Comment Re: Japanese automakers absolutely dispise EVs (Score 1) 137
Ya, it's not going to happen instantly, it's going to be very slow like now, but within 10 years, it's going to start happening very fast.
The amount of energy we put into getting gasoline is almost enough to charge a BEV. An M3 could go 4 or 5 miles on the electricty used to refine a gallon of gas, if the natural gas used in refining that gallon went to a CCGT, you'd get enough electricity to move that M3 another 20 to 30 miles for every gallon of gasoline refined.
Gas stations have been decreasing for 50 years. There were almost twice a many 50 years ago, as today. There might be more overall pumps, because the 2 pump stations have been replaced by dozen pump stations with the same amount of staff.
the average lifespan of a new ICE car/truck is 12 years and even in California they are 75% of new sales. And, even in California, diesel usage is still going up, and the total BEVs are only 5% of the vehicles on the road.
Once that hits a certain percentage of vehicles on the road, I think it's 15%, is historically big industries have fallen into free falls and started changing very quickly. Things like natural ICE to mechanical refrigeration, cell phones, or horses to powered vehicles. Plenty of people said simliar things.
It has taken insane resources to keep oil so cheap. That's only worked because of the continuous growth in needs. Once that continous growth is gone, prices will start to increase and very unstable.
Just like other industries, as the economies of scale increase on batteries, they get cheaper and cheaper. We've got a lot more of the materials needed for batteries, then we've got oil. And we already recycle most of the batteries into new ones.
We are within a year of batteries being cheap enough that a BEV car is cheaper up front then a simliar ICE car. Trucks are going to take longer, but not that much longer.