batteries making EVs harder on the roads.  Additional weight will also increase the cost of maintaining an EVs suspension.   How these factors play out is hard to estimate but smart buyers who consider these unknown costs are even more likely to stick to gasoline vehicles.

Edited June 16, 2018 by PeterfromCalgary

[BillKidd + 139]

Someone above mentioned the technology of a flywheel in a vacuum being an alternative to batteries. Here is an article, including a video that shows how it works...

 

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/154405-volvo-hybrid-drive-60000-rpm-flywheel-25-boost-to-mpg

[John N Denver + 25]

On 6/15/2018 at 4:57 PM, Capt. Lauren Dowsett said:

Electric Cars?? WHY? What the hell powers the generator that supplies the electric to the "plug"?????????? Crude oil will be around for perhaps 200 years!!  Get used to it tree-huggers!!  The combustion engine is very, very efficient!!  In a few more years with technology growing in leaps & bounds the EV car won't even compete!!

Now natural gas as a fueler!!  It burns almost pure clean!!  Very little wear on the engine & the oil almost lasts forever!!

Get real tree-huggers you depend on "fuels" for 99% of your living!!!

Capt. Lauren Dowsett

 

If you think "The combustion engine is very, very efficient!!" then you don't know anything.  Current combustion engine efficiency is in the 20% range.  Compare that to electric engines which are around 90% efficient and are ACTUALLY very, very efficient.

My electric car is powered by the sun.

NREL has a map of how efficient a gas car would have to be to as efficient as an electric car.  Charging an electric car on  worst grid in the U.S. is still equivalent to getting 35 mpg.  The best grid is equivalent to getting over 200 mpg.

You say "tree-hugger" like it is an insult.  Don't you like trees?  I would guess you probably see dozens a day all helping to clean up your dirty air from your pollution transportation.

In 15-20 years you won't be able buy a new car with a gas burning engine.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

On 6/16/2018 at 11:34 AM, BillKidd said:

Someone above mentioned the technology of a flywheel in a vacuum being an alternative to batteries. Here is an article, including a video that shows how it works...

 

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/154405-volvo-hybrid-drive-60000-rpm-flywheel-25-boost-to-mpg

That is great stuff!  And to think that I wrote this in a Student paper decades ago in college.  

However, what Volvo is doing is known as a "hybrid transmission."  The stored energy is inside the transmission itself, the package then dropped into the drivetrain between the engine and the wheels.  That concept was first done with transit buses, which are constantly starting up under heavy loads. The design will not power the auto itself for long distances between charges, in that it has no internal wiring to convert that rotor into an electric motor-generator. If you do that (embed copper wires inside that carbon-fiber flywheel), set it outside the transmission and couple the output to electric motors at the wheels, then the flywheel becomes a stand-alone replacement for that big battery pack. 

The energy stored inside a flywheel is a function of a linear relationship to the mass, and to the square of the speed of rotation.  Thus the design criteria are to make the flywheel lighter and faster.  The faster it turns the more energy you pack in there, squared, so you get lots and lots of energy storage.  You need the vacuum for two reasons:  (1) to allow the machine to run way up in rpm speeds, up to about 100,000 rpm, where it would break the sound barrier (and disintegrate) if not in a vacuum;  and (2) to remove the friction element of the air it would be spinning through, which would create vast drag and dissipate the energy.  If such a flywheel is in a vacuum, then it would retain the stored energy for months, so you can leave your car at the airport and have plenty of power left to get home after that business trip to central Africa for three months.  Always nice.

Even with this simple Volvo package, you get a 25% better use of fuel.  Notice how sharp improvements in technology, once they get widely adopted, will have a dramatic effect on liquid fuels demands.  Product substitution remains the nightmare of the oil-producing countries.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

On 6/16/2018 at 8:40 AM, PeterfromCalgary said:

Good point!   I limited my post to costs which are easy to quantify but EV buyers will face a lot of other hidden costs down the road.

Replacing batteries is probably going to be very expensive.   Batteries needing replacement shortly after the warranty expires is definitely a strong probability which buyers should consider but which I was unable to find figures for.  

Furthermore, not only will government subsides probably end (depending on who is elected in the future) but governments will also have to find a way to make up for lost gasoline tax revenue and pay for the additional wear on roads due to heavy batteries making EVs harder on the roads.  Additional weight will also increase the cost of maintaining an EVs suspension.   How these factors play out is hard to estimate but smart buyers who consider these unknown costs are even more likely to stick to gasoline vehicles.

Figure ten thousand bucks.  Less for a gasoline/diesel hybrid drive, of course. 

If you want to get those costs down, and would be really happy with a stand-by generator for your home, then you build a small gen-set powered by a small 3-cylinder diesel.  The rig is mounted on a platform that direct-couples into the bottom frame of your car, much like pushing a fork into a potato.  You attach the frame sections with pins and D-ring clips.  Now you run a power output cord from the gen-set into your auto battery system.  When you go on some longer trip, you have this attached diesel gen-set in back giving you extra juice; figure on a 34-hp motor to keep things charged.  You leave the gen-set running constantly at a set rpm to keep pumping in the current, and the variations in current demands are met with feed-in from the battery pack.

When you are in the home turf, you unplug the add-on trailer (it has two wheels to support it and keep the load off the rear springs, but it does not swivel like an ordinary utility trailer, it is direct-coupled) and run around with your limited-range EV.  since some 90% of trips are less than 25 miles, that should work fine.  And you have that gen-set to power the house just in case the grid is Off.  Cheers!

[Outlaw Jackie + 78]

EVs are a very small % of US market.  India and China, where the larger increase in market share will occur, still produce most of their electricity with coal.  Let's look at the number in 2025. 

[GeoSciGuy + 74]

Never. 

Oil demand will never decline.  (That is, unless the global population gets dramatically reduced.)  

Oil has so many more applications than just gasoline and diesel: Plastics, fabrics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, the list goes on.  

If only looking at the fuel aspect, oil demand will still never decline.  Global jet fuel demand growth will consistently be larger than any drop in gasoline and diesel demand.  

Battery metals will have to be mined and hauled by large excavators and trucks, refined, transported to battery factories, then transported to car manufacturing facilities before being transported to a customer.  

Peak Oil Demand is a fantasy of the left, just like Peak Oil was in previous years.  

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

Not anytime soon, since most of the countries that have people with wages to afford an EV are also filled with pseudo-enviromentalist that have fetishes with solar panels and windmills and think that nuclear power is the devil, well there's going to be more and more demand for Oil and Gas.

Solar panels are simply the most expensive way to generate electricity, and windmills if you wan't to use them properly they need to be big, and need pumped storage support, and even in that i doubt it can power more than 20% of a country energy needs, (not only electricity needs) the only renewable energy sources that are cheap are Hydropower, Geothermal, and maybe Tidal, but not every country has the geography and populations of Nepal, USA, Russia, Norway, Canada to  use a 100% electrical grid

Africa will have in the future 4.5 or 5 billion people, add that to the atleast 3 or more billion people in asia that need a lot of oil to make their countries work and have a good quality of life, and the renewable reliable sources are just not enough to give 3000 to 8000W of power to every person.