Hypothetical: how fast could a "complete" EV transition happen?

[srs5694]

There is a black swan, however. And that is the impact of heavy duty, commercial EV. Here the reporting is really lousy. Nobody has good numbers on how many commercial EVs there are. Last year I did an analysis and found that electric buses alone could account for about 4 times the oil displacement of all light EVs. I suspect this ratio continues and is even high because of substantial underreporting in this space. So I believe conservatively the total impact on oil is about 5 times that of LD EVs. This gets us to a potential incremental impact of about 600 kb/d this year.

I've seen similar analyses that suggest that widespread adoption of electric buses could be a really big deal with respect to oil consumption. There's been some recent news in a similar area: Amazon has just announced that they'll be buying 100,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian:

Amazon will order 100,000 electric delivery vans from EV startup Rivian, Jeff Bezos says

This took a lot of people by surprise, since Rivian had not previously announced a delivery van variant of their trucks.

 

[StealthP3D]

It is going to take quite a while to get to the poitn where greater than 50% of vehicles are electric vehicles, but even when that does occur there will still be ICE vehicles on the road for a long time as the life cycle for a vehicle is typically 10+ years. Here is an interesting chart from the paper - Old Pistons Die Hard

That's a laughable chart. It shows more ICE cars in 2050 than in 2010! Not going to happen.

I suppose you are unaware that the projections come from a "think tank" funded by petroleum dollars?

 

[240W]

it says global, i think it's possible

 

[PhantomX]

Wouldn't one of the key obstacles being availability of electricity? Unless there are strong commitments to build generators, wouldn't we actually not have enough electricity to charge all cars if everyone is to switch over to EV?

 

[Ulmo]

15 years until all new vehicles are EV's, and 25 years for old ICE vehicles to attrition out, with thin tails for new (ICE) up to 20 years for specialty conditions and 32 years (old ICE) for specialty attrition. We could shave around the edges, but mostly it's going to be half a generation to really see it take off high.

We're almost at the can never go back stage, and it has enough inertia it will make it there for sure.

EVs are here to stay until the next thing that replaces them.

THE ONLY THING THAT COULD RUIN EV ADOPTION IS MAKING THEM SO ABUNDANTLY MANDATORY THAT COMPANIES THINK THEY CAN CHARGE WHATEVER THEY WANT FOR THEM, WHICH WOULD CAUSE POOR PEOPLE NEVER TO AFFORD THEM AND CAUSE THE BIGGEST BACKLASH IMAGINABLE. That is actually possible since at the same time EVs are rising in popularity, road diet and massive anti-car taxes are being waged against citizens. The only way for adoption to happen organically is not to force it. At first, a little kick in the butt to get it going was good, but that phase is over. The free market is the strongest and fastest tool to success. Mob control causes anti-competition, and slows and even reverses adoption. But I predict the Trump mentality of free people will prevail enough for the mandatory nature of EVs to be held back until it makes sense. There may be some city centers where new registrations for ICE can be restricted and old ICE registrations grandfathered, but pushing that too hard would be catastrophic.

Sensible times to implement mandatory EVs in all but city centers is basically grandfathering the last 3% of existing ICE until they disappear. Historic vehicles of course would still exist.

Ok, now do China export boats, which today cause more pollution than all cars.

 

[Ulmo]

@RubberToe

Assuming I didn't mess up this chart, it compares the running total of production for each year up to week 36, which is the latest week for which 2019 data was available. It looks like less gasoline was produced in 2019 to date than in any of the past three years.

This isn't a large drop, and may not be due to EV adoption. But maybe it's something to keep an eye on.

Some sectors (construction) suffered cutbacks in 2019, whereas other sectors (those moving into finished buildings and starting work) experienced gains. Likely, the new workers of new tenants got to keep their jobs longer than a few months typical with construction, so got to arrange shorter commutes on average. Add to that the adoption of EVs in California, and I think the EV adoption is in there somewhere, but not the whole story.

 

[Ulmo]

That's a laughable chart. It shows more ICE cars in 2050 than in 2010! Not going to happen.

I suppose you are unaware that the projections come from a "think tank" funded by petroleum dollars?

The other crazy thing about the chart is it shows a decline in growth in 2030s and declining cars in 2050. What do they think we'll fly around in, asteroids? Superbabies? Puffs of ions? What the hell? Car demand is going up.

 

[Ulmo]

Wouldn't one of the key obstacles being availability of electricity? Unless there are strong commitments to build generators, wouldn't we actually not have enough electricity to charge all cars if everyone is to switch over to EV?

Nothing will stop us. It's not a problem. We have abundant sunlight and nuclear power plant technology to build, and we will build it. Battery production needs to ramp up to fill in the dark nights and dark days, but that will happen. A faster path to that future is charging cars in work parking lots during sun hours with solar power.

Now, I would like to communicate to all of the rest of us that we found out wind power is bad since it causes noise pollution, weather changes (if not upwind of where it's used), and bird death. (Don't listen to the utilities bitch about frequency and variability issues; they are just interfering with the battery build out on purpose to buy that fake excuse, but it is a totally fake excuse; it's just an engineering problem that engineers can easily solve, i.e., install batteries.) Other than that, we're well on our way.

I have a nit that someone should put up space shades between sun and Earth to counteract the net warming effect of using nuclear (or other mined) power (i.e., matter to energy (heat) transformations, releasing stored energy). The longer we wait, the less of a nit it is and more of a big deal. SpaceX: we need adjustable (openable, closable) space shades between Sun and Earth to counteract nuclear power. Another way to do it is use nuclear as a bridge to building out 100% solar, overbuild the solar, slow down building it for a bit and shoot out heat from the solar plants into space, until Earth cools a bit, then when our energy use grows, we already have the solar panels. That might be a cheaper way to balance the extra heat caused by nuclear.

 

[srs5694]

Wouldn't one of the key obstacles being availability of electricity? Unless there are strong commitments to build generators, wouldn't we actually not have enough electricity to charge all cars if everyone is to switch over to EV?

Depending on when EVs are charged, the current grid can absorb an awful lot of EVs before it's strained in any significant way. I don't recall the exact figure, but I think it's something close to 50% EVs before more generating capacity is required, at least on average in the USA. This analysis assumes charging most EVs at off-peak times, which mostly means overnight. This is manageable, and some utilities are experimenting with programs to encourage this sort of charging behavior.

Of course, that's based on the current electrical grid, and much of the point of shifting to EVs is for the reduction in CO2 emissions. If you're still using a power grid that's dominated by natural gas plants, that produces a relatively modest reduction in CO2 emissions. Thus, to really cut CO2 emissions, those CO2-fired plants will need to be replaced by something else that's cleaner; and to move beyond ~50% EVs, more generating capacity will need to be built. This is far from an insurmountable hurdle, though. The solar panels on my roof provide about 80% of the electricity I consume, including for my car, and they'll pay for themselves in a few years. Put solar panels on enough roofs and you'll generate plenty of power for EVs. (Although solar generation is obviously time-locked in an inconvenient way, so you'd need to pair that with power storage or otherwise fiddle around, like by shifting EV charging times to daylight hours. My point isn't that we should rely 100% on solar power to charge our cars, but that adding solar generation can provide a significant part of the extra power generation needed to get beyond ~50% EV adoption and/or to reduce the carbon footprint of transportation.)

 

[wycolo]

Where are EVs located during peak solar hours of the day? That is where EV charging should take place. This implies that employee parking lots etc are where solar powered EV chargers should be located, at least for commuters. For retirees their cars can likely be charged at home one day for use on the following day. These ev_miles are essentially removed from the grid (free rides).
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[arnis]

ICE passenger vehicle sales will start to drop soon, that will take less than 8 years. Though I believe not before 2024.
Heavy long-distance road transportation will stay on fossils for much longer, I believe we will see the peak at around 2030.
And when fall starts to happen it will take around 15 years for 90% change from fossil to non-fossil (imagine S-curve)
Vehicle lifecycle will still be at least 15 years before scrapping.

I'm taking into account Paris Climate agreement, European Union long term 2050 goal (and how much money is being invested right now), China being a leader for most of the time and the fact that Trump will be retired soon.
Some of the solution is biomethane - unstoppable byproduct. Is actually green, but not EV and there is not a lot of it for everybody. This is why I said from fossil to non-fossil.