These are switching to electric as well.
Agree. California, at least, is making moves toward all electric lawn equipment - I wonder if this sort of idea will catch-on…
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38004981/california-ban-gas-powered-lawn-equipment/
My prediction for when half of cars will be electric would be around 2050. My second guess would be much later than that. It could be sooner, as the future is unpredictable, but it’s not the way I’d bet.
Electric cars are significantly supply-chain limited, and that won’t change soon. Most electrics now have 12-24 month waiting periods, and prices have gone up substntially. And that’s with sales being simething like 4% of passenger cars and almost no trucks or vans.
Also, the EV subsidies will end long beforemwe get anywhere near 50% of sales, let along 50% of the entire car fleet.
Actually, 6%. Eighteen percent in California.
https://electrek.co/2022/10/27/electric-cars-reach-new-car-sales-california-compare-us/
My understanding is that auto makers (certainly Ford, anyway, although I don’t think Tesla) prioritize Europe over North America with their EVs. I expect that’s due to a mixture of better incentives and legal requirements. Perhaps with the new incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, they’ll balance the two markets more evenly going forward.
Bloomberg NEF issues a yearly Electric Vehicle Outlook report, the executive summary of which is free to read. They are estimating that, in the absence of new regulations that drive EV ownership, the global passenger vehicle fleet will be 50% EVs in the early 2040s. Obviously this happens earlier in some countries and later in others, but they estimate that the EV sales share in the US will be pretty close the the world average - a little behind in the 2020s, and a little ahead in the 2030s. So I would expect their estimate for the US to be close to 2040 also.
Note that projections of sales trends 20 years into the future is pretty speculative by nature, and you can pretty easily find a range of projections. Bloomberg, though probably a touch optimistic, is pretty grounded in reality, and their projections are probably about the best you can do. Take into account, though, Bloomberg’s explicitly acknowledging that pro-EV regulations will accelerate the shift to EVs.
I’m not sure this is a coherent idea. If trade-in value is high, then that means that someone must be buying that car. And if everyone sold their car when it reached that age, then the people who just bought the car already at that age would also have to sell it immediately.
A car will continue to be used, by someone or another, until it eventually gets to the point where it’s dumped or scrapped. Changing ownership before that point doesn’t really change anything: All that matters is the point at which the dumping or scrapping happens.
Thanks @zut, that’s exactly what I’m looking for.
The main point is that fleet managers, although representing a bit over 10% of all road vehicles are already grappling with a problem that most people can happily defer for perhaps a decade. They will be a considerable lobby for logistic security and making sure that there are sufficient charging stations to operate their fleets, and be seen to be supporting corporate environmental commitments. Their shoutiness now will create the infrastructure other people are likely to be influenced by in their decision in 2033 as to whether an EV is worth buying.
When trying to predict future EV growth, this is a good read:
Some important takeaways from that paper:
- A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car
- An onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired power plant.
- Since 2010, the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit of power generation capacity has increased by 50% as the share of renewables has risen.
- Mineral demand for clean energy technologies would rise by at least four times by 2040 to meet climate goals, with particularly high growth for EV-related minerals.
- Current and planned production of Lithium and Cobalt will result in 50% shortages by 2030.
- Copper will be at 80% of need by then. Prepare for big increases in copper prices, and the price of electrical hardware including power generation and EVs.
- Shifting to EVs moves our supply chain to some of the worst countries with terrible environmental and human rights issues.
- Opening a new Lithium mine takes on average 16 years.
- Because of shortages, the quality of raw materials is declining raising the financial and energy cost of refining them.
Be prepared for a LOT of new mining to support renewables. The reason I said 2050 (and maybe never) is because it remains to be seen what the demand for EVs will be if the price goes up substantially due to material shortages while the price of electricity to power them also goes up. It’s not clear at all that we will solve the resource issues any time soon. Current Lithium projects in development don’t cut it. New mines take a couple of decades. Recycling can help - according to the EIA about 10% of the materials needed can be recycled.
What we’ve seen in the last year at a comparatively low level of EV sales is not a hopeful sign. Prices of EVs are going up substantially. The Ford Lightning started at $40,000, and is now $60,000. Last year, the average EV price went up to $66,000. The Nissan Leaf jumped in price by 45%. This is due to high demand triggered in part by rebates, coupled with major price increases in raw materials. Tesla vehicles went up almost 20% in the last year. Even with those increases the waiting time for EVs is now averaging 35 weeks, with the most popular models as much as 2 years.
There is no fiscal policy that can solve this. Adding subsidies to a supply-constrained market just drives up prices and waiting lists. We need fast-track rapid expansion of mining for lithium, cobalt, rare earths, copper, and other critical minerals. But ‘fast-track’ on any large project has died in the west. Expect protests, lawsuits and other pushback against new mining projects.
Given the lack of raw materials it’s entirely possible that extra demand for EVs will just drive up prices more, killing demand growth, EVs may become a rich person’s car for a while until we get our act together and start mining - and building nuclear plants, because the electric power transition is a major competitor for materials with EVs, and it looks like we can’t have both in any reasonable time frame.
Electric motorcycles are becoming a thing. I remember visiting Beijing in 2010 and already electric scooters were not uncommon. My weedwhacker is already electric with swappable rechargeable batteries.
Delivery vehicles and in-city trucking - I can’t think of a better application for battery vehicles. they drive a limited area, stop-and-go driving (with regen) is suited for electric, and regularly returning to home base and not needed overnight is ideal for a charging scenario.
I don’t do Snowmobile or outboard moto, but my recollection is that they are serious gas guzzlers. I suspect that will be a niche market.
My current hang0up with my Telsa is (or, was) lack of charging options for distance travel. But between Tesla’s expanding network of chargers, and the governments’ determination to make options available for other cars, that is less of an issue. I suspect for the OP’s question, the reverse will become the issue - people will be reluctant to rely on gasoline powered vehicles as the availability of gasoline retail becomes less common. I recall stories during the previous gas shortages, of people parking a van over the filling port of a gas station’s tanks and sucking up volumes of gas using access through the van’s floor. There are unattended gas stations, but unlike electricity, it could become more of an issue that if you get off the beaten path and into the hinterland, there will be less opportunities to find a gas station open later at night, etc. Whereas, a charger can sit on the corner of any lot, and it would be much harder to steal electricity from a computer-regulated charger.
(There are websites like Plugshare.com and Supercharge.info that tell you the location of many chargers. Tesla’s on-board computers help you plan longer trips from charger to charger.).
This I see as more of the hyperventilating by the doomsayers pining for the status quo. Much of these minerals are in short supply simply because demand has been low. Rare earths AFAIK are used for permanent magnets so i assume there’s a technology where a lesser generator could produce enough power to use electromagnets to generate electricity (sort of a bootstrap process) rather than going whole-hog with REE. There are plenty of sources for lithium, just that the countries that do supply it for now are less demanding of environmental protection. The problem in the future should not be supply, but rather the cost of eco-friendly supply.
Yes. And it isn’t taking changes in the tech into account. For example, Tesla has been using NMC batteries in their cars. NMC has both cobalt and nickel. But some time back they started to use LFP batteries, which do not have cobalt or nickel, in the non-performance models. Last year, half or more of their cars had LFP batteries.
https://electrek.co/2022/04/22/tesla-using-cobalt-free-lfp-batteries-in-half-new-cars-produced/
They’ve also apparently changed the cells in the Megapack batteries to be LFP. So the paper’s predictions of how much of those two minerals will be needed in future EVs/batteries is likely to be way too high.
This figure is still tiny compared to the total number of cars on the road though.
660,000 electric
445,000 plug in hybrid
32,700,000 total cars
this gives only 3.3% electric cars currently on UK roads.
In Norway, which had the most aggressive incentives to switch to EVs, the figure for number of EVs on the roads (as opposed to sales figures) is 20%.
The transition from ICE to EV has a long way to go. It will be a slightly different graph in each country. The EV makers are also still dealing with how to make a modestly priced city car in volume. The costs have to come down for the commercial vehicle fleet market. About 50% of the traffic in cities is commercial and those purchasing decisions are all about economy.
For the costs to come down the batteries have to be cheaper. So if some new battery tech using cheaper materials suddenly becomes feasible for volume production, the rate of adoption could accelerate.
Norway is a useful reference point regarding what can be done with present day tech and public policies that provide financial incentives. But it is still only at 20%. EVs are all about waiting lists because the volumes being made are far less than the demand. Once those issues are resolved projections will become easier and it will follow the S curve that is typical of the take up of similar innovations.
In a big country like the US, the economy and geography will favour adoption in some states rather than others. I expect cities smothered in petrochemical fog will nudge the adoption with financial carrots and sticks much more than wide open spaces of the great plains.
You S curve may vary!
That’s already happening. It’s the reason California is leading the US in adopting EVs.
I doubt that is much of a driver in adoption of electric vehicles. Air quality in California urban centers has vastly improved since the ‘Eighties with tighter emission controls on vehicles and gasoline formulations that produce less nitrogen oxides, sulphur compounds, and particulates, and even Los Angeles generally has very clean AQI when there aren’t wildfires or still air even prior to the current expansion of EV availability. California leads the United States in adopting electric vehicles because it has a lot of financial and practical incentives (rebates, HOV lane access), the most expensive gasoline prices in the nation and a lot of exburb commuters who spend multiple hours per day on the road, an affluent base of people who turn over luxury vehicles every few years, a very favorable climate for EVs, and a massive amount of infrastructure in terms of charging stations, plus owning an EV or PHEV has a cachet as a forward-thinking progressive or ‘responsible’ moderate which would be a negative in most of the Midwest or South.
Stranger
Here is an old (2021) map of electrolyzers located in the US U.S. Hydrogen Electrolyzer Locations and Capacity | Department of Energy
A lot more electrolyzers have been installed since then. I collaborate with the electrolyzer manufacturers and they are all overwhelmed with demand (Cummins, Nels, Plug Power, Thyssenkrupp, …) . Currently most are running on 3-5 year backlogs
It is to be noted that electrolyzers have been operational in submarines for many decades now and has seen significant technology development.
One of the first adopters of Hydrogen fueled EVs was Caterpillar for mining equipment. Hydrogen powered mining equipment needed no recharging downtime and did not make fumes inside the mines.
Nowadays a lot of Warehouses for Homedepot, Amazon etc. are coming up on Hydrogen fueled fork lift and other equipment.
And of course there is Toyota’s Marai.
Instead I would guess that gas prices are the big factor. Gas prices twice as high in Europe as in the U.S. are very common. And the higher the gas price the more electric cars make economic sense.
But that’s exactly what I was refering to. California has a lot of air pollution, so they’re encouraging EVs by giving rebates. Yes, pollution has been reduced a lot in recent years, but they’re trying to reduce it even more. That’s the whole job of CARB (California Air Resources Board). Going forward, CARB has mandated reductions in sales of internal combustion engine cars leading up to a ban on them in 2035.
Yes, there’s other factors which you mention that are not under the control of CARB, and separating them out in terms of which is most significant would probably be impossible, but I think the rebates are among the most significant. The future reductions in sales will be even more significant.
The ‘doomsayers’ in question are the Energy Information Agency. They aren’t coming from some fossil fuel advocacy group. This is reality.
Let’s hope cobalt-free batteries work out, so we don’t have to build our green world on the backs of children in the Congo as we are doing now. But that does nothing for the nickel, copper and lithium shortages we will be facing.
This is not theoretical. EV prices are currently skyrocketing and supply dwindling because of supply chain shortages.
The ‘incentives’ in the act cut off a lot of supply with ‘buy American’ requirements, snub the largest EV maker Tesla because they aren’t union, and the onsumer subsidies pushed into a supply-constrained market just drive up prices and don’t increase supply. Just like student subsidies do to tuition.
The ‘inflation reduction act’ also makes inflation worse by goosing supply with borrowed money that increases the money supply.
And just wait until EV makers and electric power component makers have to compete for copper and batteries and such with the new mandates for building out more trains like Amtrack and new steel tracks across the U.S.
Also, if we don’t start producing more natural gas pronto, the price of electricity is really going to cut into the value proposition for electric cars. We will need natural gas for many decades, in increasing quantity. Shutting down coal increases rhe need for natural gas. We should be producing it as fast as we can. Lower electricity prices are the best way to encourage peoole to get off of worse forms of fossil,fuels.
The LFP batteries also don’t contain nickel, as well as no cobalt. Lithium and copper supplies are likely to be problems, although I don’t know if they took into account the lithium that should be coming from brine extraction.
And I have no idea of the status of that. There should be enough lithium in the Salton Sea area to supply most US demand, but last time I tried to find out what’s going on, I got little info. Certainly nothing on annual production, which means either they are real good at keeping secrets or they aren’t producing anything yet.
I’m seeing reports of several non-American auto makers planning on building factories in the US because of the Inflation Reduction Act. Which is the reason those buy-American provisions are in there and why they don’t go into effect immediately, but rather are phased in over several years. And I’m fairly certain the IRA has no requirement for union labor. That was in its predecessor incentive, but not in this one.