Things are expensive

woodchucker said:
I'm not talking whether ev makes sense, in some ways it does, in some it doesn't.
what I am strictly talk about is the UNINTENDED consequence. So many times new laws come across and many will say why didn't they see that coming. This is not a law, but it does have an UNINTENDED consequence. The real danger is if the need drops so low, how many companies will survive. Do we head to a monopoly. so many ways of it playing out.
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Ah! Got it now. Thanks for further clarifying your comments. Understood.
 
Bah, a few million American motor vehicle operators are not the heart and soul of the oil industry. You're worrying about nothing. While we're likely to play more with electric vehicles moving forward, there are still entire continents that are rich with resources and feature populations many fold that of the US who will continue to burn petrol because they lack the infrastructure to support EVs. That will be the market for the oil companies, and the consumers will pay because it's no different in Calcutta than Dallas as long as the conglomerate gets their cut. The idea that the oil industry will lose all of its customers over electric cars in the US is simplistic. China, India, Brazil and the whole southern continent, Africa, Asia... They'll buy the gas long after we stop, and Exxon will oblige. You'll still be able to buy a tub of bearing grease when you need it. Whether you will still be able to buy a 1/2 lb of Angus beef on a bun is a much different question.
 
pontiac428 said:
Bah, a few million American motor vehicle operators are not the heart and soul of the oil industry. You're worrying about nothing. While we're likely to play more with electric vehicles moving forward, there are still entire continents that are rich with resources and feature populations many fold that of the US who will continue to burn petrol because they lack the infrastructure to support EVs. That will be the market for the oil companies, and the consumers will pay because it's no different in Calcutta than Dallas as long as the conglomerate gets their cut. The idea that the oil industry will lose all of its customers over electric cars in the US is simplistic. China, India, Brazil and the whole southern continent, Africa, Asia... They'll buy the gas long after we stop, and Exxon will oblige. You'll still be able to buy a tub of bearing grease when you need it. Whether you will still be able to buy a 1/2 lb of Angus beef on a bun is a much different question.
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I don't mean that they will lose all, but it will put a big dent in their production.
epoxies, plastics, etc are all by products of oil refinment, and most is for oil (diesel and gas) both are heavily used in non-coal burning power generation. I know it won't completely go away, but a huge chunk is still transportation. And that's what drives the by products too. So with a reduced need for gas/diesel, now you have problems .. un-intended consequences.
 
You're right about transportation. Pre-WWII Europe saw railroad and autobahn/highway expansion on a massive scale. The US waited until after WWII, and decided to skip the railroad part. The US has a big huge 4 time zone mainland that would have really benefitted from inexpensive travel and transport, but at the time, the automobile was seen as the solution. Now all of our logistics are handled by 600 hp diesel trucks pulling one 45' trailer at a time from coast to coast. That wasn't very good planning, and as the fuel crisis, the environmental crisis, and now the falling Icarus crisis or whatever you want to call it has left us wishing we had a dang railroad where one train can pull several million pounds of freight instead of one truck pulling a net of less than 25 tons per haul. To make it worse, trucks are at the low end of the priority list for fuel. The marine transport industry will get every drop if scarcity gets scary. Of course, the millionaires will have fuel for their private jets, that goes without saying.

It's okay, we're only ankle deep in it. Of course, we dove in head first, but ankle deep is ankle deep.
 
I'm guessing we're still 10 years from the point where new cars are more EVs than internal combustion. And if the average life of a car is a bit shy of 10 years, that means that it'll take more than another 10 years for 1/2 the cars on the road to be electric. I figure that means we're at least 3 decades away from seeing internal combustion cars become rare.

The interesting thing is my understanding that a barrel of crude produces so many gallons of gasoline, so many diesel, so much oil, etc, and that can only be changed somewhat. I doubt diesel and jet fuel will succumb to EVs as fast as gasoline engines. Does gasoline at some point become a waste product, like natural gas?
 
rabler said:
I'm guessing we're still 10 years from the point where new vehicles are more EVs than internal combustion. And if the average life of a car is a bit shy of 10 years, that means that it'll take more than another 10 years for 1/2 the cars on the road to be electric. I figure that means we're at least 3 decades away from seeing internal combustion cars become rare.
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I sure hope so… I need all those years to finish my pending car projects! :grin big:
 
rabler said:
Does gasoline at some point become a waste product, like natural gas?
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Nope, it becomes feedstock for chemicals, plastics, pharmaceuticals, and the rest of the industrialized processes that require raw material. The reactions that are done in refineries today are awe-inspiring. They can separate, fractionate, crack, catalyze, and react every which way to provide the end of the pipe commodities demanded from the same barrel of oil that can be fractioned into fuels.
 
rabler said:
The interesting thing is my understanding that a barrel of crude produces so many gallons of gasoline, so many diesel, so much oil, etc, and that can only be changed somewhat. I doubt diesel and jet fuel will succumb to EVs as fast as gasoline engines. Does gasoline at some point become a waste product, like natural gas?
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I was thinking the same. What then happens?
 
Let me toss in some refinery chemistry. The GTL process converts natural gas to modern synthetic oils. When you buy synthetic oil, it was most likely was made by dealing with catalysts and fractionalizing natural gas to produce oil (yes, this is an oversimplification, but the full text would take two pages and encompass about 3600 patents).

And yes, back in the days natural gas was treated like a waste product from oil wells and was burned off at the site.

So, as long as we are using natural gas, we will have accesss to very high quality (high purity) synthetic oils, which outperform lubricating oils refined from crude oil.

*This includes the Mr. Wizard science moement for the day*
 
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