The most recent post at Doomberg has a simple thesis: we need to produce a lot more oil. What follows is a simple explanation of something I’ve been pointing out for a long time:
An exercise in simple arithmetic may be sobering to those counting on EV growth to dampen oil demand. The number of vehicles on the road powered by internal combustion engines (ICE) will continue to grow until EVs achieve a near-total share of new vehicles sold. This is because the size of the total ICE passenger vehicle fleet is dictated by flows in and out (i.e., the removal of ICE vehicles from the road). In the first half of 2021, the EVs represented just 2.4% of all new passenger vehicles sold in the US. Modern vehicles have incredible reliability and longevity. New vehicles sold today tend to remain on the road for decades.
Here’s another sobering statistic: it takes about 20 years for a near-complete turnover of the U. S. vehicle fleet which is to say if 100% of the cars sold today were EVs, it would be 2042 before the last car with an internal combustion engine was retired in the normal course of events. And EVs comprised just 2.4% of present new passenger vehicle sales. With that level of adoption how long will it take for a complete transition of the fleet to EVs? Forever.
The US is a net oil importer, and the country with the biggest share of those imports is Russia.
Our net oil imports from Canada are an order of magnitude greater than our net oil imports from Russia.
I was watching some car reviews on Youtube and Alex on Auto’s had a great opening monolog when he reviewed the Prius; starting at 3:32.
https://youtu.be/8Fub8AdysmI?t=212
He states the 300,000 EV’s sold in 2020, the US saved 180 million gallons of gasoline. But if car manufacturers used that same amount of battery in 14 million hybrid cars, the 14 million hybrids could save 39 billions gallons of gasoline (!).
Recommend watching that monolog.
I stand corrected re biggest importer, but still we import oil and diesel from Russia.
https://www.klkntv.com/nebraska-public-power-district-strives-to-achieve-net-zero-carbon-emissions-by-2050/
I find it fascinating that the board voted to “strive”.
But their comment was even more so,
“We believe it will take a variety of actions to reach this goal, from alternative fuels, energy efficiency projects, lower or zero carbon emission generation resources, carbon capture, carbon-offsets, beneficial electrification, energy storage, and other new emerging technologies that may not yet be commercially available or have yet to be developed,†states NPPD President and CEO, Tom Kent.”
This is mostly posturing, but automakers are throwing real money into a large wager on quick turnover to EV’s. Some even committing to the elimination of ICE vehicles within a few years.
Legislation enforcing this enormous switchover using “technologies that may not yet be commercially available or have yet to be developed,â€
would be economically and politically suicidal.
There’s little public support for this “inevitable transformation”,
except by people insulated from the real world where diesel moves millions of tons of coal, rock, grain, fertilizer, gravel, sand, concrete, fuel, food, water, on and on, every hour of every day around the world.
In other news. I stayed at home today and saved 1/2 gallon of gasoline. Extrapolating, if everyone in the world would stay home we could save 12 gazillion gallons a day………. Details at 10.