Bloomberg - Peak Oil and Electric Cars

[Bgarret]

Oregon develops plan for removing coal from energy production.

Oregon just became the first state in America to ban coal | Fusion

in 5 years, how many legislatures will continue to ban Tesla from direct sales vs. how many will develop a plan to ban coal as an energy source?....and how will history judge them?

 

[The Blue Owl]

Oregon develops plan for removing coal from energy production.

Oregon just became the first state in America to ban coal | Fusion

in 5 years, how many legislatures will continue to ban Tesla from direct sales vs. how many will develop a plan to ban coal as an energy source?....and how will history treat judge them?

I want a state to force coal sellers to use franchised dealers, and ban the selling of ICE cars.

 

[JRP3]

Burning diesel in a portable generator has no advantage.

Actually it might. No wasted time and fuel idling and the generator can run at an efficient rate near full load only when charging if sized correctly.

 

[jhm]

http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/common_images/articles/39/World%20oil%20demand%20by%20sector%202012.png

This graphic is useful. About 16% of crude oil, or around 15 mbpd, is used for non-energy purposes like petrochemicals and asphalt. The rest of it about 80 mbpd needs to be displaced by renewable energy and storage. If batteries are needed for all of this displacement, then I estimate that the world will need 4 to 5 TWh of annual battery production capacity. This is about 80 to 100 Gigafactory scale output. As density doubles every decade, the output measured in GWh will double as well. So 30 to 50 Gigafactory-sized plants can grow into this. This would be an investment of $150B to $250B at Tesla's cost. This is a surpringly small investment to take oil out of the energy market. When not in the midst of a glut the oil and gas industry invests about $350B per year to replace and grow reserves. So right now we can think of Tesla's first Gigafactory as a 2% to 3% stake in the battery capacity to replace the oil industry. It's a virtual oil reserve on order of 25 billion barrels over the next 30 years, as much as the US oil reserve. Not bad for a $5B investment.

 

[kenliles]

http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/common_images/articles/39/World%20oil%20demand%20by%20sector%202012.png
This graphic is useful.

I find this flowchart useful for the overall US energy use

View attachment Energy_US_2014.pdf

 

[jhm]

The problem is with heavy equipment (the really big stuff already has electromotive-diesel powertrains), is the charging structure. Burning diesel in a portable generator has no advantage.
A modern farm tractor runs an 8 hour shift or longer. They can carry enough liquid fuel for 8 hours, but that size battery isn't that clever in the near future. Sustained >100hp use would require a physically massive battery.

Trivia, Porsche bid on the Tiger Tank in WWII. Ferdinand set it up for diesel-electric to eliminate the gearbox. It failed during the trials right in front of Hitler who chose a more conventional design.

Solar energy and batteries can be quite portable. Miners are increasingly using solar to displace diesel generation, and batteries round this out. Companies are developing efficient logistics for deploying and redeploying temporary solar installations.


Even where there is insufficient space for temp solar, how many Powerpacks can you put on a flat trailer? Just at today's battery density you could probably get 2 to 4 MWh at 1 MW. With that, you can have a mobile Supercharger station. Just like ordering up a stream concrete trucks to get the job done, you can order up a stream of power trailers to keep all the equipment going. Better yet, you can design equipment with swappable power packs. Then you just order trailers full of precharged power packs, and swap them out as needed.

These are totally solvable logistics problems. As the density of packs go up and the price comes down, the economics and logistics only improve. Additionally the commercial electric truck will be built with these logistics in mind.