And why it won’t matter when they do…
Guest mockery by David Middleton
CEO of world’s largest oil company says it will be ‘decades’ before electric cars become real threat
- It will be decades before electric vehicles make up a significant percentage of the global car fleet, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said.
- Electric cars accounted for about 0.2 percent of all the light-duty vehicles on the road in 2016.
- Crude oil demand will remain robust in the shipping, aviation and petrochemicals business even as electric cars erode demand, Nasser said.
Published 11:12 AM ET Tue, 24 Oct 2017 Updated 11:45 AM ET Tue, 24 Oct 2017CNBC.com
Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser, who runs the world’s largest oil company, is taking the rise of electric vehicles in stride.
Growing adoption of electric vehicles stands to put a big dent in oil demand in the coming years. Barclays recently forecast that cleaner-burning cars could wipe out crude consumption nearly equal to annual output from Iran, OPEC’s third-biggest oil producer, by 2025.
But while electric vehicle manufacturers are making “good progress,” battery and hybrid cars still account for just a fraction of the overall market, Nasser told CNBC in an exclusive interview. They won’t account for a significant part of the global fleet for years to come, he said.
“Electric vehicles will continue to grow. They will take good market share, but it will be decades before they shoulder a significant percentage of the energy mix.”
The number of electric vehicles grew to just more than 2 million in 2016, up nearly 60 percent from the previous year, according to the International Energy Agency. They now make up about 0.2 percent of all cars on the road — a “very small percentage,” in Nasser’s view.
Nasser also points out that hybrid-electric vehicles with gas engines make up a big chunk of the total. There were about 805,000 plug-in hybrid electric cars in the world in 2016, according to IEA. That’s 40 percent of all electric vehicles.
By 2030, IEA projects the electric fleet could grow to 160 million, he noted. By that time, there will be 2 billion vehicles overall, Nasser estimates.
[…]
60% growth 2015-2016 –> 0.2% “of all cars on the road.”
160,000,000 / 2,000,000,000 = 8.0% “of all cars on the road.”
Will that save us from Gorebal Warming? Apparently not…
The Number of Electric Cars on the World’s Roads Doubled Last Year
To 2 million.
The number of electric vehicles on roads worldwide rose to a record high of 2 million last year, but has a long way to go to reach levels needed to help limit an increase in global temperatures, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday.
In 2015, the number of electric cars, including battery-electric, plug-in hybrid electric and fuel cell electric passenger light-duty vehicles, was 1 million, the IEA said in a report.
Even though that doubled last year, the global electric car stock is only 0.2% of the total number of passenger light-duty vehicles in circulation.
“They have a long way to go before reaching numbers capable of making a significant contribution to greenhouse gas emission reduction targets,” the IEA said.
“In order to limit temperature increases to below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, the number of electric cars will need to reach 600 million by 2040,” it added.
[…]
- EV = Electric Vehicles
- PEV = Plugin Electric Vehicles
- HEV = Hybid Electric Vehicles
- ICE = Internal Combustion Engine
Will 600 million EV’s save us from Gorebal Warming? Not if the total number of vehicles continues to grow at the current rate. By 2040, there will be 2.7 billion vehicles. If 600 million of them will be EV’s, the better part of 2.1 billion will be ICE (1.1 billion more than the current climate-killing total…
“But… but… the world gubmint will save us from Gorebal Warming by banning ICE-powered vehicles! France, the UK, China, Volvo and the Peoples Republic of California have already banned them!”
Sorry, my well-intentioned green friend, but “that dog don’t hunt”…
Why Petrol Powered Cars Aren’t Going Anywhere
By Peter Tertzakian – Oct 19, 2017
Internal combustion engines keep accumulating at a rate of tens of millions per year. When is the earliest date that we could expect to see “peak piston”?
Your intuition may be taxed when I say this, but more electric vehicle sales does not quickly equate to declining piston-fired cars on the world’s roadways.
Banning All Engines
In my last column, I pitched an aggressive de-carbonization scenario for transportation—a simultaneous, global ban on the sale of all new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles by 2040. In other words, I imagined that every country in the world, from Brazil, to Nigeria, to Russia, to China, rapidly accelerates their electric vehicle (EV) sales starting in the early 2020s. And within 25 years each and every country would commit to stop selling spark plug machines.
Even under such heavy-handed government restriction, the global fleet of purely petroleum-powered cars wouldn’t start to decline until 2030 at the earliest. By 2050, it’s quite likely that there would still be the same number of ICE vehicles on the road as today.
[…]
In mature economies like the U.S., the scrappage rate was just over 4.0 percent of the fleet, but it’s been declining over time (see Figure 1). Today, it’s half of what it was in the 1970s and falling. Globally, the trend line is the same, but the rate is lower, at 3.0 percent. Car-owners in less wealthy countries can’t afford to swap their cars out, so they tend to keep their wheels for longer.
Yes, EVs are coming in, but new ICE cars are still accumulating by tens of millions per year, and are being driven for longer.
[…]
Even under an aggressive EV adoption scenario, our second figure shows that peak piston isn’t likely to occur before 2030. That’s because of the residual sales momentum and retention of petroleum power vehicles. By 2050, 60 percent of the global fleet of personal vehicles could be composed of EVs, but the number of ICE vehicles remaining on the roads would not likely to be much less than today.
Figure 1 from “Why Petrol Powered Cars Aren’t Going Anywhere”
Figure 2 from “Why Petrol Powered Cars Aren’t Going Anywhere”
But… but… but… Tony Stark Elon Musk will save us from Hydra Gorebal Warming by building 500,000 Iron Legionnaires Tesla Model 3 vehicles per year!!! He promised us!!!
Sorry, my Tesla cultist green friend, but there’s a cobalt cliff waiting for the Tesla Model 3… assuming Tesla can ever figure out how to weld steel. (How did he ever make that Iron Man suit, if he can’t weld steel?)…
The Cobalt Cliff Will Cap Tesla’s Model 3 Production Capacity At 250,000 Units Per Year
Oct.23.17 | About: Tesla Motors (TSLA)
John Petersen
Long-term horizon, nano-cap, micro-cap, alternative energySummary
- From a geopolitical perspective, there are two classes of cobalt supplies; metal refined in China that’s unavailable to non-Chinese customers and metal refined outside China that’s available to anyone.
- From an economic perspective, there are two classes of cobalt users – industrial users that represent half of global demand and battery manufacturers that scarf the leftovers.
- From a battery manufacturing perspective, there are two end-use segments – high-value consumer products and low-value transportation and stationary storage products.
- When one separates cobalt refined in China from cobalt refined elsewhere and further separates non-Chinese cobalt based on end use, it becomes clear there’s almost no cobalt for non-Chinese automakers.
- Tesla has no cobalt supply chain of its own and Panasonic’s supply chain can’t support the production of more than 250,000 Model 3s per year.
Introduction
Tesla (TSLA) has a problem that may be a company killer. Elon Musk has promised stakeholders a Model 3 run rate of 500,000 cars per year by the end of 2018, but Panasonic’s (OTCPK:PCRFF) cathode powder supply chain can’t support more than half of that volume. More importantly, expansion of Panasonic’s supply chain would be a Herculean task because its cathode powder supplier, Sumitomo Metal Mining (OTCPK:SMMYY), already is using 100% of its cobalt production to satisfy Panasonic’s cathode powder requirements.
While I would consider a sustained run rate of 250,000 Model 3s per year a major accomplishment, I don’t think a market that expects multiples of that production volume next year would share my admiration. Some of my readers will delight in observing that Tesla has a long history of ambitious promises backed by small and late deliveries, but that kind of criticism mutes the ugly reality that a 250,000 car per year run rate on the Model 3 won’t be enough to stem the tide of red ink or put Tesla in a position to service its debts.
We all know what happens when companies are chronically incapable of making a buck without the kind financial gimmickry that pervades Tesla’s financial reporting.
[…]
As usual, any and all sarcasm was purely intentional.
via Watts Up With That?
October 26, 2017 at 07:11AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 