Is the future already here?

[Long Run]

No more oil, no more driving, no more garages at home (well, we will still have these to keep all of our junk):

All fossil-fuel vehicles will vanish in 8 years in twin ‘death spiral’ for big oil and big autos, says study that’s shocking the industries

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph
Tuesday, May 16, 2017

No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years. The entire market for land transport will switch to electrification, leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century.

This is the futuristic forecast by Stanford University economist Tony Seba. His report, with the deceptively bland title Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030, has gone viral in green circles and is causing spasms of anxiety in the established industries.

Seba’s premise is that people will stop driving altogether. They will switch en masse to self-drive electric vehicles (EVs) that are ten times cheaper to run than fossil-based cars, with a near-zero marginal cost of fuel and an expected lifespan of 1 million miles.

Only nostalgics will cling to the old habit of car ownership. The rest will adapt to vehicles on demand. It will become harder to find a petrol station, spares, or anybody to fix the 2,000 moving parts that bedevil the internal combustion engine. Dealers will disappear by 2024.

Cities will ban human drivers once the data confirms how dangerous they can be behind a wheel. This will spread to suburbs, and then beyond. There will be a “mass stranding of existing vehicles”. The value of second-hard cars will plunge. You will have to pay to dispose of your old vehicle.

It is a twin “death spiral” for big oil and big autos, with ugly implications for some big companies on the London Stock Exchange unless they adapt in time.

* * *
The next generation of cars will be “computers on wheels”. Google, Apple, and Foxconn have the disruptive edge, and are going in for the kill. Silicon Valley is where the auto action is, not Detroit, Wolfsburg, or Toyota City.

The shift, according to Seba, is driven by technology, not climate policies. Market forces are bringing it about with a speed and ferocity that governments could never hope to achieve.

“We are on the cusp of one of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruptions of transportation in history,” Prof Seba said. “Internal combustion engine vehicles will enter a vicious cycle of increasing costs.”

The “tipping point” will arrive over the next two to three years as EV battery ranges surpass 200 miles and electric car prices in the US drop to $30,000. By 2022 the low-end models will be down to $20,000. After that, the avalanche will sweep all before it.

* * *

“Our research and modelling indicate that the $10 trillion annual revenues in the existing vehicle and oil supply chains will shrink dramatically,” Prof Seba said.

While the professor’s timing may be off by a few years, there is little doubt about the general direction.

India is drawing up plans to phase out all petrol and diesel cars by 2032, leap-frogging China in an electrification race across Asia.* * *

* * *

OPEC, Russia, and the oil-exporting states are now caught in a squeeze and will probably be forced to extend output caps into 2018 to stop prices falling. Shale fracking in the US is now so efficient, and rebounding so fast, that it may cap oil prices in a range of US$45 to $55 until the end of the decade. By then the historic window will be closing.

Experts will argue over Seba’s claims. His broad point is that multiple technological trends are combining in a perfect storm. The simplicity of the EV model is breath-taking. The Tesla S has 18 moving parts, one hundred times fewer than a combustion engine car. “Maintenance is essentially zero. That is why Tesla is offering infinite-mile warranties. You can drive it to the moon and back and they will still warranty it,” Prof Seba said.

Self-drive “vehicles on demand” will be running at much higher levels of daily use than today’s cars and will last for 500,000 to 1 million miles each.

It has long been known that EVs are four times more efficient than petrol or diesel cars, which lose 80 per cent of their power in heat. What changes the equation is the advent of EV models with the acceleration and performance of a Lamborghini costing five or 10 times less to buy, and at least 10 times less to run.

* * *

The effect is not confined to cars. Trucks will switch in tandem. Over 70 per cent of US haulage routes are already within battery range, and batteries are getting better each year.

EVs will increase U.S. electricity demand by 18 per cent but that does not imply the need for more capacity. They will draw power at times of peak supply and release it during peak demand. They are themselves a storage reservoir, helping to smooth the effects of intermittent solar and wind, and to absorb excess base-load from power plants.

* * * There will be losers. Whole countries will spin into crisis. The world’s geopolitical order will be reshaped almost overnight. But humanity as a whole should enjoy an enormous welfare gain.

http://www.financialpost.com/m/wp/news/ ... e-industry

[Crackpot]

smoking crack it will take 10 years just for the majority of vehicles on the road now to "refresh" and viable electric vehicles are still years off. The guy may as well be talking about flying cars


ETA Did I mention EV infrastructure is all but non existent?

[dales]

How are these mass quantities of electricity to be generated?

Me thinks partly by fossil fuel.

The guy who authored this tripe is a crackpot (with apologies to you, CP)

[Econoline]

I don't doubt that within a decade there will be some cities (mostly in Europe, but possibly also in China and India) which will ban the use of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles. But within the U.S. I think the author's time frame will be way off, probably by a factor of 3 or 4. And yes, charging infrastructure and increased generating capacity are both important parts of the problem...which we've barely begun to solve.

[Crackpot]

35 years is a far more realistic number. We are still about 7 years off from the first "level 5" autonomous vehicles hitting the road and that is assuming they actually can "learn" the wide range of weather and terrain needed.

[Crackpot]

need I point out these same bozos were saying we'd all be driving electric as of 7 years ago?

[Crackpot]

Hell due to the problems with my truck I mentioned in another thread I've been looking at new cars and while level 1 and 2 autonomous has become fairly commonplace (level 3 will be hitting soon) electric and Hybrid options are scarce. Far more scarce than I would have expected. I was expecting my next car to be Hybrid options just aren't available.

[Bicycle Bill]

I'd put this in the same "pie in the sky" file that also contains all the articles from the past forty years about personal flying cars, 200-mph "bullet trains" along the Northeast Corridor, colonies on the moon, supersonic passenger airliners, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Reagan's "Star Wars" ABM system), the way nuclear power plants were going to make electricity so cheap it wouldn't even pay to meter it, and how automation was going to increase production and reduce costs so much that we wouldn't have to work a 40-hour week but would still be able to improve our lives and our standard of living.


Hell, we don't even have Marty McFly's hoverboard yet!  

-"BB"-

[Crackpot]

Quick Primer

5 levels of autonomous driving
lvl 1 = adaptive cruise
lvl 2 = + emergency breaking, park assist
lvl 3 = limited self drive (high human input/override required)
lvl 4 = self drive (limited human input/override available)
lvl 5 = total autonomous (no human input)

[Crackpot]

It's far closer than that Bill. level 4 will likely be available within the decade (availiable and saturation are totally different things) and level 5 will follow not to long after. I just don't see level 5 as being as useful or desirable outside of city centers as many believe.

[Crackpot]

sorry for going all wes in this thread

[Crackpot]

Just to make it official:

[Big RR]

CP--from what I have read, the airlines have pretty much been at level 4 for a decade or more, yet there was no progression to level 5 (and I would think a company that charges for pillows would like nothing better than to get rid of the highest paid employees on the planes). If they haven't adapted to level 5, I doubt individuals will.

[Crackpot]

There's a difference between a few and hundreds at whim of a single machine and from what I have heard they still can't fully automate landing. Aviation also has the unique problem where failure almost always means death vs automobiles means being stranded somewhere

[Big RR]

My understanding is that a flight can be fully automated including takeoff and landing, but that few are doing so (less than 10%). As for the danger of failure, certainly they could at least eliminate one person from the cockpit to deal with emergency failures, but all commercial passenger airlines have at least two pilots. One of the things I think the airlines realize is that it would be difficult to sell automated flights to the public, which I think would be the same problem with selling level 5 cars. As someone who is not even a fan of automatic transmissions, I know I wouldn't like to go in a car and let it drive me somewhere--and I think a lot of people would feel the same way.

As for automobile failure--consider a car speeding through the streets with the occupants unable to stop it (or even slow it down enough to safely exit)--that would undoubtedly result in death.

[Crackpot]

Yes flights can be fully automated much like cars now can be fully automated the problem come in when dealing with all circumstances. It is one thing to say it can land on its own and something else entirely to say it can land on its own in all circumstances.

Autonomous will work once people learn to accept it. Once you spend time with it you begin to trust it. Once you get widely available and reliable level 4 level 5 isn't a big jump. The problem with level 5 comes when you force it outside of the city where things can be largely controlled (outside of weather anomalies). I can easily see a future of level 5 "city only cars" and level 5 capable cars for the rest. That is capable of full auto but still capable of manual control.

[BoSoxGal]

It should have stayed the 70s forever, IMHO.

[Crackpot]

With that fuel economy and cars that unsafe?

[rubato]

http://tonyseba.com/biography/

Tony Seba is a "lecturer" at Stanfords "Continuing Studies Program" which is akin to UCs "University Extension" and not part of the University itself. He is also not an economist.

This is how he describes himself on his own website:

Biography
Tony Seba is a keynote speaker, author, thought leader, serial entrepreneur, and educator.

Trumped-up fluff. I would not waste a lot of time on anything he says or does.

yrs,
rubato

[Econoline]

It should have stayed the 70s forever, IMHO.

With that fuel economy and cars that unsafe?

Not to mention that disco music!

...and those '70s fashions....