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Page added on April 25, 2018
Electric Vehicles Begin To Bite Into Oil Demand
Employees work on the assembly line of the electric bus at a BYD’s production base on January 23, 2018 in Xi’an, China. China’s largest electric carmaker BYD sold 113,669 new energy vehicles in 2017, up 13.4 percent year-on-year. (Photo by VCG/Getty Images)
Projections have suggested that the advent of electric vehicles will have a dramatic impact on oil demand and now its starting to show. With China adding the equivalent of London’s bus fleet every 5 weeks, that’s 279,000 barrels of oil a day removed from demand.
The latest report from Bloomberg New Energy shows that economics are driving the change, with the total cost of ownership of electric buses far outperforming the alternatives. The report says a 110kWh battery e-bus coupled with the most expensive wireless charging reaches parity with a diesel bus on total cost of ownership at around 60,000 km traveled per year (37,000 miles). This means that a bus with the smallest battery, even when coupled with the most expensive charging option, would be cheaper to run in a medium-sized city, where buses travel on average 170km/day (106 miles).
Today large cities with high annual bus mileages therefore choose from a number of electric options, all cheaper than diesel and CNG buses. The BNEF report says, ‘Even the most expensive electric bus at 80,000km per year has a TCO of $0.92/km, just at par with diesel buses. Compared to a CNG bus, it is around $0.11/km cheaper in terms of the TCO. This indicates that in a megacity, where buses travel at least 220km/day, using even the most expensive 350kWh e-bus instead of a CNG bus could bring around $130,000 in operational cost savings over the 15-year lifetime of a bus.
For every 1,000 battery-powered buses on the road, about 500 barrels a day of diesel fuel will be displaced from the market, according to BNEF calculations. In 2018, the volume of oil-based fuel demand that buses remove from the market may rise 37 % to 279,000 barrels a day, or approximately the equivalent of the oil consumption of Greece. By 2040, this number could rise as high as 8 million barrels per day (bpd).
This will make a significant dent in oil demand but overall the market appears confident that petrochemicals will make up the difference in demand. That question remains open however, as the plastics market particularly continues to evolve. In the last few weeks alone
Stephen George, chief economist at KBC, agrees with the International Energy Agency predictions that petrochemicals will grow to replace transport fuel demand. His projections don’t show a peak in oil demand, rather a plateau around 2040 ranging between 110 and 110 million bpd, with no signs of a peak and drop by 2050.
He does accept that everybody uses different scenarios and that the strategies need to be resilient in facing market change and says, “I see the majors embracing renewables more than previously.” Oil demand however will continue to increase due predominantly to plastics growth.
Today the U.S. is the biggest per capita consumer of plastics at 150 kg per person per year. That includes bottles, packaging, durable goods (many cars now built out of plastic); 3-d printing and a myriad number of uses. Europe and Japan are not far behind and George predicts that demographics and the growth of the middle class will drive up the global average which is currently 45 kgs per person per year.
China alone has gone from 5kgs to the global average in 5 years and is expected to drag the global average up as it grows. India is bound to follow and while its consumption is roughly around 8-10kgs per capita this is likely to develop rapidly.
So it’s the downstream derivatives of oil that are going to drive demand with George saying, “150kgs per capita is the non combustible oil demand that replaces the transport fuel demand.”
The real question it seems is whether this will be new plastics, or recycled and reused. New methods are arising constantly, driven by new regulation and breakthroughs in technology. In April 2018, it was announced that scientists had accidently discovered an enzyme that eats plastic, which when scaled up could have a significant impact on the way in which plastic is treated within the economy.
At the moment it ends up predominantly as a waste product, clogging up pipes, water sources, beaches and in dumps. If we find a plastics breakthrough, from recycling, to bioplastics to new forms of processing, the future line of oil demand could look very different.
40 Comments on "Electric Vehicles Begin To Bite Into Oil Demand"
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 1:29 pm
If they knock off any oil demand the price of oil will come down and then people who still use oil will buy more of it. Jevons paradox…
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 1:33 pm
There aren’t enough rare earth resources to convert the worlds fleets to electric.
Shortage of resources for renewable energy and food production (Rhodes 2011)
https://www.scribd.com/document/375501088/Shortage-of-resources-for-renewable-energy-and-food-production-Rhodes-2011
UC Davis Peer Reviewed Study: It Will Take 131 Years to Replace Oil with Alternatives
(Malyshkina, 2010)
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es100730q
University of Chicago Peer Reviewed Study: predicts world economy unlikely to stop relying on fossil fuels (Covert, 2016)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.1.117
rockman on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 1:52 pm
So China bought 114K electric vehicles in 2017. Same yearh they bought 28.8 MILLION ICE vehicles. IOW 0.3958% of the commercial and passenger vehicles sold were electric powered. Which is why they like to report the 13.4% y-o-y increase an ignore the absolute numbers. Which mean EV sales increased from 0.3428% to 0.3958% of total vehicle sales in China from 2016 to 2017. While both numbers are correct 13.4% gives a very different IMPRESSION of the situation then 0.3958%. Yes indeed: ExxonMobil et al must be pissing on themselves in fear. LOL. BTW more then half the electricity used to power that huge Chinese EV fleet comes from burning coal.
Time to break out the EV party hats! LOL.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/233743/vehicle-sales-in-china/
Outcast_Searcher on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 2:21 pm
Mastermindless, it’s not 2011. They’re now finding far more rare earth metals, now that there is more economic incentive re higher prices and demand being much more apparent.
For example, a major find by Japan recently:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/12/japan-rare-earths-huge-deposit-of-metals-found-in-pacific.html
All your incessant denial doesn’t stop the obvious wave of change — even though the wave will take several decades.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 2:25 pm
Outcast
You think they are going to dig them out of the ocean? LOL There will be no wave that takes decades. Peak oil is now and when the oil supply shortages hit the world economy will collapse..Period. End of story. Dont worry you can just kill yourself before admitting how you were.
Outcast_Searcher on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 2:26 pm
Mastermindless, people won’t buy more than they feel they need. If cheaper, better alternatives are available, people can and will switch out of self-interest.
It just takes time. Without big CO2 taxes, it takes too much time, but it is still happening.
The thing I find opening is the amount of plastics consumers are using, and the rate at which that number is growing in the third world. Unless that changes or better substitutes can be found or the recycling thing truly works (number of viable cycles, costs, and participation are all issues), the demand removed via transportation could simply be shifted to demand from things like plastics.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 2:28 pm
Rockman
Great points, way to throw some cold water on this stupid delusion. the media wants to desperately to solve peak oil. They are grasping at straws left and right.
jedrider on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 2:28 pm
In the US, hybrids are popular. But, they’re just a more efficient ICE, NOT an electric vehicle.
Only rising oil prices can knock down demand for petroleum and that appears to be happening (albeit slowly as fracking still appears to be successful, but I wonder for how long?)
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 2:30 pm
Outcast_Searcher
UC Davis Peer Reviewed Study: It Will Take 131 Years to Replace Oil with Alternatives
(Malyshkina, 2010)
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es100730q
University of Chicago Peer Reviewed Study: predicts world economy unlikely to stop relying on fossil fuels (Covert, 2016)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.1.117
See we have actually studied this stuff and no how long a transition would take. Its only a big mystery to people who are uneducated or deluded like you.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 2:53 pm
All three fossil fuels (Oil, Coal, Gas) are peaking within the next decade.
Projection of World Fossil Fuels by Country (Mohr, 2015)
https://www.scribd.com/document/375110317/Projection-of-World-Fossil-Fuels-by-Country-Mohr-2015
Cloggie on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 2:56 pm
“UC Davis Peer Reviewed Study: It Will Take 131 Years to Replace Oil with Alternatives
(Malyshkina, 2010)”
https://qz.com/1245048/portugal-generated-enough-renewable-energy-to-power-the-whole-country-in-march/
ROFL
Boat on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 3:01 pm
Rock
In 5 years or maybe 10 there may be continued oil growth but the foundation for a dramatic change in transportation is being laid. The trends are supported by the volitility and price of oil.
The FF advantage of not having to pay for pollution is eroding slowly. Once climate change brings more death at a higher rate expect the advantage to dissipate more rapidly.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 3:02 pm
Clogg
That is an article about Portugal electricity being ran by renewable s. There are very few countries that use oil for electricity anymore. You are comparing apples to rocks again. And Portugal is one of the smallest countries on earth. So sad and desperate.
Die slow you piece of white trash.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 3:04 pm
Boat
In five to ten years you will be dead or wishing you were dead….And once the markets and economy go down, so does the governments, and rule of law..And then it will be fight club.
https://imgur.com/a/pYxKa
Cloggie on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 3:20 pm
“That is an article about Portugal electricity being ran by renewable s. There are very few countries that use oil for electricity anymore. You are comparing apples to rocks again. And Portugal is one of the smallest countries on earth. So sad and desperate.”
If early 2018 relatively poor Portugal can generate 100% electricity from renewables, it won’t take many years to generate sufficient extra renewable electricity for heat pumps and autonomous car fleet, that can be as much as 20-30 times smaller than the current fleet in order to produce the same transport performance. You can stick your UC Davis and it’s insane 131 years in a place where the sun doesn’t shine.
UC Davis?
Must one of those Marxist hell hole the US is littered with:
https://documents1940.wordpress.com/2017/10/26/the-new-america/
I don’t think with this kind of people 131 years would suffice to set up a renewable energy base.
Die slow you piece of white trash.
Oh wait, he’s back! This time it is not an Austrian but a Hollander!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PplDiTXIvI
ROFL
Boat on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 3:22 pm
Mm
There are stray mongrels in any society that can’t conform to minimal standards of decency. With attitudes like yours and amouse I’m surprised you avoid jail time.
There is no trend I see that supports a move towards chaos in the short or mid term. You seem like one of the strays who end up on the news. “the signs were there and nobody stopped him”.
rockman on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 3:41 pm
Boat – “…but the foundation for a dramatic change in transportation is being laid.” And what exactly is that “foundation” being laid? 2017 vehicle sales: 93 million ICE’s and 670,000 EV’s. Or looking at y-o-y changes: while 670,000 EV’s were added in 2017 to the global fleet 1.8 million ICE’s were added over 2016 sales. IOW just the increase in the number of ICE sales above the 2016 was about 3X the total number of sold last year.
One hell of a foundation. LOL.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 3:45 pm
Rockman
You can’t argue math or science or facts with Boat. He is ignorant little pussy. Who is going to become zombie food in the next decade.
alain le gargasson on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 4:11 pm
cloggie
In Portugual the annual production data at the end of the page, shows above all a hydraulic and fossil-based production, still far from the ideal announced
http://www.apren.pt/
Boat on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 4:25 pm
Rock
Do you pay any attention to battery price. Range improvementd or quickness of the charge. The trend of countries around the world mandating percentages of EV’s. Just like wind and solar.
Not wanting to die from pollution and the effects of Co2 seems like an idea that is catching on. If the actual number of units sold was stagnent or dropping I would agree with you. That’s not the case. Every year I will make sure you, mm and others will have access to the numbers. If the numbers stagnate or decline in anyway I will let you know also.
In a few years you may get the trend idea. PS The US is still trending up in the US for oil production. Same with DUCTS. Your peers in the oil biz call it advanced tech.
dave thompson on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 5:01 pm
Forbes is trying to sell some damn thing or another in this article. FF is being used just as much as ever and then some more so too year over year. Crude oil is refined and burned some damn place no mater what. EV cars and buses only mean that the oil is burned elsewhere. There is no proof of any transition to clean green industrial civ. It is all a smoke screen for the idiots.
Boat on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 5:20 pm
Dave
If you keep up you would know the EV mandates are in China and Europe. Busses almost all China. The US gives out subsidies but no mandates that I am aware of. That will happen with the next Dem controlled Whitehouse and prez
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 5:31 pm
Boat
You are dreaming you bubbling retard. Even with a democrat president you still need the house and senate to pass a bill. And with all the gerrymandering the republicans have done. Its not likely the dems will win control of all three. And based on the fact you can’t take an EV out of the city. They are pretty much worthless to most Americans. And only 1/3 of Americans have garages to charge them.
dave thompson on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 5:34 pm
Boat that all could very well be, however the reality is that the world keeps pumping, refining and burning more liquid FF every year. No matter how many EV cars, buses, trucks and what ever is built. The truth of the matter is that when there is a significant drop in FF use year over year it will only mean the ultimate demise of industrial civ as we know it.
Boat on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 5:50 pm
Dave
I don’t have a problem agreeing to disagree. I see 70 years of potential oil reported. So having 30 to 40 years to work on transportation is a long time in a tech world. Lots of other btu sources as well. Lot of doom talk but history shows it’s been talk so far.
I do understand the potentiol of many scenerios that could upset a transion. But until some of become reality I fear not.
dave thompson on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 6:00 pm
Boat come on, “Lot of doom talk but history shows it’s been talk so far.”
I have no “doom talk” only the “history” of the present to show. And that history shows one thing and that is there has been no significant inroads made in any way when it comes to using less FF. Every year humanity burns more and more. I see absolutely no proof of any transition away from the burning of FF, only the historical fact that the more of the so called transition the more the FF burned.
makati1 on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 6:24 pm
dave, I agree. The propaganda wants you to believe that renewables will keep a form of BAU going forever. Not going to happen for the very reason that for every EV or solar panel or windmill built, there are hundreds of cars, buses, and other FF consumers built. Humans will burn FFs until they are not available at any price and/or the EROEI drops below usable levels.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 6:44 pm
Boat
If humans have a future..Its underground….
https://imgur.com/a/pYxKa
Boat on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 7:11 pm
Mak, Dave
Even 70 years of oil is a very short time. Why do you think countries are preparing now. As oil goes up at some point EV and Nat gas and other forms of transportation will simply be cheaper. It ain’t rocket science.
makati1 on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 7:30 pm
Boat, you are delirious again. Renewables (EVs etc) have no future. None. Wishing does not make it so. You look at a narrow slice of the whole picture and make stupid assertions. This is nothing more than ad propaganda piece to sucker in “investors”. Not reality.
Cloggie on Thu, 26th Apr 2018 12:03 am
rockman says: “Time to break out the EV party hats! LOL.”
The implosion of the private transportation fuel and car industry will come from the autonomous car, regardless whether these cars will be powered by fossil fuel or batteries or (hopefully) by fuel cells. It will be very difficult for politicians to get the world out of the old-school car, that will only succeed in Europe, where these kind of measures find broad support in the population:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-norway-autos/norway-powers-ahead-over-half-new-car-sales-now-electric-or-hybrid-idUSKBN1ES0WC
Mass ownership of a car can be discouraged if you offer a viable alternative… by making the van part of the public transportation system. A 9p Ford Transit sort of vehicle with 3 x 3 benches or even 3 x 4 benches will not consume very much more fuel that you average sedan with the standard occupation rate of 1.25.
And “poof” says the global car industry!
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/by-2030-you-wont-own-a-car/
By increasing occupation rate from say 1.25 to 9 you decrease the fuel consumption with up to a factor 6.
If you increase utility factor from typically 5% now to 25%, you can accomplish the same transportation effort with a factor of 5 times les vehicles.
Combining these two you arrive at the staggering fact that you can realize the same transportation effort with a global car fleet of 5 x 6 = 30 times less cars, meaning 33 million Ford Transits instead of 1 billion cars today. This implies an enormous reduced embedded energy in the global car fleet, not to mention in the world’s road system.
In that situation nobody gives a f* if these pathetic 33 million Ford Transits would be powered by fossil fuel or batteries.
This development will be enabled by a combination of two radical new factors:
– autonomous car
– total location awareness of passengers via Galileo powered smart phones and giant computers matching supply and demand of transportation capacity.
Bring in the autonomous car party hats!
Kat C on Thu, 26th Apr 2018 3:53 am
Re the Japanese Rare Earth find “Extracting those metals from the seabed, however, is an expensive affair, the Journal reported.” Right, and much of the expense will be energy and how come I just sort of have a feeling they won’t be using renewable energy in the extraction…..hmmm
Meanwhile the Arctic ice extent is at its lowest ever with the possibility this will be the first ice free summer kicking off huge feedbacks http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2018/04/april-2018-update.html The end is nigh
Darrell Cloud on Thu, 26th Apr 2018 7:42 am
You want a renewable green transport system, this is it. https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2129/2419890861_1f0c2820c1_z.jpg
Kat C on Thu, 26th Apr 2018 9:06 am
Darrell, exactly! or this
https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/donkey-cart?sort=mostpopular&mediatype=photography&phrase=donkey%20cart
rockman on Thu, 26th Apr 2018 11:33 am
Boat – “Do you pay any attention to battery price. Range improvementd or quickness of the charge.” Whether I have or not isn’t relevant. What is relevant is the nearly 100 million folks that bought ICE’s who didn’t give a shit about anything you have to say. That may change in time but the current stats show NO MOVEMENT IN THAT DIRECTION.
Anonymouse1 on Thu, 26th Apr 2018 11:56 am
Boatietard doesn’t pay attention to anything not on TV, dumbass. He is legally RETARDED. So no, he is not ‘paying attention to battery price’. The price he pays attention to, is the Price is Right. He is so stupid he make you sound positively erudite by comparison, narrativeman….
fmr-paultard on Thu, 26th Apr 2018 12:09 pm
anontard, here you go again attacking my supertard boat. you seem to have problem with all supertards. my bet is something is wrong with the software in your meat (head).
Go Speed Racer on Thu, 26th Apr 2018 12:14 pm
The best city bus fleet of all. Would run on garbage.
We would remove the back 6 rows of seats, and
install wood stoves which would burn the garbage.
Garbage is plentiful in big cities so it would be easy to
add more fuel at multiple times daily while driving.
The passengers would have to help by adding more
garbage to the fires in the back. If they refused the
bus wouldn’t go anywhere.
Economics are great, the retrofit costs would be low.
No rare earth metals would be required.
GregT on Thu, 26th Apr 2018 12:41 pm
” “Do you pay any attention to battery price. Range improvementd or quickness of the charge.”
“Whether I have or not isn’t relevant. What is relevant is the nearly 100 million folks that bought ICE’s who didn’t give a shit about anything you have to say. ”
Boat would be one of those 100 million folks Rockman. He drives a Subaru. Subaru doesn’t even make an all electric vehicle. They don’t even manufacture a hybrid.
Antius on Fri, 27th Apr 2018 11:39 am
Sweden develops a conduit power supply system for road vehicles.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5664361/Worlds-road-recharges-electric-trucks-drive-opens-Sweden.html
If rolled out on all highways in Europe, electric vehicles would only need a battery range of 50km or so. This cuts the required battery size by a factor of 10, making electric road vehicles a far more achievable option.
The big problem I can see with this is that roads are filthy dirty places. The conduit is a slot in the road with live conductors embedded into it. The slot would rapidly fill with dirt and stones unless it is constantly kept clean.