The Tony Seba report

[Joseph Aaron + 2]

On 6/24/2018 at 7:51 AM, Jan van Eck said:

Bill, don't place too much credence on the Tony Seba's of the world.  Seba (and others) actually think that in ten years over 95% of car owners will have abandoned or scrapped their private autos, never to own one again.  That mindset might work for him; it is emphatically not the mindset of the overwhelming vast majority of Americans.  

Does anyone seriously think that the farmer in Iowa is about to abandon his pick-up?  How about the young women out in Wyoming, the  ones in knee-high boots and Levis and obligatory Stetson rolling up to the dance hall on Friday night complete with that gun rack across the back window?  Tall, lean, lanky, unbelievably fit,  and totally self-assured, intent on picking up men, you think they are going to roll with some "autonomous vehicle"?  No chance. 

Tonhy Seba is what Americans call a "metrosexual,"  someone born male but commanding no male personal presence.  He turns everything into some slave to the electric machine.  The possibility of any of this actually happening is precisely zero.

Jan, ten years is a little tight. That said, 40% of the cost of an EV is the battery. The price of the battery is falling 8-10% a year. In 5 years all EVs will go over 300 miles and will cost less than an internal combustion engine. As Seba says, a ICE has 2000 moving parts and an EV has 20. EVs don't break down. Gas costs 4X what it costs to charge a battery. All this says is no one will buy a used ICE in 10 years. They will have EVs that cost much, much less. In rural areas ICE will prevail.   

[Refman + 207]

2 hours ago, Joseph Aaron said:

Jan, ten years is a little tight. That said, 40% of the cost of an EV is the battery. The price of the battery is falling 8-10% a year. In 5 years all EVs will go over 300 miles and will cost less than an internal combustion engine. As Seba says, a ICE has 2000 moving parts and an EV has 20. EVs don't break down. Gas costs 4X what it costs to charge a battery. All this says is no one will buy a used ICE in 10 years. They will have EVs that cost much, much less. In rural areas ICE will prevail.   

Hmm... let's run some of those numbers. Take a Tesla Model 3 which Elon claims will sell for $35,000 in it's lowest trim. (Yes I know it's not yet available - but this is hypothetical)

$35,000 of which 40% is battery cost, so the battery is $14,000. After 5 years of battery costs falling 10% per year (I was generous and used your higher figure) you end up with a battery cost of $8,250. So the battery has decreased in price $5,750, somehow I don't see a reduction in price of $5,750 making the gasoline car obsolete. It doesn't even offset the $7,500 tax credit that is now available for EV's

You need to stop taking everything Seba says as gospel, and apply some critical thinking to what he claims.

Additionally if EV's do succeed as much as Seba thinks, then price of gas will also go way down, and so will used gas car prices. In other words buying a used gas car and running it will become a lot cheaper.

 

One final thing - I like EV's and hope to own one in less than 5 years, but I think Tony Seba is borderline delusional in his projections of the future.

 

[BillKidd + 139]

We can't yet know if Seba will be right, but he does not say that in ten years 95% of ICE owners will have abandoned them. He says that 60% of them will. That 40% of remaining cars will be ICE. But that 95% of all miles driven will be by EV. Mainly due to TaaS (transport as a service) electric vehicles.

Has everyone watched/read his entire presentation? It's not just adoption of EVs. The whole thing centers around a CONVERGENCE of several technologies causing this to happen. He gives historical examples of this. This requires a change in thinking to envision everything coming together and causing a tsunami of change... the exponential portion of the S-curve can occur really quickly. He pretty much shows that a ten year paradigm shift has occurred more than once in the past. At the pace of technological change these days (due to computers), it's probably easier for me to grasp it in 2018 than someone riding a horse in 1900. Things do change awfully fast these days.

It will certainly be interesting to look back in 2030 and see what went down! Twelve years and counting.

[Bharath + 12]

hahaaa.. finally people started talking about tony seba's report. I am the first one to put out the tony seba's report in these forums.

 

[Refman + 207]

1 hour ago, BillKidd said:

Has everyone watched/read his entire presentation? It's not just adoption of EVs. The whole thing centers around a CONVERGENCE of several technologies causing this to happen.

The convergence of several technologies is also the weak point in his argument, If any one part doesn't happen then the results are dramatically lower. 

I believe EV's will be popular, but I'm deeply skeptical about TaaS outside of major cities and don't think it will catch on nearly as much as Seba believes.

[wa601 + 18]

On 6/25/2018 at 4:11 PM, Guillaume Albasini said:

Another point that you have to take into consideration is the advent of Power to Gas.

 

Please calculate the total efficiency for this kind of energy storage:

total efficiency = efficiency electrolyser × efficiency methanation x efficiency compression x efficiency CC power plant

Nice idea but too complicated.