6 ms·

Even if we get to 99% EV within fifty years, it’s going to be a long while after that before EV takes over 100.000% of ICE.

p1necone 6y ago
I don't know about that, consider other tech that got superseded by new methods. It only took a couple of decades for there to be no companies manufacturing CRT TVs any more.
- sjwright 6y ago
  The use cases of vehicles are much wider than the use cases of TVs.
pmorici 6y ago
There are something like 1.4 billion vehicles in operation world wide and 80 million new vehicles are sold every year. That is at most 17 years once new vehicle sales are effectively 100% electric which will probably happen around 2030. The value of used gas cars will deteriorate rapidly as the spare parts and repair networks disappear and electric vehicle costs become much cheaper pulling forward demand for the transition to electric.
- donavanm 6y ago
  You making a lot of assumptions that arent born out by current experience. Its not uncommon for 100 year old cars to be registered and driven on public roads today. I personally have registered “daily drivers” from the 1970s and 80s. I actually rebuilt my 1972 motorcycle using factory parts from the dealership. As cars get rare they tend to increase in value, which also increases the return on effort/money put in to them. The “last running ICE car” is going to be a prized gem in a collection, not scrap metal.
  - jeppesen-io 6y ago
    and when 90+ precent of the cars on the road are EV - where are you going to get gasoline? or think how much an oil change will cost when motor oil becomes a specialty item > You making a lot of assumptions that arent born out by current experience current experience assume easy access to gasoline and motor oil that has been true for 100 years - that will pass in time
    - flukus 6y ago
      I've been wondering if the cutoff is actually much earlier. Say 50% of cars on the road are EV, how many gas stations can continue to run profitably with 50% less customers? Even getting and refining the gas requires massive global supply chains to transport and refine, what happens when there's a 50% drop in customers? Do they lose their efficiencies of scale? Do prices rise substantially as this happens? I suspect once we reach a certain thresholds it will create other push factors toward EV's and accelerate their adoption.
      - loonster 6y ago
        It is my understanding that refineries cannot change the percentage of gasoline that comes from a barrel of oil. If electric cars become as popular as ICE, either gasoline will be used in other things, or other oil distillates will become very expensive. Likely no more cheap air travel, propane, etc. I expect we will hit a wall that will inhibit adoption.
        mimac 6y ago
        I'm not a petrochemist, but I think reforming/cracking is an old technology which allows you to produce syngas and smaller alkanes (methane, propane etc).
      - burlesona 6y ago
        Gas stations are an interesting case, because most of them make most of their money selling snacks and beer. The gas money largely goes to the oil company.
  - pmorici 6y ago
    Museum pieces are not what we are talking about here.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    I have one, too. Not really as a daily driver, gas mileage just sucks. When the daily driver is about to be replaced one day, it will certainly be by an EV. I think that the main issue will be maintenance of ICEs in the future. Like try to find a garage that is able to tube carburators these days. It will be a while until we reach that point so.
    - donavanm 6y ago
      Exactly why I brought up very early cars and my carb’d motorcycle. They go out of common use but dont disappear anymore than carriages or horses have. Fully urbanised and developed countries have them as a collection or passion project and do silly things like bodge or manufacture specialty parts and fuel blends while reading esoteric haynes manuals on carb tuning. Meanwhile they remain commonplace where it makes sense, small portable two strokes, aircraft, developing nations, etc. The thought that civilization is going complete displace and lose hydrocarbon based engines and logistics in 17 years... Its optimistic I guess?
      - hef19898 6y ago
        Well, you still get OEM parts for Zenith carbs from the 60s. So I guess there will always be a rest of ICE powered cars. I wouldn't mind using green fuel or gas. Which might be the way forward for classics, mainstream I honestly only see EVs and fuel cells in the developed world.
    - rasz 6y ago
      You can DIY mod carb engine to EFI using plethora of cheap user programmable ECU modules and oem/salvage yard parts, its almost Lego at this point in time with everything understood and tons of documentation in the open. Throttle body, MAF, Lambda sensor, one fuel injector, fuel pressure reg, fuel pump, crankshaft position sensor, ECU, laptop to program and tune the ECU, all in all <$500. As a bonus you get to delete distributor and convert to electronic ignition for free. There are even plug&play kits for early troublesome mechanical fuel injection systems in ~$600-1000 range https://kjetkillers.pl/en_US/c/EFI-Electronic-Fuel-Injection-Kits/40 https://kjetkillers.pl/en_US/c/EFI-Electronic-Fuel-Injection... You dont need top of the line $1700 Haltech elite 2500 or Link G4X FuryX if you arent seriously racing. ~$350 full standalone ecu http://ottomotive.pl/sklep/komputery-standalone/easyecu-2-plus-detail http://ottomotive.pl/sklep/komputery-standalone/easyecu-2-pl... or http://ecu-shop.eu/produkt/ottomotive-easyecu-micro/ http://ecu-shop.eu/produkt/ottomotive-easyecu-micro/ ~$150 simple piggyback able to work in standalone mode http://ottomotive.pl/sklep/komputery-piggyback/digital-ecu-cheater-i-detail http://ottomotive.pl/sklep/komputery-piggyback/digital-ecu-c...
- onion2k 6y ago
  That would be true if the oldest cars are being removed from the pool, but that isn't how it works. Cars crash, some models wear out, some just have too little resale value to keep going, etc so they're removed from the pool earlier. Other cars are very desirable so they're get around much longer. It's not a perfect circular system.
- sjwright 6y ago
  I was talking about the proportion of the worldwide fleet, not proportion of new sales. Remember, not all vehicles are passenger cars. And not all vehicles always near electric infrastructure.
jeppesen-io 6y ago
fifty years? no way. But even if you're right, what point are you trying to make?
- sjwright 6y ago
  My point is that there's a long tail of vehicles out there. Whether the fleet transition from ICE to EV is fast or slow, getting the long tail fully transitioned in a similar timeframe is implausible. Heck, we haven't even transitioned 100.000% away from horses yet.

p1necone 6y ago

I don't know about that, consider other tech that got superseded by new methods. It only took a couple of decades for there to be no companies manufacturing CRT TVs any more.

sjwright 6y ago
The use cases of vehicles are much wider than the use cases of TVs.

pmorici 6y ago

There are something like 1.4 billion vehicles in operation world wide and 80 million new vehicles are sold every year. That is at most 17 years once new vehicle sales are effectively 100% electric which will probably happen around 2030. The value of used gas cars will deteriorate rapidly as the spare parts and repair networks disappear and electric vehicle costs become much cheaper pulling forward demand for the transition to electric.

donavanm 6y ago
You making a lot of assumptions that arent born out by current experience. Its not uncommon for 100 year old cars to be registered and driven on public roads today. I personally have registered “daily drivers” from the 1970s and 80s. I actually rebuilt my 1972 motorcycle using factory parts from the dealership. As cars get rare they tend to increase in value, which also increases the return on effort/money put in to them. The “last running ICE car” is going to be a prized gem in a collection, not scrap metal.
- jeppesen-io 6y ago
  and when 90+ precent of the cars on the road are EV - where are you going to get gasoline? or think how much an oil change will cost when motor oil becomes a specialty item > You making a lot of assumptions that arent born out by current experience current experience assume easy access to gasoline and motor oil that has been true for 100 years - that will pass in time
  - flukus 6y ago
    I've been wondering if the cutoff is actually much earlier. Say 50% of cars on the road are EV, how many gas stations can continue to run profitably with 50% less customers? Even getting and refining the gas requires massive global supply chains to transport and refine, what happens when there's a 50% drop in customers? Do they lose their efficiencies of scale? Do prices rise substantially as this happens? I suspect once we reach a certain thresholds it will create other push factors toward EV's and accelerate their adoption.
    - loonster 6y ago
      It is my understanding that refineries cannot change the percentage of gasoline that comes from a barrel of oil. If electric cars become as popular as ICE, either gasoline will be used in other things, or other oil distillates will become very expensive. Likely no more cheap air travel, propane, etc. I expect we will hit a wall that will inhibit adoption.
      - mimac 6y ago
        I'm not a petrochemist, but I think reforming/cracking is an old technology which allows you to produce syngas and smaller alkanes (methane, propane etc).
    - burlesona 6y ago
      Gas stations are an interesting case, because most of them make most of their money selling snacks and beer. The gas money largely goes to the oil company.
- pmorici 6y ago
  Museum pieces are not what we are talking about here.
- hef19898 6y ago
  I have one, too. Not really as a daily driver, gas mileage just sucks. When the daily driver is about to be replaced one day, it will certainly be by an EV. I think that the main issue will be maintenance of ICEs in the future. Like try to find a garage that is able to tube carburators these days. It will be a while until we reach that point so.
  - donavanm 6y ago
    Exactly why I brought up very early cars and my carb’d motorcycle. They go out of common use but dont disappear anymore than carriages or horses have. Fully urbanised and developed countries have them as a collection or passion project and do silly things like bodge or manufacture specialty parts and fuel blends while reading esoteric haynes manuals on carb tuning. Meanwhile they remain commonplace where it makes sense, small portable two strokes, aircraft, developing nations, etc. The thought that civilization is going complete displace and lose hydrocarbon based engines and logistics in 17 years... Its optimistic I guess?
    - hef19898 6y ago
      Well, you still get OEM parts for Zenith carbs from the 60s. So I guess there will always be a rest of ICE powered cars. I wouldn't mind using green fuel or gas. Which might be the way forward for classics, mainstream I honestly only see EVs and fuel cells in the developed world.
  - rasz 6y ago
    You can DIY mod carb engine to EFI using plethora of cheap user programmable ECU modules and oem/salvage yard parts, its almost Lego at this point in time with everything understood and tons of documentation in the open. Throttle body, MAF, Lambda sensor, one fuel injector, fuel pressure reg, fuel pump, crankshaft position sensor, ECU, laptop to program and tune the ECU, all in all <$500. As a bonus you get to delete distributor and convert to electronic ignition for free. There are even plug&play kits for early troublesome mechanical fuel injection systems in ~$600-1000 range https://kjetkillers.pl/en_US/c/EFI-Electronic-Fuel-Injection-Kits/40 https://kjetkillers.pl/en_US/c/EFI-Electronic-Fuel-Injection... You dont need top of the line $1700 Haltech elite 2500 or Link G4X FuryX if you arent seriously racing. ~$350 full standalone ecu http://ottomotive.pl/sklep/komputery-standalone/easyecu-2-plus-detail http://ottomotive.pl/sklep/komputery-standalone/easyecu-2-pl... or http://ecu-shop.eu/produkt/ottomotive-easyecu-micro/ http://ecu-shop.eu/produkt/ottomotive-easyecu-micro/ ~$150 simple piggyback able to work in standalone mode http://ottomotive.pl/sklep/komputery-piggyback/digital-ecu-cheater-i-detail http://ottomotive.pl/sklep/komputery-piggyback/digital-ecu-c...
onion2k 6y ago
That would be true if the oldest cars are being removed from the pool, but that isn't how it works. Cars crash, some models wear out, some just have too little resale value to keep going, etc so they're removed from the pool earlier. Other cars are very desirable so they're get around much longer. It's not a perfect circular system.
sjwright 6y ago
I was talking about the proportion of the worldwide fleet, not proportion of new sales. Remember, not all vehicles are passenger cars. And not all vehicles always near electric infrastructure.

jeppesen-io 6y ago

fifty years? no way. But even if you're right, what point are you trying to make?

sjwright 6y ago
My point is that there's a long tail of vehicles out there. Whether the fleet transition from ICE to EV is fast or slow, getting the long tail fully transitioned in a similar timeframe is implausible. Heck, we haven't even transitioned 100.000% away from horses yet.