Featured Fewer autos, more miles, and more oil 2040

the great thing about predicting the distant future is that you're retired before anyone catches on.

 

i would, but who would read them?

 

When I was a child, fusion energy was predicted to be 20 years away.
When I was in college, fusion energy was predicted to be 20 years away.
Now I'm of retirement age and fusion energy is predicted to be 20 years away.

Moral, a prediction of twenty years is saying it may never happen.

JeffD

ps: Hydrogen fueled cars are twenty years away.

 

i was just about to type h______ when i saw your ps.

 

Well we do have 2 trends that seem true. Auto sales deep into the future will be lower and because of rising population vmt will be higher. A sales decline is likely because of the cost and reliability of new cars and lack of parking. If you summon a self driving ride share, you don't need a taxi, or taxi driver, but the car may actually travel further than a personal one as it needs to get to you from the last person, and from you to the next person.

I don't think the predictions on future vehicles is that far off either. It is certainly better than the lutz crazy talk of no more engines.

They are predicting 19% BEV or other non oil based vehicle in 2040, with a lot of engines in phevs and hybrids. That's 23 years from now. Think of it this way. Even at $100/kwh for a battery pack, a 300 mile bev likely needs 80 kwh, or $8000 worth of pack. Instead if you make a small engine for a range extender (I'm thinking 1.2L 3 cylinder turbo charged (or supercharged, or most likely electrically turbo/super charged) by then will probably efficiently put out 110 hp). If you make it a 100 mile electric phev, that is probably $2700 worth of batteries and $5000 worth of engine and pollution control, that can quickly refuel at all the gas stations. Of course no one knows real costs out in 2040, but there is likely a phev mix that makes more sense than a long range bev.

My crititique would not be against 81% of cars in 2040 having engines with a mix hybrids, phevs, and some long distance or inexpensive cars not having big batteries at all. Mazda's skyactiv-x spark controlled compression ignition (strange name) seems, at least from the automotive press driving prototypes, to be another step to improving the old gasoline/alcohol engine. I simply think pumping oil from the ground in 2040 will be expensive enough that other liquid fuels like methanol may be powering a significant part of the fleet making 2040 past peak oil demand. Non-transportation needs probably means lubrication, plastics, and power generation. I would think if oil is expensive enough these will shift to other things.

 

Just to add - Electric cars could cut oil demand roughly equal to Iran's output
This has electric vehicles growing to 30% in 2040, and oil demand dropping 9 million barrels a day to 88 million barrels a day versus IHS Markit's estimate of growing to 115 million barrels a day. Now this 30% can't be compared to the 19% because one includes phevs and fcv and the other doesn't - the IHS Markit chart on electric vehicles likely including PHEVs and fcv shows about 30% so they are in agreement. The gasoline and oil chart from IHS Markit chart, it seems that it has some kind of bizarre problem. It has diesel consumption falling dramatically and gasoline plus diesel lower than today. The chart shows a significant drop for light vehicle consumption of oil, I have severe doubts that if this happens as in the charts, other oil usage would push consumption so high.

Of course both reports are bad news if you think ghg production from transportation will drop fast. Here in the Barclays projections ghg from oil used in transportation only drops 9%, and this is partially offset from other fuels power plug-ins.