I’ve become aware that gasoline and diesel powered vehicles are on their way out.
what happens to the infrastructure of gas stations when fewer petrol powered vehicles are on the road. Do we wind up having to go to WalMart or Autozone to buy a 5 gallon container of fuel for $200 to power our antiques? Do we go to the hardware store and swap out tanks like we do LP gas now?
What are your predictions or possible scenerios for ‘old’ petrol fueled vehicles in getting the needed gasoline?
The problem with electric vehicles is the low energy density of their power sources: around 0.5 MJ/kg for lithium-ion batteries vs. almost 46 MJ/kg for diesel and gasoline:
https://www.brookings.edu/essay/why-are-fossil-fuels-so-hard-to-quit/
In addition, I think the level of infrastructure is low worldwide, with a lack of not only smooth roads but even electric grids. In general, most of the world, where around 70 pct of human beings live on less than $10 daily:
will have to reach industrialization even as it transitions to renewable energy. The current energy usage for that population is around 20 TW.
To meet that level of industrialization for basic needs and more (i.e., to decrease that 70 pct poverty rate), up to 50 TW will be needed. If that population continues to grow due to momentum, then an additional 25 TW.
Third, from what I remember, a significant chunk of energy needed for mining, manufacturing, transport, and even mechanized agriculture requires fossil fuels. That means all energy sources will have to be utilized globally to meet just basic needs.
Finally, overall the human population has reached limits to growth:
That is, it will need at least the equivalent of one more earth in order to meet the basic needs of the current population, more if that population grows, and even more if the same wants to use ICEVs/EVs for personal travel.
How does one get gasoline in 2050? One uses ethanol. Just open the flap cap on your gas tank and pour in the juice, the same as always, except now it’s from bottles instead of a pump, most likely.
Ethanol is broadly similar in combustion properties to gasoline. It’s not as energetic as a direct gasoline replacement but it will work. It does, however, have a higher octane value than gasoline (read: can be compressed more before auto-igniting) which means with a specialty tune it could be a pretty close match in terms of energy profile. (cf: Koenigsegg Jesko which makes significantly more power on E85 gasoline than it does on plain gas.)
You may need to find a conversion kit to ensure your car is fully capable of burning pure ethanol. Very modern engines would have little to no difficulty, possibly just a rechip. Older engines would require more work–changing up hoses, adjusting sensors, and so forth. Carbureted engines might be challenging, and they’re beyond my knowledge.
Performance specialists may offer engine rebuilds to get the most out of the juice you’re burning–upping your engine compression, fiddling with the combustion timing and so forth.
So I think that, frankly, you could keep enjoying your gasoline engine, but there would likely be many fewer places to fuel up. One of the major drivers of ethanol production is gasoline, ironically, for urban-use E10 blend. With that gone, the price of industrial-grade ethanol is likely to go up.
(If you’re hard-pressed, you can make your own fuel, and a small-scale distillery would be the way to go.)
Anyway, in short, I don’t think the fuel will be the hard part in the future. The lubricants and replacement parts, that’s what will get you. Only specialty manufacturers will be making synthetic motor oil, and while it will be of very high quality, it will be shockingly expensive. Most parts simply won’t be made for your cheaper cars. I’d bet you’d find replacement parts for a 1998 Supra long after they’ve run out of piston rings for a Kia.
I’ve read threads on other sites - about what would happen if Diesel vehicles were as popular in the United States as they are in Europe. One discussion that always crops up mentions that gasoline will continue to be produced as a product of refining crude oil, so there will have to be SOME consumers using it. (Before the motorcar era, refineries routinely dumped gasoline as unsaleable.)
I expect that crude oil will continue to be extracted and refined - for diesel locomotives, asphalt, roof tar, etc.
My knowledge of refining is abysmal, so I don’t know if more modern methods could “recrack” the gasoline into other fractions.
In the way that you can make smaller chips of ice from larger chunks, you can make lighter fractions from the gasoline fraction, such as butane, propane, methane, and so forth.
Good gasoline isn’t just straight-chain octane, though. It’s heavily-branched octane, with a lot of additives to make it burn better in engines (read: octane boosters). MTBE, for instance. So while octane may continue to be a product of petroleum distilleries, the required additives to make good gasoline are not so likely.
Ethanol, though? It’s got a lot of uses outside of gasoline.
Long before 2050 rolls around, the “gearheads” will have figured out how to do an engine swap and convert older vehicles to EV’s.
If you are into that sort of thing, do a web search on “ecoboost Edsel” to see how one old car was updated to a more economical gasoline engine.
Ah, there is that.
Rimac, a high-performance electric car company named after its Croatian owner, exists explicitly because of a gearhead wanting to make a high-powered electric car and did so with, if memory serves, an old BMW and as many laptop batteries as he could scrounge.
Rimac, the company, is now buying a large chunk of Bugatti. It’s officially Serious Business. The electric hotrodder is already amongst us.
The rich and powerful call the shots, and the fossil fuel industry also fuels their bank accounts. They can’t put a meter on the sun, and it appears that they are willing to trash our environment beyond repair if need be in order to preserve the financial hegemony that their almost complete control over our energy needs allows them to enjoy.
The main reason is that gas is cheap. Once it’s not cheaper than the alternatives (and that’s happening today) we’ll stop using gas. Major players certainly distort the marketplace, but the basic economics don’t require conspiracy theories.
So, gas is cheaper than the sun shining on a solar panel? There are people who generate so much energy from the sun that they actually sell their surplus back to the power companies.
Remember the traditional gasoline station is long gone virtually everywhere (it sold gasoline and did auto repairs). Nowadays the vast majority of gasoline is sold at convenience stores where the gasoline simply attracts the customer to the store and the store makes its profits off junk food, fast food, cigarettes, etc. So even if gasoline attracts only a fairly small amount of customers to the store it could still be worth doing.
But otherwise you just expect a smaller number of places to sell gasoline. Anyone ever try to buy kerosene (say for a backup heater)? While there are some parts of the country where it is common and there are numerous places you can buy it in bulk (not the gallon to 2 1/2 gallon cans), in places like where I live you have to look around to find such places–but they exist.
It took a lot of time and money to develop electric cars that could compete with ICE for power, range, and functionality. Even now, range and cost are still concerns. For home power generation solar is a good alternative in some environments and situations, but developing and building the infrastructure that can support cities 24x7 isn’t easy or practical right now. Solar power isn’t likely to move ginormous container ships around the world, it’s not going to power long haul airliners (yet), and provide emergency power in isolated locations around the world. We’re getting there, but the technology and infrastructure aren’t cheap or available yet. Petroleum products are still cheap and plentiful.
paradoxically, yes at this point in time. I had a friend who installed solar panels on their house for around $25000. They sell excess back at a small fraction of what the power company charges for their electrical use. They may save themselves $100 a month. THey will break even on their investment in 21 years.
But thats for house power…my post is about automobile power. I was in a tesla yesterday, currently the owner can get charged up at work for essentially free, but when charging at home, it costs him about the same price in electricity to go the same distance on gas (This currently doesn’t sound right, but that’s what he told me…about $20 in electricity to go 250 miles…really???). He’s rich though, he can afford a tesla.
This reminds me - I was reading an 1880s (or very late 1870s) newspaper from a town with a kerosene refinery, and they used gasoline streetlamps. Of course, it was mentioned in the paper because one exploded, as I recall. Maybe it’s not really relevant to the thread topic, but any excuse to share. 
I agree with this. Though with rolling coal you have some who make it part of their identity. And some driving/car enthusiasts just prefer the experience. But those are a tiny percentage of people, and form only niche markets.
And, of course, convenience plays in to desirability. Right now the infrastructure isn’t present (as it was not for ICEs in the early days) to be able to “fill up” your electric car quickly, easily and conveniently (especially for those who don’t have garages/assigned spaces). As mentioned upthread, it will become less convenient for ICEs when/if they become rare (as they look to in the long-term) since there won’t be gas stations essentially everywhere. The speed is still an issue for electric cars for some - they want to hop in the their car and go somewhere, take a road trip, etc. without needing any extra planning or spending extra time. Cost (or regulations, or motivations for cleaner energy) can definitely offset inconvenience, though.
You guys are kind of getting ahead of yourselves. Due to the much longer lifespan of cars and how people are owning cars longer, combined with the fact EVs are still a very low % of total new car sales (and expected to still be a small minority even in 2030), it is expected that a significant % of total cars on the road in 2050 will still be traditional internal combustion engine, gasoline or diesel powered vehicles. Most likely consumer diesel will be gone by then, but truck diesel will still exist. I’ve seen a few different projections but most show ICE cars probably still being anywhere from 40-60% of cars on the road even in 2050. That means there will still be a significant network of stations to handle them, and as has been mentioned, gas stations have never made their money off gas. It’s a commodity and rigorous competition means that the retail price of gas is kept at basically the most razor thing profit margin possible by market effects.
Selling retail gas has always been a way to sell something else. It used to primarily be automotive services, the typical filling station would upcharge you on the gasoline by doing a full service fill up where they pump the gas for you, check your oil, your tire pressure, clean your windows etc. That station would also offer mechanical services, oil changes, tune ups, tire repairs etc. Sometimes they’d be a full mechanic’s shop, sometimes not. But that business’s real money was on the work they could bill you for on your car, not selling the petrol.
Now it’s shifted to primarily convenience stores. Those stores are making their money off the snacks and drinks sold inside, and other convenience items. That’s also why most of the convenience store chains have membership clubs where you accumulate “gas points” from shopping inside. They really want you coming inside the stores, and going inside the stores being a normal thing.
Now at some point, gasoline powered cars will be a small minority of all cars on the road. I just don’t think it’s 2050. But what about when it does? It probably is still going to be sold from pumps at these convenience store type places. The number of pumps will be less, and maybe they’ll be off to the side. It’s hit or miss but a decent chunk of gas stations today have a small pump sometimes tucked off to the side for kerosene. Kerosene for home use was at one time a lot more common, for powering heaters, lamps, it used to be used as a cheap fuel for tractors once upon a time. Now kerosene is less used in the home, but some people still need it, so some stations still have a kerosene pump. if you check around at gas stations in your area, you’re likely to find at least one, and that will likely be how gasoline is distributed when it has fallen largely out of favor for ordinary daily use.
Unless he pays a hell of a lot for electricity, I’m not buying it. I’ve figured the cost for us to run our EVs is about $0.04 per mile. That’ $10 per 250 miles, --not accounting for places you can charge free and places that charge you more than home rates. We get free Tesla charging with that car when out on the road, but we’ve only used in once in 18 months. Like most people, we charge mostly at home.
I think it’s useful to roll with the OP, but there’s no getting ahead of one’s self.
First of all, a number of countries, primarily European but including India, are barring combustion engines from urban centers by 2030 on average. Read more here; this wikipedia link is quite satisfactory for this thread. Note that California is playing along as well, and it’s the tail that wags the US dog in a number of ways, automotive included.
A little poking about suggests the average car, owned by the average user, lasts for about 12 years. With a 20-year gap in the OP, it’s a safe bet that most internal combustion cars will be in the scrapyard at that point.
So for the most part, internal combustion cars are going to take a very significant hit. I think your “40 to 60%” estimate is extremely generous as a global average, as I’d be surprised of 20% of the cars built in 2030 would survive until 2050, and there would be relatively little impetus to replace them with more gas-burners.
Places that tend to lean more conservative or have a lower GDP are llikely to have a higher ratio of gas to electric, but manufacturers aren’t going to be that keen on making new gas-burners when there’s a greatly reduced market for it and regulatory pressure against it.
Note that I write all of this very much as a person who’s a fan of gasoline engines and motor sports. But I can see the writing on the wall.
This ( Electric Cars Are Coming. How Long Until They Rule the Road? - The New York Times (nytimes.com)) report which collates data from various projections is still projecting gas powered cars as 60% of cars on the road in 2050. Note it only projects EVs to be around 35% of sales in 2035. I think assuming gas cars will be rare or a small minority by 2050 is simply unrealistic.
Thanks for the link. I think it’s interesting and I plan on reading it a bit later today.
Would you say that it considers future trends, or only current ones?
I mean it’s explicitly trying to project future sales, so it’s intrinsically attempting to consider future trends. Predicting the future is not actually a thing, which is why it’s a projection. I actually read this report a long time ago, and there’s a few reports that underlie it that are worth looking at directly too, but there are significant headwinds to just assuming EV uptake is going to hit some sort of rocket ship trajectory. Without a good explanation as to how to get past those limitations it’s probably a little optimistic to just handwave away a projection showing about 40% of cars on the road in 2050 will be EVs without explaining how we would fill in that other 60% easily.