Electric Vehicles Will Decimate Oil
The electric vehicle revolution is speeding up. Year over year, electric vehicles sales are up 45% and the Tesla Model 3 hasn't even gotten into the fray yet. If electric vehicles continue as these rapid growth rates, they represent a 10% market share before 2025.
But what exactly will that mean for oil?
Well, it's already not good. Vehicles constitute the single largest consumer of oil, 45% of all oil demand. A serious blow to that sector could mean disaster for oil markets worldwide. We're already seeing the beginning of this in some areas.
China's oil demand growth has slowed to a 3 year low. While this may seem insignificant, China's economy is still growing rapidly and their growth for oil demand is starting to trail behind. This has been linked to the now 1.3% market share electric vehicles have in China. This trend is set to accelerate worldwide.
Peak Oil Before 2030?
Previously unthinkable, we are now talking about oil demand peaking before the year 2030. This isn't some nutjob conspiracy either: both Shell and Statoil (two of the largest oil companies in the world) have repeatedly stated they believe oil may peak in the 2020's. If so, this would wreak havoc on a previously unstoppable global industry.
Even a 5% market share for EV's would mean an impact similar to what we saw in 2014 on oil. That could mean oil prices collapsing to new lows.
The oil demand isn't down because of electric vehicles, it is down because of a global depression.
Gasoline is a waste product from converting crude oil into the chemicals that run our world.
The thing limiting electric vehicles is batteries. If someone came up with a battery that is twice as good, every vehicle would be electric tomorrow.
Whether you use oil in an internal combustion engine, or in an electric plant doesn't really make much difference.
And, electric cars are really only good for urban environments.
The urban environment is going away. People are moving out to the country, where you need a diesel truck, or they are moving to downtown areas where you can walk/bike everywhere.
I agree. There's a lot of misinformation out there, on both sides about oil. Honestly, if everyone took just 30 minutes on google to research it, I think we'd be in a much better place in our discussion of what's best for the environment, and what's best to support civilization as a whole. Most people don't understand that something like 80% (it's been a while since I read about this, it could be higher) of everything they interact with in their daily lives is made using some form of refined crude (think for a second of how many things you use daily that are made with some form of plastic).
The electricity has to come from somewhere. If it's not created using oil (diesel generators) it's built by things that do.
Yes, but take a look at oil consumption. It would have took two minutes of Googling to figure this out.
Road vehicles are 45%. All petrochemicals constitute just 13%, which is plastics. Diesel generators constitute like 0.3% of worldwide electricity. The oil replaced from vehicles in power plants built using oil products is minuscule. For every barrel lost in road vehicles, maybe 1% will be replaced on the other end. It's non-existent.
I did spend two minutes, and found five other graphs with different breakdowns of the usage %s. The only thing they agreed on was the 45% number for road use. I'm not going to argue that EVs haven't had an impact, but I don't think it's at the level you're suggesting. The last study I saw with a full report was dated 2010. EVs were in their infancy then, being in prototype and test stages at that point. All the manufacturers were trying to figure out if it was a viable strategy or not. It wasn't until Elon Musk came along with Tesla that we started to see people really begin to take EVs seriously.
It will be interesting to see how much of an impact they've had as their production and adoption has ramped up over the last seven years (with probably only the last five being meaningful).
I was agreeing with the previous poster that EVs aren't the only (and most likely not the most impactful) reason of the declining demand for crude. The main problem is that there are always a multitude of things impacting something as large scale as a worldwide crude consumption, but we always tend to get hyperfocused on the one thing that we either agree with the most or disagree with the most. That's the part I was talking about when I said there is a lot of misinformation on both sides of the argument.
This is nonsense. Oil demand is partly down because of EV's.
EV's do just fine in rural settings too, I grew up rural. Like 2% of people living rural require a truck (much less a diesel), and we have no reason to believe EV's can't take over those vehicles too.
Living out on a farm or a ranch, you needed a truck.
You need to go fetch a wayward cow? You need a truck.
Need some feed? You need a truck.
Got to get some gravel so that you can make your road so that cars can drive down it? You need a truck.
A car is a luxury item.
The EV's downfall is range and constant high speeds. (driving on highways)
In the city, and EV is great because at minimum you aren't wasting energy while sitting still. But at highway speeds the internal combustion engine is at its best efficiency. At highway speeds the EV is at its worst efficiency.
Yes, but the VAST majority of rural people do not live on ranches or farms. I grew up rural in Alberta. Seriously, like 5% of rural people need a truck. Maybe 25% actually own a truck. Most drive cars. All the situations you described apply only to a tiny minority of people. Go drive out in the country, you'll quickly find 95% of people are doing none of the things you described.
EVs will still take over those jobs easily. EVs are so much cheaper to run and range is getting so long. A Tesla can already run 550 kilometers, and in 3 years we'll have tons of EVs in the 500 to 600 kilometers range. It might mean rural people take longer to adopt them, but its hardly an unstoppable roadblock.
Buy electric!
Wait, what about the power plants that generate the electricity?