Comment Re:About BEVs' inmient inevitability (Score 2) 373
I can undesrtand why people living in countries like the USoA, China, Japan, the EU, Australia, the UK, Canda and the like may think that Fully Electric Vehicles are inevitable.
But, as a Velezuelan, with friends in LatAm, India, and the Magreb, I can offer a different perspective...
This is predominantly a peak demand problem, thankfully EVs don't charge (and don't have to charge) during peak demand. While EVs will reshape the power generation, the additional power generation capacity is expected to be within 3 to 5% and energy share will be ~10%. See analysis for India.
Do everyone lives in a house where they can install a charger? What about us plebs that live in apartments? How much a public charger will cost? Or the works to install a charger in our parking spots will cost?
Charging in apartment will be the key issue to address, they way it is happening in India is common slow/medium speed cheap charges are getting installed. These are then charged to the vehicle owners like any other already metered items (water, backup power generator, etc).
Toyota's hybrid strategy is a winner. Make BEVs for developed markets, Make plug-in-Hybrids (if serial better, instead of the Prius' paralell hybrid krap) for less sophisticated markets, and make ICEs where electrification is simply not possible.
Ah, and another thing, if any car maker is reading, and wants to help the environment (both air quality and global warming) ditch gasoline ICEs across all your range and go to 100% Natural gas cars.
The biggest problem with this approach is hybrid vehicles don't scale down well and at least in India the mass market is small cars, i.e. sub 4m and ~1000Kg. In fact couple of small box with battery and motor like cars have been outselling the few hybrids which have been available in India 10x (or more) as the hybrids are much bigger and cost 2 to 3x.
In India there is a significant shift to electric two wheelers and with the introduction of good quality small electric vehicles a similar shift has started for small cars. So electric vehicles will have a significant share by 2035, say 30 to 50%. It may not ever hit 100%, but I can see EV become the majority soon after.
Why you ask? We need to keep extracting oil/petroleum,
[snip]
But wait! There is more! We also need to keep drilling for natural gas itself! Not because the natural gass associated oil/petroleum is not enough...
While share of renewable in power generation keeps increasing, nobody has a solution for 100% renewable and gas powered electricity plants will play a role. Similarly oil/petroleum will also be used where it makes sense in large hybrid vehicles, aviation and even power generation. Even if there is a decline in overall usage, it will be sufficient enough to meet the non-energy demands. I think it is coal which will (and should) decline.
