Annals of Motordom – 24
An occasional update on items from Motordom – the world of auto dominance.
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OIL AND REVOLUTION
Matt Chambers passes along a bleak observation by Garth “Greater Fool” Turner:
Some smart people, like Jeff Rubin – defrocked chief economist at CIBC – swear it was not the US housing crisis, scummy loans, greedy bankers or house-horny subprimate credit-suckers that caused the financial panic. Instead, it was $147 oil. The world couldn’t take it. His argument is a sound one. Soon you’ll see why. …
The Egyptian Revolution now sweeps through Libya, after infecting most of the Arab world. The country’s despotic, shades-wearing, camel-hip leader dispatched the military to mow down civilians, which also sent oil workers scrambling and shot prices even higher. Brent crude passed $108 and US contracts jumped 5% during the day, then pounced to $94. Libya is the first major oil producer to get the revolutionary fever, and Saudi Arabia may not be far behind. Then $200 oil is coming.
Which means maybe the following prediction might have to be updated:
ELECTRIC DOMINANCE BY 2020
Electric car pioneer Shai Agassi is a man with a startling prediction: Before 2020, he says, more people everywhere will be buying electric cars than those powered by gasoline. … ‘From 2000 to 2010, China added 120 million [gasoline] cars on the road (and) next year, 25 to 30 million’, Agassi said. ‘It’s no longer the U.S. that sets the price (of oil). Now it’s a question of how many cars were added in China, how many were added in Brazil, how many were added in India’.”
Ref: Dan Perry, AP, The Age, 28/1/11
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FRANCE: Electricité
Autolib’ is the car version of the Vélib’ self-service cycle hire scheme. From this autumn, visitors to Paris and local residents will be able to hire a self-service electric car for short periods to travel around the city and its suburbs. As with the Vélib’ scheme, users will be able to pick up a car at one point and leave it at another.
The city of Paris is a keen supporter of the project, the contract for which was awarded to the Bolloré Group, and has set its sights high:
a fleet of 3,000 electric cars in over 1,000 locations in Paris and around 40 neighbouring towns. …
A subscription will cost €12 a month, with a €5 euro charge for the first hour of use. Paris’s city runabouts will be fitted with lithium polymer batteries produced in Brittany in the west of France. …
But what is new this time is that the whole scheme is based on self-service: the ability to pick up a car in one location and drop it off at another. A benefit that should appeal to large numbers of users, since 58% of Parisians do not own a car and two-thirds of them have expressed an interest in the project.
Virginie Langerock
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THE MOST SCENIC HIGHWAY IN THE WORLD
Thanks to Ornulf.
Another interesting take on the rise of the electric car:
“For the last year, Deutsche Bank’s Paul Sankey, one of the best long-range energy minds on Wall Street, has been distributing a series of provocative, deeply researched, and forward-looking notes to clients under titles like “The Peak Oil Market” and “The End of the Oil Age.” Last week, Sankey produced a sixth note called “2011 and Beyond — A Reality Check.” Among the takeaways: As of 2010, the new electric car age is coming upon us faster than expected — far beyond this year’s conspicuous arrival of the General Motors Volt and Nissan Leaf, and the race among the world’s industrial nations to dominate this technology. Converging even more rapidly, says Sankey, are far higher oil and gasoline prices, starting in 2012. Such shifts could have enormous geopolitical ramifications — as a consequence, some countries will become poorer, and some richer, with corresponding impacts on their global influence.”
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“Which brings us smoothly to the electric car age. Sankey blends a forecast from Deutsche Bank’s automobile analysts into his note: We are in the midst of a plunge in the price of the most expensive single component of a hybrid or electric car — the lithium-ion car battery, Deutsche Bank says. DB’s auto team forecasts that the price of a lithium-ion car battery pack will fall from the current $16,250 to $11,250 in 2012 — and $6,250 in 2020. If this trajectory holds, it means that in a decade, car batteries will reach the magic threshold sought by all battery-makers: a cost of $250 per kilowatt hour (the 2009 cost was $650 per kilowatt hour). (See page 20 of Sankey’s attached report for an interesting chart.)”
“The reason $250 is the magic threshold is that, at that cost per kilowatt hour, hybrids and electric cars will more or less stand on their own without a subsidy; the buyer’s payback period, when accounting for fuel savings, will fall to about three years, the point at which the DB team believes consumers will start to look at these vehicles on an equivalent basis with gasoline-driven models, and not as a lifestyle choice. Once that happens, car sales will spiral upward until, in both China and the United States, some 70 percent of new car sales will be either hybrid or electric models by 2030, DB forecasts.”
Source: http://oilandglory.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/29/the_electric_car_age_just_got_a_little_closer
Looking at Streetview in Google Earth that area in Norway looks fantastic, great views on those highways. There is however some long tunnels under some of the channels.