Prime destined to be doa?

Me either. Since everybody knows Toyota Hybrids as ubiquitous and ultra reliable, the Toyota Prime will be just an extension to the hybrid for many millions of people with nobody else pushing hybrids except as an after thought.


Unsupervised!

 

This is so true and a sad comment on our species.

 

It's probably not what will happen.

Whale oil was displaced in lamps not because the price skyrocketed, but because much cheaper alternatives were available.

Fossil fuel will be displaced as alternatives become cheaper. The cheap alternatives will drive fossil fuel prices down as excess supply builds.

Sure, gas running $4 / gallon in the US is likely to happen at some point in the future, and it will spur some into EVs, but at some point in the future people will still be choosing EVs over conventional vehicles even as gas prices drop to $2 or lower.

 

that is an interesting theory. i don't know the whale oil story, but i expect the middle east to be competitive until very last man. woman and child is dead.
but who knows, maybe they get smart like the tobacco companies and diversify before then.

 

Iran is trying to diversify. Everybody just assumes its to get the bomb, and not also get away from oil.

 

sure, maybe they can sell nukes all over the world.

 

Saudi Arabia brought up the desire to be compensated as the world weaned itself from oil. WFT. Get real.
UAE namely Dubai looks to be the most forward looking oil country, as in progressive to survive in a world without oil.

 

thorium reactors - any country truly wanting nuclear power can go this route, to help meet power needs.

But the reason they don't is because thorium reactors can't generate weapons-grade material. When countries start developing thorium reactors - that's when you know they're truly diversifying for altruistic motives .
.

 

Petroleum will be necessary for the foreseeable future because everything is made from them, from plastics, to pharmaceuticals, to fertilizers and more. Not only that, but anything that flies will require the energy density of petroleum derived oil, and I suspect many large power intensive machines such as farm tractors, mining equipment and any heavy machinery. However, demand will drastically reduce when 99% of heating, electricity, and transportation are transitioned to alternative sources. At least the carbon in petroleum derived products is mostly contained and does not get released as CO2.

At the moment, a barrel of oil is used in the following ways:

Oil producers will suffer as demand falls, but the cheaper alternative power will benefit everyone. Also, the rise of robotics will benefit everyone. I foresee a future of plenty for most people.

 

does carbon fibre come from petroleum?

 

Yes.

 

I was reading this article: http://www.environmentalhistory.org/brilliant/bioenergy/the-whale-oil-myth/Kind of interesting.

I wish the government would maintain a higher floor on the pricing of gasoline with some kind of tax.

 

It seems that just about anything that isn't wood, leather, glass, or metal is derived from petroleum. Of course, lots of petroleum is consumed in mining and working those materials.

 

Or electricity to neighbors, like Canada does to us.

And the US can lead the way. In serious, the current line of development in thorium reactors is in using unrefined thorium. This will greatly reduce the cost, and expand the usable amount of fuel. For a reactor, the thorium needs to be mixed with a neutron donor. There is one we have plenty of sitting in nuclear power plants' spent fuel rods; plutonium. A few years back, I posted a thorium thread in which a company in Norway was developing thorium fuel rods that contained 10% plutonium, which could be mostly drop in for existing uranium reactors.

In the US, spent fuel rods can't recycled, because of the fear a bad man might get some of the more energenic stuff. Some we have the rods just piling up at plant sites.

Much on the heavy mine equipment is electric. Yes, diesel electric, but overhead lines like trains use are already being installed to supplement the large dump trucks energy requirements. Batteries might be able to replace the ICE. Then the monster draglines use so much electricity, onboard generators wouldn't work, and these brutes are wired right into the grid.

Some of the fibers are made from Rayon, but I haven't heard of a renewable source for the resin.

 

lower demand = lower price = more difficulty for competing fuels.

 

That article is itself disingenuous and contradictory. Their hypothesis is that petroleum did not result in people moving away from whale oil, but then they go on to talk about all the options that technology brought about to displace whale oil use, including kerosene.

Their own words:

So, it might not have been an overnight switch to petroleum products that saved the whales, but it surely happened. It's not as cheap to charter a boat, find dwindling whale populations, kill them, and extract the meager amounts of oil they contain compared to petroleum extraction. A single oil well can produce thousands of barrels of oil over the coarse of many years, whereas each whale has a much more limited and defined limit of oil.

The point is, technology is the source of, and the solution to, most of our basic problems.

Even if the US completely banned the use of oil, that would only account for 19% of the world supply. The reduced demand would only drive down the price of oil, which would then result in increased consumption in all other countries. There would be practically zero net effect on consumption unless the majority of nations got together to set an artificially high price on oil, and even then, there would be massive corruption. Then what are we gonna do, nuke the cheaters?

Technology will solve the oil consumption issue well before countries learn to live like brothers and sisters and not as competitors.

 

@Redpoint5

I liked the comment by Dr. Kovarik after the article:

"The argument is simple. In 1862, the dominant fuel (camphene) is taxed at over $2.00 a gallon, while the emerging new fuel (kerosene from Pennsylvania) is taxed at 10 cents a gallon. Not a subsidy? Perhaps tax advantage is a more precise term than subsidy. Even so, the point is that the policy, more than the market, is what changed the way Americans used energy in the 1860s."

I think that it is both the price of what is available and the options provided by technology that cause changes.

Do you think there is no place for prices being pushed higher by fuel taxes in an effort to fund technological innovation and stimulate conservation?

 

There might be a good argument for price manipulation to drive technological innovation, but I'm very hesitant to support it due to foreseen and unforeseen consequences. Pushing fuel prices higher disproportionately harms poorer people because they are less able to afford it, and energy is a larger portion of their overall income compared to more wealthy households. Not only are they directly harmed by higher fuel prices, but the price of all goods increase since industry is so dependent on fuel. This means poor people are further harmed due to the price of basic goods increasing.

I also question the logic that throwing money at a problem is likely to produce desirable outcomes. Some problems are very difficult, and money doesn't make anybody smarter or more innovative. The US spends more money on education and healthcare per capita than other nations, and we have relatively poor outcomes. How many billions of dollars and decades have we been fighting cancer, and yet have no cure?

If I were to use fiscal policy to influence innovation, I would directly subsidize the most promising technologies using money from general revenue rather than use disincentives for consuming oil. This way the poor people who can only afford old and inefficient vehicles don't disproportionately suffer due to increased fuel prices.

Mostly, technological innovation requires time and people. The more of both you have, the more likely innovation is to occur. The future is likely to be better because more time will have elapsed, and we will have more minds incrementally inventing solutions to problems.

 

We already have price manipulation, to maintain the status quo.

Frankly, I would be happy if AFVs got the same support fossil fuels do.
I would be happier yet if we removed the massive subsidies coal and oil get now and then let renewables battle it out on an even playing field.
The oil industry should be paying for wars to 'stabilize' oil producing areas of the world, not the tax payers.
If the fossil fuel industry can't stand on its own after over a century, why are we supporting it?