9 ms·

> Bloomberg NEF forecasts sales of electric passenger vehicles ... to overtake sales of those running solely on internal combustion engines in 2038. Perhaps I

by zizee 7y ago

> Bloomberg NEF forecasts sales of electric passenger vehicles ... to overtake sales of those running solely on internal combustion engines in 2038. Perhaps I am naive, but I would be surprised if it takes that long. There are so many obvious benefits* to electric cars that the only thing holding them back from Mass adoption (IMHO) is the price of batteries. With such significant investments being made, and such steady progress being made, it is hard for me to imagine it will take almost 20 years to get to this point. * Yes, range anxiety, cold weather's affect on performance and lack of charging infrastructure are all problems, but they start going away when cheaper batteries make electric cars cheaper to own/run, and more cars are on the road to justify businesses to start installing charge stations in carparks.

aaronblohowiak 7y ago
Cheaper and lighter. The dry electrolyte from maxwell that T acquired can do both.
flexie 7y ago
You are absolutely right. The only way EVs are not going to overtake by 2030 would be if battery technology somehow stopped improving despite both investments in battery research and investments in battery manufacturing capacity are increasing exponentially. Already today, the expensive versions of Model S drives 370 miles / 600 km on one charge. If you live in a country with superchargers on main roads, this will be enough for all driving scenarios, whether it's the daily commute to and from work or it's the long vacation drive in mountainous regions or cold weather. In 3-4 years, similar range will be achieved by mid prized cars, and in 6-8 years, the higher end of the low prized cars will have that range. And at the same time charging networks expand rapidly, with Tesla's just being one of several. So around 2030, if you buy a cheap EV, range will simply not be an issue.
burlesona 7y ago
I think you’re right. This year Nissan said their plan is for their Infinity brand to go all-electric by 2022. Most forecasters today are looking at the straight line trend and underestimating the upward curve. However cars do tend to last a while so I imagine the lag between “most new cars sold are electric” and “most cars on the road are electric” will take a while, and “all cars are electric” may take a lot longer, or not happen at all if you consider niche vehicles.
- zizee 7y ago
  Yep, agreed that it will take a while for all the petrol cars to come off the road, but the reports prediction is specifically talking about new car sales, and only the majority (which I read as > 50 %) by 2038. I just feel that the prediction is almost laughably conservative. My prediction: When the price hits parity (my gut says in less than 5 years), the convenience of electric will see mass adoption over a period of a few years. It will be the transition from film to digital cameras all over again and the change will be rapid. More than 50% of new car sales will be EV sometime before 2030.
  - pmontra 7y ago
    Cars cost much more than cameras (one or two zeroes more) so old cars are going to stay around for a longer time. The other problem is building the energy distribution network. The street road I'm looking at now is filled with parked cars and no recharge points. There is a gas station. Any of those cars can spend five minutes there and go on for hundreds of km. None of them could be recharged if they were electric. There is a car sharing service with electric cars in this city. They have their own recharge points. They drive their cars there at night. They use portable car batteries to move cars with completely empty batteries. My guess is that's going to take much more than five years to get to the point where people can be confident of being able to recharge their batteries anytime they need it. Some EU countries set the late 2030s as a target to stop selling gas and that's also my guess.
    - zizee 7y ago
      > Cars cost much more than cameras (one or two zeroes more) so old cars are going to stay around for a longer time. I feel that in both my comments I have been quite clear that I have been talking about new car sales only. At the risk of repeating myself, I agree that it will take a while for all petrol cars to come off the road, even when the majority of new car sales are EV.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - 7y ago
inflatableDodo 7y ago
Perhaps they borrowed some numbers from the International Energy Agency - https://steinbuch.wordpress.com/2017/06/12/photovoltaic-growth-reality-versus-projections-of-the-international-energy-agency/ https://steinbuch.wordpress.com/2017/06/12/photovoltaic-grow...
dzhiurgis 7y ago
Model 3 in UK and many other countries is counted as luxury car and is taxed more. Meanwhile in US(seen as pillar of pollution by most EU countries) you somehow get huge rebates. How we are not making EV’s tax free is beyond me.
- eecc 7y ago
  You get full exemption from registration and road taxes in NL... which is EU
  - dzhiurgis 7y ago
    How about import duties and vat/gst?
- pjc50 7y ago
  EVs are road tax free. The only reason the model 3 counts as a luxury car and has to pay luxury car road tax is its price (over £40k). There is a pile of subsidies for Teslas : https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/incentives https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/incentives
  - gambiting 7y ago
    That's exactly what OP meant I'm sure. I'm personally baffled by that policy - it means that the most modern, most innovative vehicles end up paying more tax because......they happen to cost over £40k? What's the logic there? It was supposed to be a tax on emissions - and instead it ends up being a tax on lifestyle.
    - ithkuil 7y ago
      Indeed it's odd. It sounds like "if you can spend 40k on a car then you're filthy rich and thus must be able to spend 40k plus a hefty tax". When put this way it appears to resonate with one of the common ways to see the world.
      - 7y ago
yholio 7y ago
>it is hard for me to imagine it will take almost 20 years You are drastically over-estimating the propensity for change of the majority of the population. In Europe we have diesel versus gasoline wars with supporters of each side declaring that the other is pure crap. The idea these people would just run the numbers, see that electric is more efficient and go to the dealers to pickup an electric car is funny. We aren't even in the first phases of consumer adoption, we haven't seen the first waves of cheap knock-offs that try to capitalize on the trend and possibly set the public expectations about electrics to low levels. What we have is an american tech startup building a highly advanced and expensive car, and the major manufacturers hedging their bets and announcing electric models to make sure they are not caught off guard.
- TomMarius 7y ago
  From my "experience" (if you can say that about this) the fuel that wins pub debates is always the currently cheaper one - one day electric cars will start winning significantly, with no downsides they have today.
- nutjob2 7y ago
  Today's "highly advanced and expensive car" is tomorrow's cheap knock off. The sunk costs have been made by the Teslas of this world and economy of scale is about to deliver its magic. It's ironic reading something like this on a technology website, an industry where scale and rapid development have delivered astounding value. Cars are just the latest product to be gobbled up by the same hyper-efficient industry. My prediction is the car industry will look like the PC industry in the future. Complicated drive trains have been replaced by simple motors close to the wheel. You don't have to architect a car around them anymore. Scaling will produce more generic and interchangeable parts at much better prices. Soon we'll be talking about our latest build, but it will be a car, not a computer. This has already started with enthusiasts transplanting reclaimed Tesla innards into other shells: https://youtu.be/o-7b1waoj9Q?t=291 https://youtu.be/o-7b1waoj9Q?t=291
  - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
    It's also ironic reading on technology websites how important everyone thinks the engine is in a car. While in fact engines are the least specialized and least failure-prone part of a modern car. Your link to people transplanting Tesla innards into other shells: people have done this since the 1930s. Back then it was called a Hot Rod, today aftermarket parts in the US alone is a $300+ billion industry.
ehnto 7y ago
I travelled to a middle of nowhere Australian town for a Medieval fair a couple of weeks ago. As I was approaching a tin shed brewery backed onto an open field, I pulled into their nearly full dirt carpark and spot two free spaces. I go to pull in, and it's two Tesla charging stations nestled amongst the gum trees. It is hard to explain just how unexpected it was, having lived in rural towns most of my youth there was simply no part of my experience that said "better hope there isn't a tesla charging station underneath those gum trees"
kwhitefoot 7y ago
Already happened here in Norway. And range anxiety is something that mostly afflicts those who do not have an electric car. Once you have one it turns into what I call range awareness. You cease to be anxious about it, you simply reorganize things a little. > the only thing holding them back from Mass adoption (IMHO) is the price of batteries. I think it is a combination of price and the belief that one needs a lot of range. Here where electric cars are comparable prices to equivalent ICE cars people buy them but in the UK where they are typically a lot more expensive people don't > lack of charging infrastructure Experience here in Norway suggests that this is a minor problem for most people, most of the time, because most electric cars are fully charged by morning every day. It's only when you use the car to travel more than half the range away from home that it becomes a problem for most drivers and as most daily uses are considerably less than the range of even a first generation leaf this is fairly rare. And of course the infrastructure is being created, petrol stations here are staring to install chargers (Circle K in particular). And plenty of local authorities and even supermarkets are installing chargers in parking bays (usually 7 to 11 kW).
- stevesimmons 7y ago
  On charging infrastructure, here where I live in London, a lot of the light poles now have EV charging points. They are very subtle: just a blue LED, a small black charger cover and a small Siemens logo. Everything else is inside the preexisting pole (diameter about 4 inches). I would never have thought of doing this. But once you've seen it, it's an obvious cheap, quick and non-intrusive solution.
  - zizee 7y ago
    Yes, that sounds like a nice/simple/clever solution. Parking meters could also a good option for this sort of fit out. The other obvious option is paying an extra fee at multi level car parks. The thing I really want governments to mandate is for new apartment buildings with underground carparks to be built with provisions in place to move it way to get charging to a apartments reserved spot. With a bit of forward planning, a lot of money/effort will saved.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
They do mention that all the growth being in EVs means traditional vehicles get less investment. This is somewhat understating the problem for existing manufacturers. Basically what is going on is that EV manufacturers like Tesla are growing straight into what are the most profitable and lucrative segments of the market. This is why they are so disruptive. This is creating a lot of demand in a market that is supply limited (e.g. batteries). So that means that short term they have less of a need to actually be in a hurry to scale down to cheaper models. Margins at the high end are pretty sweet and Tesla has shown pretty convincingly people are willing to buy their products at a premium. Like Apple is not interested in selling cheap phones, Tesla may not be that interested in selling lots of cheap cars with much smaller margins. The drama around the 35K $ Tesla has shown Tesla dragging their heels there. Technically it's a software limited version of a product they sell at much higher prices. The only way it makes sense for them to not take the extra money is if they would have a demand problem for those more expensive models. They don't. Everything they build ships and they are building and shipping as fast as they can already in a market that is outgrowing their capacity to grow. So, I think 2038 is pretty reasonable. In the time between then and now, many existing manufacturers will disappear allowing the remaining ones to milk the market a bit longer. E.g. GM closing many of their product lines last year helps other manufacturers as it removes a competitor from the market. Meanwhile it just takes time and major investments to ramp up new production capacity. This won't happen overnight. IMHO much of that capacity may end up being created by new companies. ICE production capacity is a liability at this point. GM did the right thing of ripping off that band-aid and taking that pain early.
- josteink 7y ago
  > Like Apple is not interested in selling cheap phones, Tesla may not be that interested in selling lots of cheap cars with much smaller margins. Except Elon Musk stating his intention is the exact opposite. He sees ICE cars as a threat to the future of this planet and want them replaced by something less harmful as quickly as possible, and Tesla is the means to that end. Everything they’ve built so far has been done to prepare for decent mass-market EVs, like the Model 3. The high-end market is lucrative though and therefore this is where he’s starting to get competition from traditional auto-vendors, now that he has proven for them the viability of selling luxury EVs.
omarforgotpwd 7y ago
total cost of ownership is already less. the problem is just that the sticker price is higher to buy the battery upfront.
singularity2001 7y ago
people including journalists generally rarely grasp exponential change (nor sigmoidal).
- rv-de 7y ago
  Deep statement. Made me think about how to differentiate btw the two. Are there any natural exponential growth at all? Because at least every closed system will reach a limit at a point. Of course the initial burst could be exponential but the core question is about whether there is an upper limit or a convergence against a constant limit.
tomjen3 7y ago
They are about twice as expensive, and as an apartment dweller I can't charge it at home. You can't have charging stations at the same level you have gas stations today, because it takes half an hour to charge (at a minimum) but only a couple minutes to get a tank full of gas, which means you need at least 10 times the number of charging stations that you currently have gas pumps. An electric car powered by nuclear power would be awesome -- effectively unlimited range, completely clean, but anything powered by less will just suck. If we are really going to do something drastic for the environment, lets ban offices and enforce 100% remote in knowledge work. That should drastically cut down on CO2 due to transportation and free up time.
detritus 7y ago
Beyond charging infrastructure, I wonder whether the main obstacle to get over is base power generation. If the bulk of the transportation system electrifies, we're going to need a lot more power stations. Now more than ever we need fusion to be less than 50 years away - by the sounds of it, much less... .
bezoisevil 7y ago
No chance. We have a battery problem and electric vehicle cost is too high for the masses.
rimliu 7y ago
In my country average age of a car is not that far away from that number. And people do love diesel cars here. So no wonder it will take a looong time.
woodandsteel 7y ago
I agree it will be a lot sooner. The tipping point is going to start around 2025, when EV's become as cheap as ICE's for the largest autos, and will progress from there. There are a number of forces pushing the change. For one, EV's are just better, including a much lower operating cost. Secondly, governments are pushing the change because of global climate change, and also because it reduces local pollution, and also having to pay for gas imports for the great majority of countries that produce little or no petroleum. Finally China is pushing EV's hard because it wants to dominate the auto industry. I am sure the Bloomberg New Energy Finance people are quite aware the revolution is going to come much earlier. I think they are pretending it won't because they are under pressure from auto and petroleum advertisers.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

by zizee 7y ago

aaronblohowiak 7y ago

Cheaper and lighter. The dry electrolyte from maxwell that T acquired can do both.

flexie 7y ago

You are absolutely right. The only way EVs are not going to overtake by 2030 would be if battery technology somehow stopped improving despite both investments in battery research and investments in battery manufacturing capacity are increasing exponentially. Already today, the expensive versions of Model S drives 370 miles / 600 km on one charge. If you live in a country with superchargers on main roads, this will be enough for all driving scenarios, whether it's the daily commute to and from work or it's the long vacation drive in mountainous regions or cold weather. In 3-4 years, similar range will be achieved by mid prized cars, and in 6-8 years, the higher end of the low prized cars will have that range. And at the same time charging networks expand rapidly, with Tesla's just being one of several. So around 2030, if you buy a cheap EV, range will simply not be an issue.

burlesona 7y ago

I think you’re right. This year Nissan said their plan is for their Infinity brand to go all-electric by 2022. Most forecasters today are looking at the straight line trend and underestimating the upward curve. However cars do tend to last a while so I imagine the lag between “most new cars sold are electric” and “most cars on the road are electric” will take a while, and “all cars are electric” may take a lot longer, or not happen at all if you consider niche vehicles.

zizee 7y ago
Yep, agreed that it will take a while for all the petrol cars to come off the road, but the reports prediction is specifically talking about new car sales, and only the majority (which I read as > 50 %) by 2038. I just feel that the prediction is almost laughably conservative. My prediction: When the price hits parity (my gut says in less than 5 years), the convenience of electric will see mass adoption over a period of a few years. It will be the transition from film to digital cameras all over again and the change will be rapid. More than 50% of new car sales will be EV sometime before 2030.
- pmontra 7y ago
  Cars cost much more than cameras (one or two zeroes more) so old cars are going to stay around for a longer time. The other problem is building the energy distribution network. The street road I'm looking at now is filled with parked cars and no recharge points. There is a gas station. Any of those cars can spend five minutes there and go on for hundreds of km. None of them could be recharged if they were electric. There is a car sharing service with electric cars in this city. They have their own recharge points. They drive their cars there at night. They use portable car batteries to move cars with completely empty batteries. My guess is that's going to take much more than five years to get to the point where people can be confident of being able to recharge their batteries anytime they need it. Some EU countries set the late 2030s as a target to stop selling gas and that's also my guess.
  - zizee 7y ago
    > Cars cost much more than cameras (one or two zeroes more) so old cars are going to stay around for a longer time. I feel that in both my comments I have been quite clear that I have been talking about new car sales only. At the risk of repeating myself, I agree that it will take a while for all petrol cars to come off the road, even when the majority of new car sales are EV.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- 7y ago

inflatableDodo 7y ago

Perhaps they borrowed some numbers from the International Energy Agency - https://steinbuch.wordpress.com/2017/06/12/photovoltaic-growth-reality-versus-projections-of-the-international-energy-agency/ https://steinbuch.wordpress.com/2017/06/12/photovoltaic-grow...

dzhiurgis 7y ago

Model 3 in UK and many other countries is counted as luxury car and is taxed more. Meanwhile in US(seen as pillar of pollution by most EU countries) you somehow get huge rebates. How we are not making EV’s tax free is beyond me.

eecc 7y ago
You get full exemption from registration and road taxes in NL... which is EU
- dzhiurgis 7y ago
  How about import duties and vat/gst?
pjc50 7y ago
EVs are road tax free. The only reason the model 3 counts as a luxury car and has to pay luxury car road tax is its price (over £40k). There is a pile of subsidies for Teslas : https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/incentives https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/incentives
- gambiting 7y ago
  That's exactly what OP meant I'm sure. I'm personally baffled by that policy - it means that the most modern, most innovative vehicles end up paying more tax because......they happen to cost over £40k? What's the logic there? It was supposed to be a tax on emissions - and instead it ends up being a tax on lifestyle.
  - ithkuil 7y ago
    Indeed it's odd. It sounds like "if you can spend 40k on a car then you're filthy rich and thus must be able to spend 40k plus a hefty tax". When put this way it appears to resonate with one of the common ways to see the world.
    - 7y ago

yholio 7y ago

>it is hard for me to imagine it will take almost 20 years You are drastically over-estimating the propensity for change of the majority of the population. In Europe we have diesel versus gasoline wars with supporters of each side declaring that the other is pure crap. The idea these people would just run the numbers, see that electric is more efficient and go to the dealers to pickup an electric car is funny. We aren't even in the first phases of consumer adoption, we haven't seen the first waves of cheap knock-offs that try to capitalize on the trend and possibly set the public expectations about electrics to low levels. What we have is an american tech startup building a highly advanced and expensive car, and the major manufacturers hedging their bets and announcing electric models to make sure they are not caught off guard.

TomMarius 7y ago
From my "experience" (if you can say that about this) the fuel that wins pub debates is always the currently cheaper one - one day electric cars will start winning significantly, with no downsides they have today.
nutjob2 7y ago
Today's "highly advanced and expensive car" is tomorrow's cheap knock off. The sunk costs have been made by the Teslas of this world and economy of scale is about to deliver its magic. It's ironic reading something like this on a technology website, an industry where scale and rapid development have delivered astounding value. Cars are just the latest product to be gobbled up by the same hyper-efficient industry. My prediction is the car industry will look like the PC industry in the future. Complicated drive trains have been replaced by simple motors close to the wheel. You don't have to architect a car around them anymore. Scaling will produce more generic and interchangeable parts at much better prices. Soon we'll be talking about our latest build, but it will be a car, not a computer. This has already started with enthusiasts transplanting reclaimed Tesla innards into other shells: https://youtu.be/o-7b1waoj9Q?t=291 https://youtu.be/o-7b1waoj9Q?t=291
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  It's also ironic reading on technology websites how important everyone thinks the engine is in a car. While in fact engines are the least specialized and least failure-prone part of a modern car. Your link to people transplanting Tesla innards into other shells: people have done this since the 1930s. Back then it was called a Hot Rod, today aftermarket parts in the US alone is a $300+ billion industry.

ehnto 7y ago

I travelled to a middle of nowhere Australian town for a Medieval fair a couple of weeks ago. As I was approaching a tin shed brewery backed onto an open field, I pulled into their nearly full dirt carpark and spot two free spaces. I go to pull in, and it's two Tesla charging stations nestled amongst the gum trees. It is hard to explain just how unexpected it was, having lived in rural towns most of my youth there was simply no part of my experience that said "better hope there isn't a tesla charging station underneath those gum trees"

kwhitefoot 7y ago

Already happened here in Norway. And range anxiety is something that mostly afflicts those who do not have an electric car. Once you have one it turns into what I call range awareness. You cease to be anxious about it, you simply reorganize things a little. > the only thing holding them back from Mass adoption (IMHO) is the price of batteries. I think it is a combination of price and the belief that one needs a lot of range. Here where electric cars are comparable prices to equivalent ICE cars people buy them but in the UK where they are typically a lot more expensive people don't > lack of charging infrastructure Experience here in Norway suggests that this is a minor problem for most people, most of the time, because most electric cars are fully charged by morning every day. It's only when you use the car to travel more than half the range away from home that it becomes a problem for most drivers and as most daily uses are considerably less than the range of even a first generation leaf this is fairly rare. And of course the infrastructure is being created, petrol stations here are staring to install chargers (Circle K in particular). And plenty of local authorities and even supermarkets are installing chargers in parking bays (usually 7 to 11 kW).

stevesimmons 7y ago
On charging infrastructure, here where I live in London, a lot of the light poles now have EV charging points. They are very subtle: just a blue LED, a small black charger cover and a small Siemens logo. Everything else is inside the preexisting pole (diameter about 4 inches). I would never have thought of doing this. But once you've seen it, it's an obvious cheap, quick and non-intrusive solution.
- zizee 7y ago
  Yes, that sounds like a nice/simple/clever solution. Parking meters could also a good option for this sort of fit out. The other obvious option is paying an extra fee at multi level car parks. The thing I really want governments to mandate is for new apartment buildings with underground carparks to be built with provisions in place to move it way to get charging to a apartments reserved spot. With a bit of forward planning, a lot of money/effort will saved.

jillesvangurp 7y ago

They do mention that all the growth being in EVs means traditional vehicles get less investment. This is somewhat understating the problem for existing manufacturers. Basically what is going on is that EV manufacturers like Tesla are growing straight into what are the most profitable and lucrative segments of the market. This is why they are so disruptive. This is creating a lot of demand in a market that is supply limited (e.g. batteries). So that means that short term they have less of a need to actually be in a hurry to scale down to cheaper models. Margins at the high end are pretty sweet and Tesla has shown pretty convincingly people are willing to buy their products at a premium. Like Apple is not interested in selling cheap phones, Tesla may not be that interested in selling lots of cheap cars with much smaller margins. The drama around the 35K $ Tesla has shown Tesla dragging their heels there. Technically it's a software limited version of a product they sell at much higher prices. The only way it makes sense for them to not take the extra money is if they would have a demand problem for those more expensive models. They don't. Everything they build ships and they are building and shipping as fast as they can already in a market that is outgrowing their capacity to grow. So, I think 2038 is pretty reasonable. In the time between then and now, many existing manufacturers will disappear allowing the remaining ones to milk the market a bit longer. E.g. GM closing many of their product lines last year helps other manufacturers as it removes a competitor from the market. Meanwhile it just takes time and major investments to ramp up new production capacity. This won't happen overnight. IMHO much of that capacity may end up being created by new companies. ICE production capacity is a liability at this point. GM did the right thing of ripping off that band-aid and taking that pain early.

josteink 7y ago
> Like Apple is not interested in selling cheap phones, Tesla may not be that interested in selling lots of cheap cars with much smaller margins. Except Elon Musk stating his intention is the exact opposite. He sees ICE cars as a threat to the future of this planet and want them replaced by something less harmful as quickly as possible, and Tesla is the means to that end. Everything they’ve built so far has been done to prepare for decent mass-market EVs, like the Model 3. The high-end market is lucrative though and therefore this is where he’s starting to get competition from traditional auto-vendors, now that he has proven for them the viability of selling luxury EVs.

omarforgotpwd 7y ago

total cost of ownership is already less. the problem is just that the sticker price is higher to buy the battery upfront.

singularity2001 7y ago

people including journalists generally rarely grasp exponential change (nor sigmoidal).

rv-de 7y ago
Deep statement. Made me think about how to differentiate btw the two. Are there any natural exponential growth at all? Because at least every closed system will reach a limit at a point. Of course the initial burst could be exponential but the core question is about whether there is an upper limit or a convergence against a constant limit.

tomjen3 7y ago

They are about twice as expensive, and as an apartment dweller I can't charge it at home. You can't have charging stations at the same level you have gas stations today, because it takes half an hour to charge (at a minimum) but only a couple minutes to get a tank full of gas, which means you need at least 10 times the number of charging stations that you currently have gas pumps. An electric car powered by nuclear power would be awesome -- effectively unlimited range, completely clean, but anything powered by less will just suck. If we are really going to do something drastic for the environment, lets ban offices and enforce 100% remote in knowledge work. That should drastically cut down on CO2 due to transportation and free up time.

detritus 7y ago

Beyond charging infrastructure, I wonder whether the main obstacle to get over is base power generation. If the bulk of the transportation system electrifies, we're going to need a lot more power stations. Now more than ever we need fusion to be less than 50 years away - by the sounds of it, much less... .

bezoisevil 7y ago

No chance. We have a battery problem and electric vehicle cost is too high for the masses.

rimliu 7y ago

In my country average age of a car is not that far away from that number. And people do love diesel cars here. So no wonder it will take a looong time.

woodandsteel 7y ago

I agree it will be a lot sooner. The tipping point is going to start around 2025, when EV's become as cheap as ICE's for the largest autos, and will progress from there. There are a number of forces pushing the change. For one, EV's are just better, including a much lower operating cost. Secondly, governments are pushing the change because of global climate change, and also because it reduces local pollution, and also having to pay for gas imports for the great majority of countries that produce little or no petroleum. Finally China is pushing EV's hard because it wants to dominate the auto industry. I am sure the Bloomberg New Energy Finance people are quite aware the revolution is going to come much earlier. I think they are pretending it won't because they are under pressure from auto and petroleum advertisers.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]