The End of the Car Industry As We Know It?

27 Comments on "The End of the Car Industry As We Know It?"

Boat on Tue, 4th Aug 2015 7:33 pm 



Go California.

davey thompsony on Tue, 4th Aug 2015 7:59 pm 



Electric cars do not cut greenhouse emissions. Some might argue that electric cars make the emissions worse.Where does rubber,plastic, rare earth metals,steel,metal alloys, lead and lithium come from? All of the construction of an electric car require FF inputs for the entire life of the car. Wind,solar and the alternative energy utopia that people seem to think industrial civilization is/will transition to ain’t gonna happen.

Boat on Tue, 4th Aug 2015 8:17 pm 



Davey,
Stand in a 2 car garage, shut the door, turn them both on and see which one will make you pass out. At the end of the lifecycles of these products you rail against, the bottom line is less pollution. Less death, less sickness etc.

gdubya on Tue, 4th Aug 2015 8:33 pm 



The argument that electric cars use resources seems a little weak while we build I.C.E vehicles like there is no tomorrow.
Same logic: Solar panels cause pollution, therefore we will continue to build coal plants.

BobInget on Tue, 4th Aug 2015 8:47 pm 



There’s room for more then one type of power plant for the 2020 ‘family car’ of the future. I have lots of hope for fuel cells that double as stand-by power plants for the home. GE and Tesla verge on marketing solar storage batteries that recharge a vehicle in a half hour. In the US only Honda sells CNG Civics. South America and Europe CNG is a popular, cheap fuel.

Let’s live long enough to see oil used for transportation only in aircraft where power to weight ratios trumps all.

davey thompsony on Tue, 4th Aug 2015 9:45 pm 



Electric cars and other forms (trucks, trains,planes,even shipping) will never be brought to scale to replace the use of FF transportation. Boat, yes you are correct under the assumption that what comes out of the tail pipe is the problem. How are roads made without lots of concrete, steel,asphalt, let alone maintained? Cross country trucking with batteries? At scale? Where is all the lead, copper, rare earth metals ect. mined from and how is it done? The idea of saving our way of life with more and more planetary destruction in an alternative transition to clean green technology? I call BULLSHIT!

Apneaman on Tue, 4th Aug 2015 10:13 pm 



Boat, what happens to the brain from working in a PVC pipe plant and breathing in that cocktail of fumes for 15 years?

Apneaman on Tue, 4th Aug 2015 10:46 pm 



Dahr Jamail | The New Climate “Normal”: Abrupt Sea Level Rise and Predictions of Civilization Collapse

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32131-the-new-climate-normal-abrupt-sea-level-rise-and-predictions-of-civilization-collapse

Makati1 on Tue, 4th Aug 2015 11:07 pm 



The ‘family/personal’ car of the future is a bicycle or shoe leather. Cars are a byproduct of the Age of Petroleum, like the internet and all of the I-gadgets that we play with today. Ditto such careers as those associated with the hydrocarbon industry excess, the fields of psychology, archeology, philosophy, photography, economics, etc. and those that teach such professions will disappear.

Why? The cash in your pocket is going to shrink in buying power continually as the energy resources that back it shrinks. There is a reason that those careers did not exist before the 18th century and it wasn’t because we were not as smart. It was because they require a lot of excess energy to exist. By that I mean. energy not needed for life’s necessities. We are quickly going back to that age when all the energy available was needed to survive. I tell my grand kids to learn carpentry, masonry, midwifing, etc. Any skill that will be needed when the excess energy disappears. We are almost there.

Pennsyguy on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 3:18 am 



I believe that the payload efficiency of an electric car is about 5%. Most of the energy in any autom0bile is used to move the car as opposed to the often single occupant.
Also, I don’t see how the U.S. can find the energy or money to rebuild or maintain the highways. I wish we kept our passenger trains.

Ralph on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 3:57 am 



The limited energy storage of battery powered cars forces the builders to make them as light, aerodynamic and efficient as possible to get accept able range out of them. The result is that an electric car emits significantly less CO2 than than equivalent size and powered ICE car provided the electricity is not generated by coal. Coal based electricity brings them into about parity.

The embedded energy (energy cost of production) of a Nissan Leaf is a tiny fraction of that of a Ford F150.

My family (hopes to have) 3 powered vehicles to match our needs – a 1.2 litre diesel returning average 50mpg (US) (real world driving) for long journeys or large load carrying,
a Nissan Leaf for primary family transportation, and a pedelec electric assist bicycle for daily commute.

The bicycle makes a 12 mile commute practical for my 53yo legs whilst keeping me fit and only marginally slower than a car average speed in traffic. Cost of electricity is about
$0.001 a mile.

Makati1 on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 6:10 am 



Ralph, I think you are dreaming. I give personal autos about 5-10 more years until they become the toys of the wealthy. Why?

1. Cost to buy.
2. Cost to fuel.
3. Cost to maintain.
4. The repairing of roads made of asphalt/concrete and steel.
5. The bridges that need maintenance constantly to be safe.
6. The end of globalization and the supply of the thousands of parts and materials in a car that comes from all over the world. No, the US does NOT make many of them today. Those machines and skills were shipped to Asia.

And the dwindling need to go anywhere you cannot walk as your income shrinks and your world with it.

Makati1 on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 6:20 am 



In the US, the government is going to raise the taxes on fuel and/or start taxing everyone more to cover the road and bridge maintenance. The Highway Trust Fund is broke. The Federal tax of $0.185 per gallon does not begin to pay the road and bridge maintenance costs. Eventually all roads and highways will be toll, plus fuel taxes maybe double or triple those today.

Electric, gas, diesel, propane, all the same … too expensive for Joe Six-pack to own and use. F150s will be rusting hulks in back yards or sold for scrap. Not toys for casual use or family hauling. At least that is what I see coming. I haven’t owned a car for eight years. I do ride a taxi about once a month, but I could walk. I suspect we will all learn to walk more often, and not just for exercise.

Cloud9 on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 7:25 am 



There are roughly 252 million vehicles on the road with an average age of 11.4 years. The trend is for that age to increase. It is not uncommon to see cars on the road that are forty or fifty years old. I suspect cars will be with us for a very long time. What is going to change is their average everyday use. The soccer mom class is being impoverished. As road conditions deteriorate I suspect the old four wheel drives will be kept running longer than most imagine.

I think Cuba is a model for the rest of us on how transportation problems will sort out. Most of us are going to be riding our bicycles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs6xoKmnYq8

Ralph on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 7:34 am 



Makati1

I think that the cost to buy is not much of an issue – there are enough ICE cars on the road today to outlast the global supply of oil before they become unrepairable. Cars in Cuba typically lasted 30-40 years when imports were impossible.

Roads are going to degrade, but that process takes decades.

Spare parts for high tech. vehicles are going to be a real problem. But an electric car has far fewer parts than an ICE, and buying a second hand one now will be a huge advantage over waiting 3 years for the next oil supply crunch. Like electricity, the first 50 miles range matters far more than the next 500 when the option is walking or hauling a hand cart.

I am not Joe Six Pack or in the US. electric will work for me, here, for the next few decades.

Cloud9 on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 7:52 am 



I pull my own wrenches. I drove a CJ-7 for twenty years. It was running fine when I traded it for a new 05 Wrangler. The 05 ignitions system is much more complicated but relatively easy to replace. I’ll be driving the wrangler till I die or gas can no longer be had. These systems are robust and fairly simple. The junk yards are full of parts.

Davy on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 8:03 am 



Ralf, EV’s have a limited niche to play IMHO. In a different world with a world of people with different mentalities I could see promise with EV’s. That would be a world with the majority thinking like you are in a world without limits and environmental and resource decline. I might add in an overpopulated world facing a bottleneck.

The fact is there are so many draw backs to EV’s and efficiency. We do not have the time nor the money to switch out a oil transport fleet of every conceivable shape and size. It is too vast and the whole transport system geared to it and supporting it. This is too vast an undertaking for the time we have left.

One must also ask how cost effective it is to talk about switching out a fleet before its life cycle is up. There is a huge expense in resources and environmental damage involved with the production of vehicles of any kind. Wouldn’t it be better to discuss how we can eliminate driving to begin with?

I admire your thinking. I have a turbo diesel for commuting getting 42MPG. I have a small pickup for local commutes. I have a big pickup for farm work. The big pickup is seldom used. I drive as little as possible and combine trips when I must. I feel a F150 you referenced is more efficient than a leaf if we are talking the F150 carrying 15 people and the leaf 1. It is as much application as the technology. Try using a leaf on a farm other than commuting.

The bike idea is great but not practical for everyone. I had an E-bike when I was in a small town and I loved it but it didn’t work in the winter. It is not useful now on the farm. Bikes are an important trend we need to promote. Bikes are an example of the low tech side of mitigating the economic fall coming. I still remember as kid seeing the Chinese cities with so many people on bikes. I admired that about the Chinese. Look at the Chinese now with the worst pollution and traffic congestion in the world.

I would caution you on going from the micro level to the macro level with such discussions. My biggest cold water point for your thinking is we are at limits with decreasing marginal returns to technology. This means AltE has little future beyond a small scale extender of our modern society. AltE will quickly be marginalized when the economy goes into contraction because AltE is so low a contribution currently and will require a huge new buildout that will likely not happen. AltE is at its peak now in my opinion. I wish it was not so but soon little new will be produced once the descent takes over.

We will be managing with what we have while we can. It is will be a world of salvaging what we can. This will be a struggle of maintaining an unsustainable life while drifting into the world we left behind pre widespread fossil fuel usage. I don’t know the time frame for this descent but the direction says new technologies are going to become less and less a factor. Salvage and a hybrid living of new and the old ways will be the norm that is if we are lucky and we don’t have a hard quick collapse.

ghung on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 8:14 am 



Cloud9 said; “The junk yards are full of parts.”

Not sure where you are, or the last time you went to a junk yard (auto salvage). All but one of ours closed since most junked cars were immediately being crushed and shipped to China. Others closed because of environmental requirements and other liabilities. The only junk yard left around here salvages wheels and engines worth salvaging, then crushes the car and sends it to China. Few other parts available unless you’re lucky enough to find your model there before it’s gone, usually just a couple of weeks.

Maybe this will change as China crashes.

BobInget on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 9:37 am 



Today’s EIA Weekly Status report:
quite bullish IOM.

The Headline Should Read;

US Consumes 20.3 Million Barrels Per Day!

(that’s up from 20.1 last week)

Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the Week Ending July 31, 2015
U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged about 17.1 million barrels per day during the week ending July 31, 2015, 313,000 barrels per day more than the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 96.1% of their operable capacity last week. Gasoline production increased last week, averaging 10.0 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production decreased last week, averaging over 5.0 million barrels per day.

U.S. crude oil imports averaged 7.2 million barrels per day last week, down by 365,000 barrels per day from the previous week. Over the last four weeks, crude oil imports averaged 7.5 million barrels per day, 0.4% below the same four-week period last year. Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 822,000 barrels per day. Distillate fuel imports averaged 149,000 barrels per day last week.

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) decreased by 4.4 million barrels from the previous week.

At 455.3 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories remain near levels not seen for this time of year in at least the last 80 years. Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 0.8 million barrels last week, and are in the middle of the average range. Finished gasoline inventories decreased while blending components inventories increased last week. Distillate fuel inventories increased by 0.7 million barrels last week and are in the middle of the average range for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories rose 0.9 million barrels last week and are well above the upper limit of the average range. Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 0.3 million barrels last week.

Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged over 20.3 million barrels per day, up by 3.6% from the same period last year. Over the last four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged over 9.5 million barrels per day, up by 5.4% from the same period last year. Distillate fuel product supplied averaged over 3.7 million barrels per day over the last four weeks, down by 4.1% from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied is up 1.6% compared to the same four-week period last year.

energyskeptic on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 12:02 pm 



Batteries are not cheap enough, or long lasting enough, to sustain electric cars except for a tiny tiny tiny segment of wealthy people who earn $140,000 on average AND like to buy things way ahead of everyone else. Batteries require a revolutionary battery breakthrough that can be achieved only by being able to observe femtoseconds of chemical reactions, nano-scale technology, and so on and on.

At the current rate of PEV, PHEV, etc car buying, it would take something like 1500 years to turn over the current car fleet.

People who can afford to buy even a new, gasoline based car earn over $85,000 a year.

Even if batteries were improved, the distribution of wealth means that most people won’t be able to afford an electric car, and declining oil means a constant shrinking of the middle class and the end of growth.

Electric cars are a fantasy to keep people hopeful so they don’t abandon the stock market. The United States wants to be what Heinberg calls “the last man standing” which means business-as-usual as long as possible rather than spend the dwindling energy on softening the blow of going back to biomass, the fuel of pre-industrial civilizations.

http://energyskeptic.com/2014/who-killed-the-electric-car/

GregT on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 1:10 pm 



67% of all electricity globally is generated by burning fossil fuels, without a substantial fleet of electric vehicles. I wonder where all of the extra electricity will come from to generate enough power to replace all ICE vehicles with EVs?

BobInget on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 1:16 pm 



Here’s the real deal.
Just when we thought we were running out of cheap oil, here comes tech breakthrough that extends crude’s transportation dominance for years.

New, cheaper solar panels are a reality.
We’re promised two year paybacks.

I admit, cheaper PVs won’t do much for our existing fleets running on gasoline. Oh, BTW, fifteen million such cars ‘New Cars’ will be sold in the USA 2015. Doubtless, almost as many ICE powered cars next year. Every year from here on out, fewer hay burners sold.

The 2016 Chev Volt is tagged for 53 mile range. Buy an array of lower cost PV’s and it possible you hardly ever buy gasoline by the time the Volt is payed off your PV’s will be too.

davey thompsony on Wed, 5th Aug 2015 2:02 pm 



How much do batteries and inverters cost to replace? The life of PV inverters is in the 10 year range. The life of the batteries for PV’s and these new EV’s has not changed, they last from 4 to 6 years then need replacement. Spending money this way instead of on gasoline is no real savings for your pocket book or the environment when you add it all up. PV’s EV’s is more complexity in an already devastated biosphere.

Kenz300 on Thu, 6th Aug 2015 11:08 am 



Electric vehicles, bicycles and mass transit….. the future.

criticalmass on Thu, 6th Aug 2015 3:36 pm 



Davey, Dave… you have a lot of ignorance when it comes to EV’s. Take the LEAF for example. Anything newer than ’13 is expected to get well over 150k miles on a battery pack. That’s going to take you to 80% of the original capacity before you replace it and recycle the batteries for home or industrial use. How many miles do you drive a year?
Used EV’s can be had for under $11k now and get 4+ miles per KWH. There is one moving part on the motor, rated at 500k miles from the dealer. Batteries continue to become more energy dense.
Take it from an EV driver who monitors the actual use/ end product- Unless we bike (I commute that way) or use light rail (also electric, BTW) there is no more efficient means of transport than EV. DO THE MATH.

Davy on Thu, 6th Aug 2015 4:22 pm 



Critical do the math on the EV’s. What is on the road plus what is the production capacity? Compare that to all the internal combustion fleet currently not even mentioning aircraft. EV’s will likely never be a significant alternative to internal combustion vehicles. This is especially true considering a possible if not likely contraction that will surely lower production of EV’s. Commodities are crashing now further denting consumer choice for EV’s.

EV’s are not especially green to make nor to power considering the resources involved. The renewable contribution to the power grid is low generally so EV’s are being powered for the most part by fossil fuels with all the energy conversion losses involved with changing energy carriers (fossil fuels to electricity to battery to transport).

I believe in EV’s as a niche technology. In the right application I think they will be a benefit to society. In a location with high AltE resources they can allow utilization of variability with charging strategies. Charge at night on a windy night when draw is low for an area with significant wind power as an example. In this circumstance EV’s would be advantageous. EV’s can offer resilience to fuel shocks. They can be incorporated into home applications as a power source if needed. There are lots of possibilities

What you can’t convince me of is an AltE and EV world. The particulars of the whole concept of an AltE and EV’s dominated post carbon world do not add up. The scale of this transition is beyond realistic as to be nothing more than technological fantasy. AltE and EV’s can never function without fossil fuels in the mix. They are not self-replicating nor will they ever be.

If the technology proved out and the ability to scale where there I do not see the time element being satisfied. We are quickly running out of time. Society is hitting multiple limits and crossing ecological boundaries of no return.

What you techno-optimist should be focusing on is finding ways to incorporate your beloved technology into mitigation and adaptation policies for the dangerous times ahead. You should be focusing on ways to get your fellow man to practice relative sacrifice and live with less knowing that less is in the future. Blind techno-optimism is a dead end street that will waste precious resources in a failed way of life.

apneaman on Thu, 6th Aug 2015 4:29 pm 



Currently, what percentage of the worlds passengers are EV’s? How many cars need to be built to matter?
What happens when/if it is scaled up? How much more land has to be torn up for the minerals to build them? All mining, heavy transport and most manufacturing are done with fossil fuels. So there’s that. What would the waste stream look like at 10%, 30%, 50% EV’s? Start researching the current waste stream for all our high tech goodies as it stands now. Then do the math. So at scale we mitigate (ha ha) global warming, increase efficiency (and spend the savings on other crap) and destroy more habitat thus increasing the speed of the 6th mass extinction (were on the list). A Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.

The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth