Serious oil price problems from 2012

[touchring]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

Actually I'd argue "there goes the central business district".

In some ways you're right, but it also depends on the distance from working places. A suburb that is too far away from job places (e.g. >25 miles) isn't going to do well. Electric cars don't move fast and a single charge will last half the distance as a full tank, not to mention you have to charge over night.

[flintlock]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

There are only 2 big uses of oil the US can cut that would make a difference: Passenger car & Heavy duty truck

Is this true? How much oil do we use in heating homes? I have no idea. But I do see HUGE room for improvement in home energy use. Just curious.

[flintlock]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

Yes, of course every case is different. A lot of suburban communities that sprung up overnight as one of those "build it and they will come" type places will probably flounder first. I just read a lot of stuff from urbanites who can't see why we all don't want to live in town where you can just walk to everything. My point is we won't all fit within walking distance, unless we have cities like this:



My cousin moved into the city to live with his fiancee. He loves it despite being broken into numerous times, walking in on intruders, and most recently, his wife was beaten up by a pimp. They go nowhere unless armed. In his email out to everyone announcing the last incident, he warned he didn't want to hear any "I told you so" lectures from the rest of us.

[ggirod]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

In this considered treatment of the Saudi Arabia Oil supply issue, it appears that they do, indeed, have the spare capacity for now. That doesn't mean that there is no long term problem, just that there is enough to cushion supply crunches.

[c1ue]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

Hybrid is probably the best 'replacement' solution, except for the fantastic expense of having both gasoline and electric engines, plus batteries, all in one vehicle.

All electric is a really terrible idea.

One note for all those electric car fans: besides the long recharge time, once your battery is drained, you're screwed.

You can't go to the nearest gas station and bring back a can - the car must be towed to a charging area where it will then sit for many hours.

Really speaking gasoline will have to hit $20/gallon or more before electric vehicles are really practical in any way, and around $13/gallon for hybrids (i.e. calculate the price premium difference vs. the hybrid/electric vehicle's lifetime cost to own vs. a comparably sized gasoline vehicle.

CNG can work, but there simply is no network of places you can fill up. And equally, you can't bring back a can of CNG should you run out.

On the other hand, for all the above 'new' types of vehicles except CNG, fuel theft becomes nearly impossible, though stripping likely becomes even more lucrative.

[touchring]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

One note for all those electric car fans: besides the long recharge time, once your battery is drained, you're screwed.

You can't go to the nearest gas station and bring back a can - the car must be towed to a charging area where it will then sit for many hours.

"Oh gosh, my car went flat!"

[zoog]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

Is this true? How much oil do we use in heating homes? I have no idea. But I do see HUGE room for improvement in home energy use. Just curious.

According to this chart from eia.doe.gov, our petroleum usage is 72% transportation, 22% industrial, 5% residential and commercial, 1% electric power.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

According to this chart from eia.doe.gov, our petroleum usage is 72% transportation, 22% industrial, 5% residential and commercial, 1% electric power.

This sounds about right. Home heating oil is usually only prevalent in older homes that are off the grid. This means it's used particularly in the northeast. Over time, as the population center of the US moves further southwest, the usage as a percentage has gone down.



Incidentally, as a consequence of heating oil being concentrated in the northeast, per capita carbon emissions are greater there:

[dcarrigg]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

I have been a skeptic on electric car penetration hitting targets I've seen laid out, but I am curious as to what thoughts you have there...thx!

Even despite the rare earth argument (which is a strong one), how efficient is it to burn a bunch of coal or natural gas to create electricity to power a car and to power it's toaster coil and blower fan to create heat during the 6-9 months per year that one might want it in the colder areas? Electric cars only really make sense to me (discounting the rare earth piece) when they are fed by nuclear power (or renewable sources if enough ever come online to handle the transportation load).

[FRED]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

If this is a topic of interest to readers, if you haven't already read EJ's book thepostcatastropheeconomy you may like this section on alternative fuels and transportation. Here's an excerpt:

New cars

At the tail end of the FIRE era, after the dollar declined 40% between 2002 and 2006, oil prices increased to $147 and gasoline to over $4 in a burst of cost-push inflation, innovative fuel-efficient cars made a brief comeback in the U.S. But the inflation quickly ebbed when the depression started in 2008, and alternative fuel efficient cars, such as gasoline hybrids, were hit especially hard due to the price premium and plunging gasoline prices that fell below $2.

During the Transitional Economy, the number of cars on the road in the U.S. declined for the first time—ever. Many two-car families become one-car families, with the smaller of the two cars favored, and driving is reduced. During the TECI Economy, the old fleet of cars left over from the FIRE Economy era—the average more than ten years old--begins to turn over. The forcing function for adoption will be declining purchasing power of wages in the U.S. to buy fuel, meaning for the first time in generations Americans will work more hours to pay for transportation that in the past because the dollar will not purchase as much energy as before.

The new cars will not be exotic hydrogen fuel cell cars but hybrids that burn diesel, the most abundant and cheaply available fuel in the U.S. Here’s a quick rundown of available technologies and why diesel hybrids will dominate.

Diesel

Diesel vehicles are associated with plumes of black smoke and smelly exhaust, but modern diesel engines and pollution control equipment make that perception obsolete. Nearly every auto manufacturer will offer diesel cars and trucks for sale in the U.S. by 2010. With high fuel mileage typically in excess of 50 MPG and new methods of cleaning up emissions, diesel is the fuel of the future. When the first diesel hybrids hit the market in 2010 with 75 MPG, the next big trend in bringing down both the fuel inefficiency and emissions of the American passenger car fleet will have begun. Gradually the FIRE Economy gas hogs will be replaced by diesel fueled in trucks and autos.

Later, after the TECI Economy gets a footing and America regains its competitive standing in the world economy, and the infrastructure has evolved to support it, Americans can look forward to a whole new generation of hydrogen and LGN powered electric and plug-in hybrid cars.

Pure electric

Pure electrics have been pitched by focusing on two key advantages, zero tailpipe emissions and speed off the line. The first advantage is debatable because the electrical power needed to charge the car’s batteries had to be generated someplace, and in the U.S. that place is most likely to be a coal fired power plant. The car’s carbon footprint is made many miles away. Worse, the sum of the inefficiencies of electricity generation, transmission, and battery charging make the electric no more energy efficient than an internal combustion engine car. An electric car that runs off a fuel cell—an on-board electricity power plant that usually runs on hydrogen or methane—is far more efficient. But as mentioned before, lack of availability of fuel and low energy density of hydrogen fuel make these solutions nonviable today.

A key performance difference between an electric motor and internal combustion engine is that an internal combustion engine reaches maximum torque when the engine is turning at a rate of thousands of revolutions per minute. This makes internal combustion engine autos relatively slow off the line compared to even a puny electric car because electric motors reach maximum torque at zero RPM. But the off-the-line advantage is a mixed blessing. Once a pure electric gets up to speed, torque drops off dramatically requiring elaborate gearing to provide torque for passing.

The pure electric car is the very first type of car ever made, back in late 1800s. The reason they have never come into widespread use is not only for lack of needed battery technology, although that is part of the problem. Pure electrics have three killer limitations.

The worse limitation is that they cannot be used while they are being charged. To use an electric car you have to plan ahead, and drivers are not used to having to calculate whether they’ll have enough juice to complete a trip. If you unexpectedly need to use a pure electric car and it is not charged, you’re out of luck. It’s not like running out of gas and you can get some more and quickly be back on the road. You will have to wait, usually for hours, before you can use the vehicle. That limitation is the primary reason pure electrics have languished for over 100 years, and no amount of battery technology will fix it. The charge time can be shortened but never bought down to the five-minute recharge time of a car that burns diesel or gasoline.

Other limitations are heating and cooling the passenger compartment. The passenger compartment of an auto is an especially difficult space to cool: it’s kind of rolling glass greenhouse with usually dark surfaces that collect heat inside. Car air conditioners have the capacity of home air conditioners. They consume prodigious quantities of energy. For an electric car, that translates into vastly reduced range if the batteries are used to power the A/C in the summer. Heating an electric car in the winter is even worse. It’s equivalent to shorting out the batteries to heat an element to warm the passengers. Having to choose between the heat or running out of power needed to get home from a trip that was not carefully estimated by the driver beforehand is enough to make the electric car a non-starter as a replacement for pure internal combustion or hybrid cars.

Motorcycle riders are not heated or cooled. Motorcycles are an ideal application of pure electric power. Santa Cruz, California–based Zero Motorcycles, founded by Neal Saiki, makes the only pure electric motorcycles that are true substitutes for gasoline powered bikes. They are quiet and are screaming fast. With a range of only 60 miles and needing four hours to charge, they are not intended to as sole source of personal transportation.

The term hybrid refers to propulsion systems made up of a combination of an electric motor and a smaller than usual internal combustion engine. Fuel efficiency over a traditional internal combustion engine auto is gained by combining the power of both engines during acceleration and re-capture some of energy normally lost in braking; braking energy is used to recharge the batteries that drive the electric motors. Some of the efficiency gains of an electric car are gained without the primary disadvantage of a pure electric car: they can be used without pre-planning.

[shiny!]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

Random thoughts:

I do not think I would ever want a silent electric motorcycle. It's hard enough with car drivers not seeing bikes, but if they can't hear them either...

Once again US auto makers fail to see the coming trends. They're all going to gear up to offer politically correct electric options, when the most viable mid-term solution, as EJ says, is clean diesel. Volkswagon is making a diesel Golf for the US market, but only as an expensive luxury car. If they would make a plain vanilla version I would consider one. All I need is automatic transmission and A/C.

One of the biggest problems is that car makers still think in a box: A car must be a box of 4-wheels and seat 4-5 passengers, when for the most part, cars carry a single driver with 0-1 passengers. In this sense, even economy cars are very large and very wasteful in natural resources. Arcimoto is building a 2-person electric commuter car that has only three wheels. Three-wheeled vehicles are classified as motorcycles and therefor don't have to adhere to the safety requirements that cars do. Thus they can be made much lighter than a car while still being safe.

I figure there will be a few diesel cars coming out as novelties at first, then the price will come down over several years. For now I ride my 91.5 mpg scooter as much as I can, and use the old Grand Marquis on days I can't take the scooter or need to haul stuff. A 150cc scooter can easily hold its own on 45-50 mph city streets.

[FRED]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

Random thoughts:

I do not think I would ever want a silent electric motorcycle. It's hard enough with car drivers not seeing bikes, but if they can't hear them either...

Once again US auto makers fail to see the coming trends. They're all going to gear up to offer politically correct electric options, when the most viable mid-term solution, as EJ says, is clean diesel. Volkswagon is making a diesel Golf for the US market, but only as an expensive luxury car. If they would make a plain vanilla version I would consider one. All I need is automatic transmission and A/C.

One of the biggest problems is that car makers still think in a box: A car must be a box of 4-wheels and seat 4-5 passengers, when for the most part, cars carry a single driver with 0-1 passengers. In this sense, even economy cars are very large and very wasteful in natural resources. Arcimoto is building a 2-person electric commuter car that has only three wheels. Three-wheeled vehicles are classified as motorcycles and therefor don't have to adhere to the safety requirements that cars do. Thus they can be made much lighter than a car while still being safe.

I figure there will be a few diesel cars coming out as novelties at first, then the price will come down over several years. For now I ride my 91.5 mpg scooter as much as I can, and use the old Grand Marquis on days I can't take the scooter or need to haul stuff. A 150cc scooter can easily hold its own on 45-50 mph city streets.

Here's an iTulip prediction: In the future you'll be able to download the equivalent of ring tones for your electric car or motorcycle that plays through speakers for the purpose of warning pedestrians and other drivers of your presence. All vehicles will come with a default tone that you can upgrade. The volume you can play your tone at will be limited by state law.

What can the US learn from the Europeans? Diesel autos get approximately 30% better mileage than gasoline fueled autos. Diesel fuel costs about 30% more than gasoline in the US, so the cost advantage of 30% more fuel efficient diesel engines is negated. In Europe gasoline has been taxed to subsidize the cost of diesel for decades. Diesel fuel costs about the same as gasoline. In Europe, diesel autos cost approximately 30% less to operate than gasoline fueled autos. As a result, 70% of personal autos in Europe are diesel.

[wayiwalk]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

I think the car makers listen to the big oil companies. In this country, the big oil companies are getting out of retail, meaning, Exxon is getting rid of their retail gas outlets. There are many business reasons for this, but a practical reason is that they see the change to come in gas retail.

In time, quick recharging (maybe "topping off) lasting 5 minutes will come to be. But imagine a gas station of today trying to pull that off....instead of the 1 -3 minute fill up and payment scenario, cars will be in the station twice as long....which means, for the same number of cars on the road, you'd need twice the square footage on the property to fit the cars that are charging there (because it takes longer).

Big box retailers have expressed interest in adding recharging hook ups in their parking lots, possibly even for free, with the goal that the free topping off while you shop is the loss-leader.

I doubt US auto manufacturers are deaf/dumb/blind to these changes that other large US businesses are planning for.

[FRED]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

I think the car makers listen to the big oil companies. In this country, the big oil companies are getting out of retail, meaning, Exxon is getting rid of their retail gas outlets. There are many business reasons for this, but a practical reason is that they see the change to come in gas retail.

In time, quick recharging (maybe "topping off) lasting 5 minutes will come to be. But imagine a gas station of today trying to pull that off....instead of the 1 -3 minute fill up and payment scenario, cars will be in the station twice as long....which means, for the same number of cars on the road, you'd need twice the square footage on the property to fit the cars that are charging there (because it takes longer).

Big box retailers have expressed interest in adding recharging hook ups in their parking lots, possibly even for free, with the goal that the free topping off while you shop is the loss-leader.

I doubt US auto manufacturers are deaf/dumb/blind to these changes that other large US businesses are planning for.

More from EJ's book:

A company called Better Place is developing one solution to the battery recharge time problem. The idea is to make modular, pre-charged batteries available at service stations. The EV driver pulls up to an automated system that exchanges the car’s discharged batteries for new ones that are already charged. The whole process takes less time than that needed for refilling a fuel tank with gasoline or diesel.

While this sounds great in theory, as usual the devil’s in the details. Battery replacement stations only solve the pure electric auto owner’s problem if there are enough stations within a driver’s range to keep the auto going for long trip. Until the driver is assured that there are Better Place battery replacement stations in the middle of Montana, a cross-country drive is out of the question, and so the auto’s range is effectively limited to the area where recharging stations are available. This makes the Better Place model work better in smaller countries, such as Japan, or on islands, like Hawaii. Even so, government investment is necessary to overcome this chicken-and-egg problem: Pure electric manufacturers can’t build vehicles in volume until the recharging stations are in place to overcome the consumer’s objection to recharge wait times, and the service station owners, or Better Place itself, cannot make money on battery replacement services until there are enough pure electric autos on the road to create enough daily demand make the stations economics.

A more promising approach to EV battery charging that does not require massive infrastructure investment and can evolve slowly along with the EV industry, but one that will take many years to develop, is based on the “top off” recharge model. The idea is that EV drivers, like laptop and mobile phone users, want to keep their EV’s batteries mostly charged most of the time. They want to be able to top off their EV’s batteries when they are shopping at the mall or at work by plugging into a simple recharge station wherever they park, ten minutes here, two hours there. A clever Boston start-up called inCharge founded by Dror Oved is developing a product to do this.

For this reason hybrids will continue to be the fuel efficient design of choice for consumers for the next decade.

[srivatsan]

Re: Serious oil price problems from 2012

Fred et al:

I just brought a new car. I also read the book written by EJ. The big factors with my car buying experience are oil price shock, and utility (all other factors can be boiled down to these two). I found that if there is an oil price shock, either public transportation will improve or more two wheelers would be seen or optimistically both ;) . Either way, it would be better to buy a utility vehicle so that whenever the family goes out of city, then bigger car is worth it. For local transport, motor bikes ( I like drove in India when it was less scary ) would be kewl.

I went with Subaru Forester 2011. I like it

Cheers, Srivatsan.

If this is a topic of interest to readers, if you haven't already read EJ's book The Postcatastrophe Economy: Rebuilding America and Avoiding the Next Bubble you may like this section on alternative fuels and transportation. Here's an excerpt: