If the bulk of private passenger transportation were to be replaced with plug-in hybrids whose batteries were good for 40 miles of range, but planes, trains and trucks (semis, not pickups) continued to use petroleum-based fuel, would we still need to import oil? What effect would that have on the oil market assuming it takes 10 years to replace the fleet?
Thanks for your help,
Rob
I’d have to look at some real numbers, but my guess is that we would still *want * to import oil, even if we didn’t have to. That’s because imported oil is likely to be cheaper than much of what we can produce in the US. Getting oil out of the ground in the Middle East is much easier than getting it out of old US oil fields or from the bottom of the ocean, if you ignore the politics (hard to do, granted). The market would tend to go down given that the US consumes a significant quantity of the world’s production. In 10 years, though, everyone pretty much expects China to take up quite a bit of that slack, so the net price might not drop as much as would be expected. OTOH, there is the school of thought that says commodity prices (such as for oil) will stay steady or decline as replacements are found for the commodity in question. If that’s true, then the use of PHEVs would be one of those replacements for oil, and the long-term price would drop or stay constant.