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Transportation accounts for a huge portion of US carbon emissions. As recently as 2014, it was behind the electricity sector — 26 percent of US emissions to electricity's 30 percent. But as the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) just confirmed, as of 2016, they have crossed paths. "Electric power sector CO2 emissions," EIA writes, "are now regularly below transportation sector CO2 emissions for the first time since the late 1970s."
This is happening because power sector "carbon intensity" — carbon emissions per unit of energy produced — is falling, as coal is replaced with natural gas, renewables, and efficiency.
The only realistic prospect for reducing transportation sector emissions rapidly and substantially is electrification. How much market share EVs take from oil (gasoline is by far the most common use for oil in the US) will matter a great deal.
[...] Today saw the release of a new study from the Grantham Institute for Imperial College London and the Carbon Tracker Initiative. It argues that solar photovoltaics (PV) and EVs together will kick fossil fuel's ass, quickly.
"Falling costs of electric vehicle and solar technology," they conclude, "could halt growth in global demand for oil and coal from 2020." That would be a pretty big deal.
The "business as usual" (BAU) scenarios that typically dominate these discussions are outdated, the researchers argue. New baseline scenarios should take into account updated information on PV, EV, and battery costs. (The EIA doesn't expect inflation-adjusted prices of EVs to fall to $30,000 until 2030, even as multiple automakers say they'll hit that within a few years.)
[...] If these forecasts play out, fossil fuels could lose 10 percent market share to PV and EVs within a decade. A 10 percent loss in market share was enough to send the US coal industry spiraling, enough to cause Europe's utilities to hemorrhage money. It could seriously disrupt life for the oil majors. "Growth in EVs alone could lead to 2 million barrels of oil per day being displaced by 2025," the study says, "the same volume that caused the oil price collapse in 2014-15."
Source: http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/2/2/14467748/electric-vehicles-oil-market
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Saturday February 04 2017, @11:00AM
Maybe you don't switch to hybrid because gas is cheap, but most people I know haven't done so because hybrids cost too much — either in general, when recent/efficient enough for the person's use case, or when recent/durable enough to be expected to serve the family (original owner & 1-2 younger/poorer drivers) for a decade or more.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 04 2017, @02:58PM
Bingo. YOu've nailed the biggest problem with electric and hybrid vehicles. You CAN'T charge them to capacity quickly.
The battery manufacturers, and car makers, claim to be making progress. But, there is no way you can charge a battery in five to fifteen minutes. If you drive into a charging station on the last few ergs of energy in your battery, you can plan on being there for hourse.
Closely related to that minor little problem, is range. For me, minimum range is 200 miles. That would be sufficient to take me to work, one round trip, and if I decide that just HAVE to stop in one of the nearby towns for business, I would have a nice cushion. 100 mile round trip to work, plus an extra fifty miles to go out of my way, and a fifty mile cushion, because the math is sometimes not quite right.
As things stand right now, taking an electric vehicle cross country would be an exercise in futility. It would make more sense to have battery changing stations, where you could pull in, swap out the battery in ten minutes, then go on your way. Except - you're likely to trade off a great battery, for a worn out POS that won't get you to the next battery station.
We've got a ways to go before electric takes over the market.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday February 04 2017, @06:08PM
Many well established families have two vehicles, often optimized for different purposes. It makes sense to have a little commuter vehicle alongside a larger less efficient one such as a van or truck.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday February 04 2017, @06:50PM
Actually, there is a way, but it involves exchanging batteries. Either that, or using flow batteries which, as far as I know, are only viable in fixed installations. (They tend to be a LOT larger.) Unfortunately, there's no easy way to tell the charge capacity of a battery, so people are reluctant to accept the exchange approach, though I understand an Israeli taxi company used it, so if it became cheap/common enough there could be lots of business cases. (Just keep a pool of spare batteries.)
But I don't expect this to take off. Being possible doesn't mean it's likely to be adopted.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Saturday February 04 2017, @09:25PM
This reminds me of an old pre-cell phone mobile phone network I saw back in the 80s. It used antennas that had been placed at specific points, mostly gas stations. I remember thinking that this would never scale - you'd need antenna's everywhere to get decent coverage!
.... So that's basically what happened.
The charging problem sounds very similar. A trivial way to solve it is if you could swap your car's batteries at a "gas" station for fully loaded batteries. That's probably not what'll win out in the end, but there are solutions which make electric vehicles feasible, e.g. charging at work. If every work place can easily charge all the EVs coming in, then your range anxiety is vastly diminished. By the time you leave the office, the batteries will be full again.
On another note: EVs cost too much is of course just another way of stating "gas is too cheap".If gas prices shoot above $20 a gallon, EVs (and small, efficient cars) will become a lot more popular.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Saturday February 04 2017, @03:13PM
Consumer Reports begs to differ [consumerreports.org]: If you look at the listings, you'll see that hybrids stack up quite well against other cars in terms of cost.
The real issue is a psychological one: Hybrids have a higher up-front expense, while being cheaper to run because they require about half the gas of gasoline-only cars. The thing is, when car shopping, it's easy to see "whoa, that hybrid is $3K more than an equivalent gas-only car", but not easy to see that "after 5 years, that extra cost will have paid for itself in gas savings".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by Oakenshield on Saturday February 04 2017, @05:20PM
My experience begs to differ. My car is 14 years old and I have years of spreadsheet data on my driving mileage and gasoline prices. While looking to replace my car a few years ago I looked at hybrids and the cost delta over gasoline-only models meant that - for my average driving - gasoline would have to stay well over $4 per gallon to pay foritself by the end-of-life of the car. I didn't even factor in the cost of replacing the batteries. I still haven't pulled the trigger, but unless hybrids are a lot cheaper now, it wasn't worth it. I'm looking at plugin hybrids now and that might work out to be a good deal, especially with tax credits and the fact that my work has a free charging station, but running the numbers is difficult since I really don't know how many kWh I would use.
Newer gas-only cars are pretty fuel efficient these days, making the mileage delta for hybrid drivetrains less cost effective. I don't see any vehicles that double their mileage by adding hybrid drivetrains. Last summer, I rented a Hyundai Sonata (gas only) to take on vacation. The mileage we got was much better than my girlfriend's Camry Hybrid of approximately the same size. The Hyundai also had considerably more storage space in the trunk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 04 2017, @06:56PM
Your anecdata doesn't really mean anything without the number of miles you drive per year.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday February 04 2017, @06:02PM
That doesn't apply to me; I quit buying new cars in the 1980s when my two month old Volkswagon's alternator went out ninety miles from home. Also, since that means I'm buying an older, cheap car I can pay for it with a credit card rather than an auto loan, so only have to pay for liability insurance. Car gets totaled? Just buy another one.
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(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday February 04 2017, @06:31PM
I've never bought a car new either, and probably never will, but I think it's vitally important to understand how the numbers work. And it's true with used cars too: My current hybrid (which typically gets 45-50 mpg) cost a bit more to buy than a non-hybrid with similar mileage would have, but has already paid for the extra cost in savings on gas.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Touché) by TheRaven on Saturday February 04 2017, @04:46PM
Maybe you don't switch to hybrid because gas is cheap, but most people I know haven't done so because hybrids cost too much
Why do you think those are different reasons? Hybrids are not cheap in absolute terms, they are cheap relative to the cost of buying and running a pure-ICE vehicle. Either the cost of the hybrid going down or the cost of the ICE vehicle going up will alter this balance.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday February 04 2017, @04:48PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Saturday February 04 2017, @09:29PM
Hybrids cost too much only when gas is cheap. If gas is expensive enough, hybrids and / or EVs become the more economic option.