11 ms·

Cratering motor fuel sales in Norway show the death spiral that can end oil

122 points by cs702 3y ago

roenxi 3y ago
Norway is more of a city than a country, and a rather wealthy one that is difficult to draw conclusions from when it comes to consumer spending patterns. I'd brush this off as not that interesting. However, if we're looking for oil death spirals in Norway, I recommend: https://crudeoilpeak.info/global-peak/norway-peak-oil https://crudeoilpeak.info/global-peak/norway-peak-oil
- kiba 3y ago
  It's a country of five million spread over a significant amount of land area? My metropolitan area is like 6 million people, but only 500K lives within the city of Atlanta.
  - flavius29663 3y ago
    so the poster is right, your city/metro is larger than Norway, population wise. And they are super wealthy to boot. It makes it less interesting in the context of switching to EVs.
    - mrweasel 3y ago
      Doesn't it make it more interesting, or at least interesting from a different perspective. Vast cities are interesting because it's challenging to provide enough charging capacity for a "small" area, but also because there are a myriad of transportation option that could effectively complement cars. Countries like Norway is interesting because the cars are need because low population density makes other options to expensive and because now the cars need a much longer range. It's also interesting because, regardless of peoples opinion about the size of Norway, it is a country. Imagine the changes in government policies that are because possible when gas powered cars are no longer a thing to consider. Norway also taxes fuel, that money will be missing from the government budget in the future. It's going to be harder to explain that you're taxing electricity in a country that gets a large amount of it's power from hydro and windmills. Or how about the fact that Norway is a huge oil producer... is it morally right to ban gas powered cars at home, but sell oil abroad? It's hugely interesting precisely because Norway is an entire country.
- joe__f 3y ago
  Somewhat larger and with more fjords than your average city
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - x86x87 3y ago
    How many fjords does the average city have?
    - tokai 3y ago
      Norwegian cities? Around ≲1.
      - joe__f 3y ago
        Ah yeah I was going to go for '0 or epsilon', globally
- Angostura 3y ago
  You made me look up the area of Norway, and that’s a fairly ludicrous assertion. Whatever reason you want to use to brush it off - that’s a daft one.
- tyfon 3y ago
  Being Norwegian, that is one of the funniest description I have heard of the country which in reality is the exact opposite.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    I suspect that what the poster is getting at is that Norway's population is small and very wealthy, and it is concentrated around Oslo/Bergen/Trondheim so that it's risky to generalise based on what's happening there because, on global scale, it's a bit like a large-ish wealthy city (there are 1 million more people in Hongkong than in Norway). I don't think he meant that it wasn't an actual country. It obviously is. On top of that, Norway has a lot of hydro power, I believe. So not only there are wealthy with a small population, but they get effectively free electricity...
    - joe__f 3y ago
      I got the impression they are a firm believer in the spherical cow model
      - roenxi 3y ago
        mytailorisrich's reading is much more accurate than yours then. He's picking up what I'm putting down.
        joe__f 3y ago
        Well, I'm glad somebody else was able to understand what you meant and clarify it for you. I'd say it's not surprising that people misunderstand you if you don't put much detail in your posts
    - Broken_Hippo 3y ago
      but they get effectively free electricity... Tell that to anyone paying an electric bill, especially if they live in Southern Norway.
- travisgriggs 3y ago
  Not Norwegian, but lived there for 2 years, in multiple places from Narvik to Stavanager to Oslo to Trondheim. Population wise, Norway slots between Minnesota and South Carolina and is ~7.5x the mighty "city" of Alaska. It has a mainland latitude sweep of nearly 24 degrees, California covers 16 degrees of latitude. It's coastline is a mind boggling 51,748 miles. I can't find a good stat on total road network size, but neighboring Sweden of similar foot print has only a little less roads than the Spain. Some city I guess. As a Washington State resident, my biggest primary holdback with going all electric is the range reduction that occurs in winter months due to cold. Canadian friends have confirmed that it's a real thing. I would love to see what effect this has in Norway. I also would love to see which makes and models are trending there.
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > As a Washington State resident, my biggest primary holdback with going all electric is the range reduction that occurs in winter months due to cold. From what I can tell, a substantial mitigating factor is if you can garage your vehicle.
    - jgilias 3y ago
      Keeping it in the garage, or just somewhere you can plug it in overnight helps somewhat because it gets heated up before your drive using the grid electricity. The consumption is still higher though. Mine goes from 14 kWh/100km when it’s 20 Celsius to 24 kWh/100km when it’s -10 Celsius. Highway consumption changes less dramatically as going faster you spend a larger share of the energy on moving as opposed to heating. So 18 kWh/100km to 20 kWh/100km. Range wise that’s a 25% reduction in usable range. I do 400 km comfortably during the summer and 300 km during the winter. Mine has a heat pump though, which should make it more efficient when it comes to heating.
      - speedgoose 3y ago
        In addition to the mandatory heat-pump, and starting a trip with a warm car and a warm battery, the better EVs also extract heat from the battery to heat-up the cabin. Long trips with one or two short fast charging stop aren't so much worse than summer. In both cases the car cools down the battery after a charging stop (the battery heats up a lot when fast charging). In winter it moves the heat inside the car, and outside the car during summer (in addition to running AC).
- deleted 3y ago
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- yread 3y ago
  here you can see population density map of Norway Sweden and Finland. It is quite spread out https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/58777074043/population-density-of-norway-finland-and-sweden/amp https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/58777074043/populati...
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
> electricity comes from the wall socket Would that it were so!
exar0815 3y ago
Well, in the larger metropolitan regions (Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim), where probably 2/3 of Norwegians live, you see a majority of electrics or at least hybrids. When you get further North, that diminishes. From Lofoten to Tromsø, you see more and more petrol or diesel. And heavier vehicles. The automotive culture there starkly reminded me of Iceland.
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  It's not so much the automotive culture, but backbreaking taxes on ICE vehicles, and basically no alternatives if you live in rural areas and have to drive long distances. Maybe someone from norway can calculate/check how much a mid-range petrol/diesel car (eg. VW golf, renault megane,...) costs there after all the taxes, and compare to an electric one, but it's a LOT more than in eg. germany.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    Assuming the taxes are just on first-hand sales, the subsidies on new EVs probably flooded the rural regions with cheaper-than-expected 2nd-hand ICE vehicles. Obvs the market for newer 2nd-hand ICE vehicles is going to wash away.
  - dromtrund 3y ago
    A VW Golf starts at 35800€, and a VW ID.3 starts at 32800€, taxes included. Overall, electric cars are a bit cheaper than their counterparts, but not a lot. However, today, petrol is 2.15€/l and electricity is 0.013€/kWh. That's 11.20€/100km versus 0.185€/100km for the ID.3, literally two orders of magnitude cheaper. Everyone charges at home, and there's also a 40% discount in toll roads, which saves me about 8€ per day I'm commuting. With the 3k€ lower price, a range of 430km, and fast charging stations every 30km along the major highways, there's just no reason to pick the Golf. We still have a PHEV in addition to our electric car, but there's no reason to. If we're going on a 500km road trip, we'll take the electric BMW i4, no question.
    - aftbit 3y ago
blondie9x 3y ago
Oil is still being used for plastic products. It will still be mined and drilled or fracked until all uses of oil diminish.
- ric2b 3y ago
  It will still be less if demand is lower. And if plastics become more expensive due to no longer being a "free" byproduct of oil consumption their usage will also go down.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    What a beautiful spiral this would be.
  - mechagodzilla 3y ago
    Right - as the biggest consumer of petroleum, gasoline subsidizes a lot of other uses that would be much less attractive otherwise.
- jonnat 3y ago
  While it't true that oil is used for plastics and chemicals today, it's absolutely not the case that it will be drilled into the future when demand for gasoline disappears. Oil is not strictly a necessary precursor to much of the chemical industry, it is rather a convenient raw material because the high value of gasoline makes lights virtually free. In the early days of oil exploration, lights were constantly burned as they had no economic use at the scale they were produced. If oil exploration would continue just for the sake of chemicals, the cost structure of these precursors would fundamentally change and it would become more attractive to replace them with renewable sources.
- phantom784 3y ago
  If oil is only being used in a product that won't eventually be burned and produce CO2, then that's a big win.
macNchz 3y ago
A couple of comments on the article point out that if gas stations start closing due to reduced demand, it will accelerate the effect by making it more cumbersome to own a gas car. Recently, some of the industrial area near my apartment in NYC was rezoned for housing, and nearly all of the local gas stations were torn down (not because of low demand but because a 15 story building would be more profitable). The result is that even though I own a gas car, I now know of more–and more convenient–places in the area where I could charge an electric car than I do gas stations. Interesting shift!
- zdragnar 3y ago
  ICE cars don't need to fill up near home, because it is so quick. EVs ideally fill up where they're going to be unattended, because it takes longer. It makes sense that you'd find more EV charging in residential areas and more gas stations near where people travel and work.
  - TheRealPomax 3y ago
    if you have to drive 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back, that's not faster than a fast-charge top-up at the fast charge point down the street, though. There's a critical density below which if you have a charge point nearby the nuisance of "going out for gas" and not being able to do anything else during that time isn't worth it compared to plugging in your car, and then just walking away for an hour. Especially if it's just down the road and you can just walk home, then walk back an hour later to pick up your car. Because that's what's really in competition: you have to be with your car the entire drive to and from the gas station, plus the few minutes it takes to fill up and pay, whereas you don't have to be with your car when you're plugging it in to charge: that time is now yours.
    - daveFNbuck 3y ago
      I don't think most people make a special trip just to get gas. It's usually a quick added stop along the way of another trip, which is less of a nuisance than having to make two small walks to move and plug/unplug your car.
daoboy 3y ago
Can anyone recommend a good article comparing environmental lifecycle costs of EV vs combustion engine that include lithium and cobalt mining?
- barbazoo 3y ago
  I’d love that too. What I want to know is the total impact of me keeping my 2016 ICE or if I should switch to a new EV, new because there are no used EVs really where I am.
  - speedgoose 3y ago
    It’s not a trivial exercise. I think it’s important to look at the future pollution and compare without going into the sunk cost fallacy. The pollution from your existing car cannot be taken back and I think there is no point to make this pollution "worth it". Producing a new vehicle, that will generate a lot of pollution too, may be better over time. It will depend on your electricity grid and how much you drive. You old vehicle may also go on the used market and replace a much more polluting vehicle. It’s difficult to take into account all parameters.
    - x86x87 3y ago
      Producing the vehicle itself leads to pollution. The question is: is it better to buy a new vehicle (and polute a nonsignificant ammont) or is the polution of my current vehicle going to be less for its remaining life?
      - speedgoose 3y ago
        In my opinion, unless you destroy the new EV in its early life and the battery cannot be reused or recycled for some reasons, it's likely much better to sell your ICE now so it replaces a more polluting car. You could also compare the pollution per km in the remaining lifetime of your current car, and the pollution per km in the remaining lifetime of a new EV. Your local electricity grid may improve over the years, but you could ignore that.
gohigh54 3y ago
30-40+/-% of refined oil is gasoline. So if you need to refine oil for jet fuel, heating oil, plastics, pavement and/or the 100s of other products we use everyday, then you are stuck with gasoline. Need to solve the 100s of other equally significant challenges as well.
- titzer 3y ago
  So it's surplus and we have a problem if we don't use it now? That can't be a serious argument. They'd have to start paying us to use this annoying byproduct of throwaway materials? Something sounds fishy with that argument.
  - lazide 3y ago
    In most places, Gasoline is already cheaper than milk, for instance. Most people just don’t buy 20+ gallons of milk at a time. Propane has gotten down to $3.30/gal in the US West.
- WJW 3y ago
  It's 30-40% gasoline because that is what the refining process has been optimized to produce that. You can get other hydrocarbon mixes by choosing different process parameters. Also, a huge part of oil refining is already shortening the chain lengths by adding hydrogen and "cracking" the hydrocarbon molecules [1]. They don't do that to gasoline at the moment because it has such a huge available market that it doesn't make economic sense to process it further. If that market disappears however then we absolutely would be able to convert "waste" gasoline further into jet fuel or plastics or whatever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry)
- icegreentea2 3y ago
  Well, you could at least burn them in centralized plants and get back a bunch of thermal efficiency. You can probably gain a bunch of processing efficiency too that way.
ada1981 3y ago
Someone remind me again on the stats of battery toxicity and pollution vs fossil fuels? Also, is all of Norway energy produced by wind or solar? Or does this just move the tail pipe and introduce more toxic battery waste?
- zotbar1234 3y ago
  98% of the domestic needs are from renewable sources.
- x86x87 3y ago
  The irony is that Norway is making money (and to their credit pumping it back to the people) by exploiting fossil fuel.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  The vast majority of Norway's power is hydro power with some wind and solar. There's a single coal plant on Svalbard which is about to be shut down, and oil/gas is used mainly by the oil industry to generate power for their own use on-site. Though this is also being phased out in the future.
  - lb1lf 3y ago
    -Actually, I believe the Svalbard coal power plant was shut down earlier this week; the plant in question now runs diesel generators instead. While not very green, it is slightly better than burning coal.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
      Ah, nice! I knew I remember reading about it in the news just recently, but I guess I misremembered the timing. Shows you how fast information decays I guess.
- speedgoose 3y ago
  It's mostly hydro. Solar isn't worth it unless you like the concept because hydro is so cheap and there isn't much sun on average. When it rains a lot or there is windstorm in North Europe you can get paid to use electricity. You can check the data on this website: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
zotbar1234 3y ago
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- kieranmaine 3y ago
  The article is based on data from https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/ https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/. You make fair points on how other variables can influence fuel consumption. However, if you look at the "Distance travelled" section there's a clear trend over the last 7-8 years of EV miles displacing ICE miles travelled. With EVs approaching 90% of sales this trend will continue, regardless of fluctuations in the variables you mention.
mahidol 3y ago
Motor fuel sales cannot be the sole main indicator for a "death spiral that can end oil". Oil/Petroleum products are massively employed in the manufacture of daily life items (pretty much maybe everything, not just plastics) and cutting the usage of petroleum products in that area will be the real death spiral that can end oil.
- ben_w 3y ago
  I think we only really care about the oil being burned, not merely used as chemical feedstock. In this regard we do also have to care about oil fuel heating, oil fuelled power stations, and the transport that uses oil derivatives but not normal petrol stations (flying, shipping, non-electrified rail, probably some others too), so I would still say this is a good start rather than the actual end of oil, but for different reasons to you. Peak oil is still a thing, and we will still need to shift the feedstocks to something renewable, but the schedule doesn't need to be the same.
  - deleted 3y ago
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landosaari 3y ago
In 2025 bans of diesel will begin for some large populations Athens, Madrid, Mexico City, Paris, etc. Electric buses for Cape Town, Milan, Quito, etc. [0] If these occur with no difficulties, it will be easier for governments to uphold their 2030 and 2035 agreements. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehicles#Cities_and_territories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...
cde-v 3y ago
[flagged]
- robk 3y ago
  Racist
manxman 3y ago
Fishy click bait title. The reason electric is so popular is that ICE vehicles get taxed 100% and electrics are not. Remove the incentives and I suspect the market would be different.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  It's a case study on what could happen if EV's become cheaper than gasoline vehicles. It doesn't really matter if the shift happens due to subsidies or market forces.
  - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    Basically this study has figured out that if you subsidize Ferraris, people are going to ride in Ferraris. But the moment you will stop subsidizing them people will return back to normal cars. Absolute majority of countries does not have a capital of Norway to subsidize on such a large scale.
    - belltaco 3y ago
      Take a look at what's happening in the Chinese car market. Electric cars are getting cheaper, and EVs are selling despite subsidies expiring or being lowered.
      - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
        That's subsidized electricity in China. If you would be selling liter of gas for 10cents, people would be driving car even between single blocks.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      No they wouldn't. Ferraris are impractical, expensive to fuel, unreliable, can't be used on poor roads, hard to get into, have no luggage space, only hold two people, et cetera. Their main appeal is that they signal status. And if they were cheap, they don't do that. EVs had similar drawbacks: range anxiety, et cetera. It was not a given that people would buy them even if they were cheaper. Now we know they will, and get a glimpse of society in a world where EV's are cheaper than gasoline cars.
arwhatever 3y ago
I wonder if electric cars were to approach the maximum range that most people would ever want to drive in a day, about double the stated range of the current longer-ranged cars, if that might trigger a rather profound and sudden tipping point. Who cares how quickly they charge if you’re stopping to sleep for the night anyway?
- DoingIsLearning 3y ago
  You are looking at it from an American viewpoint. If you are in US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, you might reasonably need to cover huge distances in a day. However there are a _lot_ of people in countries across Europe, Indian sub-continent, SE Asia for whom the current EV range is actually enough.
  - guidoism 3y ago
    The US’s cars also emit a huge percentage of the world’s greenhouse gases so solving that problem is kinda important.
    - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
      My point is for a lot of people around the world the technology has reached their non-anxiety range. Which doesn't mean we should stop battery and motor innovation.
    - applied_heat 3y ago
      US is 14% of global co2 emissions, vehicles are 29% of US emmissions, so US vehicles are 4% of global. I don’t know if I would call 4% a huge percentage but it is certainly significant.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  It would be nice if EV batteries were standardised and modularised enough that one could just swap out the battery for a charged one at a gas/charging station in a couple minutes.
jgalt212 3y ago
Norway is like a drug dealer that never gets high on its own supply.
SoftTalker 3y ago
Norway leads the way in EV adoption while getting (and staying) rich selling oil to the rest of the world.
- jl6 3y ago
  Don’t get high on your own supply.
  - tanseydavid 3y ago
    They're bathing in it!
bigtex 3y ago
Have they found a replacement for plastic yet?
- harimau777 3y ago
  Depending on the application, aluminum, steel, wood, or cotton are all equal or superior to plastics. The only fairly common application that I know of where there's not a good non-plastic alternative is vegan cold weather clothing. Personally, I think that plastic is mostly used for throwaway consumerism. We'd probably be better off if we went back to making things out of materials that could last.
- ImHereToVote 3y ago
  How much CO2 does plastic production release compared to other materials?
- Forbo 3y ago
  A quick search tells me that plastics account for around 4-5% of oil production, so I don't think this is going to be the safety net for the industry that it might look like at first.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    And a great deal of plastic comes from natural gas, not oil.
semi-extrinsic 3y ago
The headline doesn't follow from the actual data (par for the course with electrek I guess). Here is a graph from the source used in TFA. Now look at the sum of gasoline, diesel and biofuels, and tell me that's "cratering". https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/NORenergy_road.png https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/NORenergy_road.png
- conjecTech 3y ago
  The table they pull that data from is annual and only has info through 2022[1]. It's not useful for saying anything about the year-over-year monthly number being discussed. The chart showing monthly sales of road petroleum show a consistent 5% annual drawdown, which is proportional to how quickly the fleet is transitioning[2]. [1] https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/table/11561 https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/table/11561 [2] https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/fuelsales.png https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/fuelsales.png
- seltzered_ 3y ago
  Seconding your point & The headline is on 'motor fuel oil', not overall oil consumption for Norway
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  I think it's implied by the headline that biofuels (despite being literally "motor fuels") are in fact part of the problem for those selling "oil". EVs, plug-in hybrids and high efficiency non-plugin hybrids all combine with biofuels to dent the market demand.
seltzered_ 3y ago
It may be worth considering that while Norway's 'motor fuel sales' went down supposedly their 'oil consumption' use per EIA has remained flat (and supposedly gone up recently) - see this chart by Nate Hagens in https://twitter.com/NJHagens/status/1669072120939159553 https://twitter.com/NJHagens/status/1669072120939159553 which is figure 2 in https://fictitiouscapital.substack.com/p/a-sticky-situation-our-chronic-oil https://fictitiouscapital.substack.com/p/a-sticky-situation-... which says "But look at the interesting case study of Norway, where oil consumption has remained flat (it has one of the highest per capita oil consumption levels globally — 3x China & 10x India) despite EVs being 90%+ of new car sales and 98% electricity coming from hydropower."
- lostlogin 3y ago
  I can see the list of things they use it for, but why is oil consumption flat lining? What is increasing their usage (as ICE car usage declines)?
soniman 3y ago
What happens when the electricity goes out? And the food in the fridge goes bad and nobody can get to the store because the electric car isn't charged? Have we really thought this through? Redundant energy sources makes sense.
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  My car rarely goes lower than 70% charged. I charge it to 80% every night (recommended) and use less than 10% every day. On average, my EV is fuller than my diesel was at any random point.
- randerson 3y ago
  With many cars now you get V2L charging, so you can use the giant battery in your car to power your fridge. You have to keep your car charged, but that is easy to do if you have a charger at home.
  - soniman 3y ago
    So you're saying that something like Powerwall will be the backup power solution? An additional $15,000?
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      No, they're saying the EV can act like a powerwall, a free bonus capability.
    - ljf 3y ago
      A power wall 3 is 13.5kWh, many evs are 40 to 100kWh
- speedgoose 3y ago
  You always have some battery left in the car. There is no need to go to 0% as it can be very inconvenient and it can also damage the battery on some types of chemistry. Most people never reached home with 0%. So if electricity goes out, you most likely have more than enough range to drive to a nearby store or fast charger. If electricity goes out for an extended amount of time in a large radius around you, that sucks and you may have to find alternative solutions such as walking, running, skiing, biking… It’s not scary or considered as big issues in Norway. Many many people enjoy that kind of activities even with electricity. Electricity goes out rarely too. I think I had two short incidents in the last 10 years.
pppp 3y ago
Where I live (in the USA), they are still building new gas stations. Are they expecting the government to bail them out? What kind of business person sees the impending end of fossil-fuel cars and builds a gas station?

122 points by cs702 3y ago

Norway is more of a city than a country, and a rather wealthy one that is difficult to draw conclusions from when it comes to consumer spending patterns. I'd brush this off as not that interesting. However, if we're looking for oil death spirals in Norway, I recommend: https://crudeoilpeak.info/global-peak/norway-peak-oil https://crudeoilpeak.info/global-peak/norway-peak-oil

kiba 3y ago
It's a country of five million spread over a significant amount of land area? My metropolitan area is like 6 million people, but only 500K lives within the city of Atlanta.
- flavius29663 3y ago
  so the poster is right, your city/metro is larger than Norway, population wise. And they are super wealthy to boot. It makes it less interesting in the context of switching to EVs.
  - mrweasel 3y ago
    Doesn't it make it more interesting, or at least interesting from a different perspective. Vast cities are interesting because it's challenging to provide enough charging capacity for a "small" area, but also because there are a myriad of transportation option that could effectively complement cars. Countries like Norway is interesting because the cars are need because low population density makes other options to expensive and because now the cars need a much longer range. It's also interesting because, regardless of peoples opinion about the size of Norway, it is a country. Imagine the changes in government policies that are because possible when gas powered cars are no longer a thing to consider. Norway also taxes fuel, that money will be missing from the government budget in the future. It's going to be harder to explain that you're taxing electricity in a country that gets a large amount of it's power from hydro and windmills. Or how about the fact that Norway is a huge oil producer... is it morally right to ban gas powered cars at home, but sell oil abroad? It's hugely interesting precisely because Norway is an entire country.
joe__f 3y ago
Somewhat larger and with more fjords than your average city
- deleted 3y ago
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- x86x87 3y ago
  How many fjords does the average city have?
  - tokai 3y ago
    Norwegian cities? Around ≲1.
    - joe__f 3y ago
      Ah yeah I was going to go for '0 or epsilon', globally
Angostura 3y ago
You made me look up the area of Norway, and that’s a fairly ludicrous assertion. Whatever reason you want to use to brush it off - that’s a daft one.
tyfon 3y ago
Being Norwegian, that is one of the funniest description I have heard of the country which in reality is the exact opposite.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  I suspect that what the poster is getting at is that Norway's population is small and very wealthy, and it is concentrated around Oslo/Bergen/Trondheim so that it's risky to generalise based on what's happening there because, on global scale, it's a bit like a large-ish wealthy city (there are 1 million more people in Hongkong than in Norway). I don't think he meant that it wasn't an actual country. It obviously is. On top of that, Norway has a lot of hydro power, I believe. So not only there are wealthy with a small population, but they get effectively free electricity...
  - joe__f 3y ago
    I got the impression they are a firm believer in the spherical cow model
    - roenxi 3y ago
      mytailorisrich's reading is much more accurate than yours then. He's picking up what I'm putting down.
      - joe__f 3y ago
        Well, I'm glad somebody else was able to understand what you meant and clarify it for you. I'd say it's not surprising that people misunderstand you if you don't put much detail in your posts
  - Broken_Hippo 3y ago
    but they get effectively free electricity... Tell that to anyone paying an electric bill, especially if they live in Southern Norway.
travisgriggs 3y ago
Not Norwegian, but lived there for 2 years, in multiple places from Narvik to Stavanager to Oslo to Trondheim. Population wise, Norway slots between Minnesota and South Carolina and is ~7.5x the mighty "city" of Alaska. It has a mainland latitude sweep of nearly 24 degrees, California covers 16 degrees of latitude. It's coastline is a mind boggling 51,748 miles. I can't find a good stat on total road network size, but neighboring Sweden of similar foot print has only a little less roads than the Spain. Some city I guess. As a Washington State resident, my biggest primary holdback with going all electric is the range reduction that occurs in winter months due to cold. Canadian friends have confirmed that it's a real thing. I would love to see what effect this has in Norway. I also would love to see which makes and models are trending there.
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > As a Washington State resident, my biggest primary holdback with going all electric is the range reduction that occurs in winter months due to cold. From what I can tell, a substantial mitigating factor is if you can garage your vehicle.
  - jgilias 3y ago
    Keeping it in the garage, or just somewhere you can plug it in overnight helps somewhat because it gets heated up before your drive using the grid electricity. The consumption is still higher though. Mine goes from 14 kWh/100km when it’s 20 Celsius to 24 kWh/100km when it’s -10 Celsius. Highway consumption changes less dramatically as going faster you spend a larger share of the energy on moving as opposed to heating. So 18 kWh/100km to 20 kWh/100km. Range wise that’s a 25% reduction in usable range. I do 400 km comfortably during the summer and 300 km during the winter. Mine has a heat pump though, which should make it more efficient when it comes to heating.
    - speedgoose 3y ago
      In addition to the mandatory heat-pump, and starting a trip with a warm car and a warm battery, the better EVs also extract heat from the battery to heat-up the cabin. Long trips with one or two short fast charging stop aren't so much worse than summer. In both cases the car cools down the battery after a charging stop (the battery heats up a lot when fast charging). In winter it moves the heat inside the car, and outside the car during summer (in addition to running AC).
deleted 3y ago
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yread 3y ago
here you can see population density map of Norway Sweden and Finland. It is quite spread out https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/58777074043/population-density-of-norway-finland-and-sweden/amp https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/58777074043/populati...

otabdeveloper4 3y ago

> electricity comes from the wall socket Would that it were so!

exar0815 3y ago

Well, in the larger metropolitan regions (Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim), where probably 2/3 of Norwegians live, you see a majority of electrics or at least hybrids. When you get further North, that diminishes. From Lofoten to Tromsø, you see more and more petrol or diesel. And heavier vehicles. The automotive culture there starkly reminded me of Iceland.

ajsnigrutin 3y ago
It's not so much the automotive culture, but backbreaking taxes on ICE vehicles, and basically no alternatives if you live in rural areas and have to drive long distances. Maybe someone from norway can calculate/check how much a mid-range petrol/diesel car (eg. VW golf, renault megane,...) costs there after all the taxes, and compare to an electric one, but it's a LOT more than in eg. germany.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  Assuming the taxes are just on first-hand sales, the subsidies on new EVs probably flooded the rural regions with cheaper-than-expected 2nd-hand ICE vehicles. Obvs the market for newer 2nd-hand ICE vehicles is going to wash away.
- dromtrund 3y ago
  A VW Golf starts at 35800€, and a VW ID.3 starts at 32800€, taxes included. Overall, electric cars are a bit cheaper than their counterparts, but not a lot. However, today, petrol is 2.15€/l and electricity is 0.013€/kWh. That's 11.20€/100km versus 0.185€/100km for the ID.3, literally two orders of magnitude cheaper. Everyone charges at home, and there's also a 40% discount in toll roads, which saves me about 8€ per day I'm commuting. With the 3k€ lower price, a range of 430km, and fast charging stations every 30km along the major highways, there's just no reason to pick the Golf. We still have a PHEV in addition to our electric car, but there's no reason to. If we're going on a 500km road trip, we'll take the electric BMW i4, no question.
  - aftbit 3y ago

blondie9x 3y ago

Oil is still being used for plastic products. It will still be mined and drilled or fracked until all uses of oil diminish.

ric2b 3y ago
It will still be less if demand is lower. And if plastics become more expensive due to no longer being a "free" byproduct of oil consumption their usage will also go down.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  What a beautiful spiral this would be.
- mechagodzilla 3y ago
  Right - as the biggest consumer of petroleum, gasoline subsidizes a lot of other uses that would be much less attractive otherwise.
jonnat 3y ago
While it't true that oil is used for plastics and chemicals today, it's absolutely not the case that it will be drilled into the future when demand for gasoline disappears. Oil is not strictly a necessary precursor to much of the chemical industry, it is rather a convenient raw material because the high value of gasoline makes lights virtually free. In the early days of oil exploration, lights were constantly burned as they had no economic use at the scale they were produced. If oil exploration would continue just for the sake of chemicals, the cost structure of these precursors would fundamentally change and it would become more attractive to replace them with renewable sources.
phantom784 3y ago
If oil is only being used in a product that won't eventually be burned and produce CO2, then that's a big win.

macNchz 3y ago

A couple of comments on the article point out that if gas stations start closing due to reduced demand, it will accelerate the effect by making it more cumbersome to own a gas car. Recently, some of the industrial area near my apartment in NYC was rezoned for housing, and nearly all of the local gas stations were torn down (not because of low demand but because a 15 story building would be more profitable). The result is that even though I own a gas car, I now know of more–and more convenient–places in the area where I could charge an electric car than I do gas stations. Interesting shift!

zdragnar 3y ago
ICE cars don't need to fill up near home, because it is so quick. EVs ideally fill up where they're going to be unattended, because it takes longer. It makes sense that you'd find more EV charging in residential areas and more gas stations near where people travel and work.
- TheRealPomax 3y ago
  if you have to drive 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back, that's not faster than a fast-charge top-up at the fast charge point down the street, though. There's a critical density below which if you have a charge point nearby the nuisance of "going out for gas" and not being able to do anything else during that time isn't worth it compared to plugging in your car, and then just walking away for an hour. Especially if it's just down the road and you can just walk home, then walk back an hour later to pick up your car. Because that's what's really in competition: you have to be with your car the entire drive to and from the gas station, plus the few minutes it takes to fill up and pay, whereas you don't have to be with your car when you're plugging it in to charge: that time is now yours.
  - daveFNbuck 3y ago
    I don't think most people make a special trip just to get gas. It's usually a quick added stop along the way of another trip, which is less of a nuisance than having to make two small walks to move and plug/unplug your car.

daoboy 3y ago

Can anyone recommend a good article comparing environmental lifecycle costs of EV vs combustion engine that include lithium and cobalt mining?

barbazoo 3y ago
I’d love that too. What I want to know is the total impact of me keeping my 2016 ICE or if I should switch to a new EV, new because there are no used EVs really where I am.
- speedgoose 3y ago
  It’s not a trivial exercise. I think it’s important to look at the future pollution and compare without going into the sunk cost fallacy. The pollution from your existing car cannot be taken back and I think there is no point to make this pollution "worth it". Producing a new vehicle, that will generate a lot of pollution too, may be better over time. It will depend on your electricity grid and how much you drive. You old vehicle may also go on the used market and replace a much more polluting vehicle. It’s difficult to take into account all parameters.
  - x86x87 3y ago
    Producing the vehicle itself leads to pollution. The question is: is it better to buy a new vehicle (and polute a nonsignificant ammont) or is the polution of my current vehicle going to be less for its remaining life?
    - speedgoose 3y ago
      In my opinion, unless you destroy the new EV in its early life and the battery cannot be reused or recycled for some reasons, it's likely much better to sell your ICE now so it replaces a more polluting car. You could also compare the pollution per km in the remaining lifetime of your current car, and the pollution per km in the remaining lifetime of a new EV. Your local electricity grid may improve over the years, but you could ignore that.

gohigh54 3y ago

30-40+/-% of refined oil is gasoline. So if you need to refine oil for jet fuel, heating oil, plastics, pavement and/or the 100s of other products we use everyday, then you are stuck with gasoline. Need to solve the 100s of other equally significant challenges as well.

titzer 3y ago
So it's surplus and we have a problem if we don't use it now? That can't be a serious argument. They'd have to start paying us to use this annoying byproduct of throwaway materials? Something sounds fishy with that argument.
- lazide 3y ago
  In most places, Gasoline is already cheaper than milk, for instance. Most people just don’t buy 20+ gallons of milk at a time. Propane has gotten down to $3.30/gal in the US West.
WJW 3y ago
It's 30-40% gasoline because that is what the refining process has been optimized to produce that. You can get other hydrocarbon mixes by choosing different process parameters. Also, a huge part of oil refining is already shortening the chain lengths by adding hydrogen and "cracking" the hydrocarbon molecules [1]. They don't do that to gasoline at the moment because it has such a huge available market that it doesn't make economic sense to process it further. If that market disappears however then we absolutely would be able to convert "waste" gasoline further into jet fuel or plastics or whatever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry)
icegreentea2 3y ago
Well, you could at least burn them in centralized plants and get back a bunch of thermal efficiency. You can probably gain a bunch of processing efficiency too that way.

ada1981 3y ago

Someone remind me again on the stats of battery toxicity and pollution vs fossil fuels? Also, is all of Norway energy produced by wind or solar? Or does this just move the tail pipe and introduce more toxic battery waste?

zotbar1234 3y ago
98% of the domestic needs are from renewable sources.
x86x87 3y ago
The irony is that Norway is making money (and to their credit pumping it back to the people) by exploiting fossil fuel.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
The vast majority of Norway's power is hydro power with some wind and solar. There's a single coal plant on Svalbard which is about to be shut down, and oil/gas is used mainly by the oil industry to generate power for their own use on-site. Though this is also being phased out in the future.
- lb1lf 3y ago
  -Actually, I believe the Svalbard coal power plant was shut down earlier this week; the plant in question now runs diesel generators instead. While not very green, it is slightly better than burning coal.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    Ah, nice! I knew I remember reading about it in the news just recently, but I guess I misremembered the timing. Shows you how fast information decays I guess.
speedgoose 3y ago
It's mostly hydro. Solar isn't worth it unless you like the concept because hydro is so cheap and there isn't much sun on average. When it rains a lot or there is windstorm in North Europe you can get paid to use electricity. You can check the data on this website: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

zotbar1234 3y ago

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kieranmaine 3y ago
The article is based on data from https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/ https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/. You make fair points on how other variables can influence fuel consumption. However, if you look at the "Distance travelled" section there's a clear trend over the last 7-8 years of EV miles displacing ICE miles travelled. With EVs approaching 90% of sales this trend will continue, regardless of fluctuations in the variables you mention.

mahidol 3y ago

Motor fuel sales cannot be the sole main indicator for a "death spiral that can end oil". Oil/Petroleum products are massively employed in the manufacture of daily life items (pretty much maybe everything, not just plastics) and cutting the usage of petroleum products in that area will be the real death spiral that can end oil.

ben_w 3y ago
I think we only really care about the oil being burned, not merely used as chemical feedstock. In this regard we do also have to care about oil fuel heating, oil fuelled power stations, and the transport that uses oil derivatives but not normal petrol stations (flying, shipping, non-electrified rail, probably some others too), so I would still say this is a good start rather than the actual end of oil, but for different reasons to you. Peak oil is still a thing, and we will still need to shift the feedstocks to something renewable, but the schedule doesn't need to be the same.
- deleted 3y ago
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landosaari 3y ago

In 2025 bans of diesel will begin for some large populations Athens, Madrid, Mexico City, Paris, etc. Electric buses for Cape Town, Milan, Quito, etc. [0] If these occur with no difficulties, it will be easier for governments to uphold their 2030 and 2035 agreements. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehicles#Cities_and_territories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...

cde-v 3y ago

[flagged]

robk 3y ago
Racist

manxman 3y ago

Fishy click bait title. The reason electric is so popular is that ICE vehicles get taxed 100% and electrics are not. Remove the incentives and I suspect the market would be different.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
It's a case study on what could happen if EV's become cheaper than gasoline vehicles. It doesn't really matter if the shift happens due to subsidies or market forces.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
  Basically this study has figured out that if you subsidize Ferraris, people are going to ride in Ferraris. But the moment you will stop subsidizing them people will return back to normal cars. Absolute majority of countries does not have a capital of Norway to subsidize on such a large scale.
  - belltaco 3y ago
    Take a look at what's happening in the Chinese car market. Electric cars are getting cheaper, and EVs are selling despite subsidies expiring or being lowered.
    - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
      That's subsidized electricity in China. If you would be selling liter of gas for 10cents, people would be driving car even between single blocks.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    No they wouldn't. Ferraris are impractical, expensive to fuel, unreliable, can't be used on poor roads, hard to get into, have no luggage space, only hold two people, et cetera. Their main appeal is that they signal status. And if they were cheap, they don't do that. EVs had similar drawbacks: range anxiety, et cetera. It was not a given that people would buy them even if they were cheaper. Now we know they will, and get a glimpse of society in a world where EV's are cheaper than gasoline cars.

arwhatever 3y ago

I wonder if electric cars were to approach the maximum range that most people would ever want to drive in a day, about double the stated range of the current longer-ranged cars, if that might trigger a rather profound and sudden tipping point. Who cares how quickly they charge if you’re stopping to sleep for the night anyway?

DoingIsLearning 3y ago
You are looking at it from an American viewpoint. If you are in US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, you might reasonably need to cover huge distances in a day. However there are a _lot_ of people in countries across Europe, Indian sub-continent, SE Asia for whom the current EV range is actually enough.
- guidoism 3y ago
  The US’s cars also emit a huge percentage of the world’s greenhouse gases so solving that problem is kinda important.
  - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
    My point is for a lot of people around the world the technology has reached their non-anxiety range. Which doesn't mean we should stop battery and motor innovation.
  - applied_heat 3y ago
    US is 14% of global co2 emissions, vehicles are 29% of US emmissions, so US vehicles are 4% of global. I don’t know if I would call 4% a huge percentage but it is certainly significant.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
It would be nice if EV batteries were standardised and modularised enough that one could just swap out the battery for a charged one at a gas/charging station in a couple minutes.

jgalt212 3y ago

Norway is like a drug dealer that never gets high on its own supply.

SoftTalker 3y ago

Norway leads the way in EV adoption while getting (and staying) rich selling oil to the rest of the world.

jl6 3y ago
Don’t get high on your own supply.
- tanseydavid 3y ago
  They're bathing in it!

bigtex 3y ago

Have they found a replacement for plastic yet?

harimau777 3y ago
Depending on the application, aluminum, steel, wood, or cotton are all equal or superior to plastics. The only fairly common application that I know of where there's not a good non-plastic alternative is vegan cold weather clothing. Personally, I think that plastic is mostly used for throwaway consumerism. We'd probably be better off if we went back to making things out of materials that could last.
ImHereToVote 3y ago
How much CO2 does plastic production release compared to other materials?
Forbo 3y ago
A quick search tells me that plastics account for around 4-5% of oil production, so I don't think this is going to be the safety net for the industry that it might look like at first.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  And a great deal of plastic comes from natural gas, not oil.

semi-extrinsic 3y ago

The headline doesn't follow from the actual data (par for the course with electrek I guess). Here is a graph from the source used in TFA. Now look at the sum of gasoline, diesel and biofuels, and tell me that's "cratering". https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/NORenergy_road.png https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/NORenergy_road.png

conjecTech 3y ago
The table they pull that data from is annual and only has info through 2022[1]. It's not useful for saying anything about the year-over-year monthly number being discussed. The chart showing monthly sales of road petroleum show a consistent 5% annual drawdown, which is proportional to how quickly the fleet is transitioning[2]. [1] https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/table/11561 https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/table/11561 [2] https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/fuelsales.png https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/fuelsales.png
seltzered_ 3y ago
Seconding your point & The headline is on 'motor fuel oil', not overall oil consumption for Norway
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
I think it's implied by the headline that biofuels (despite being literally "motor fuels") are in fact part of the problem for those selling "oil". EVs, plug-in hybrids and high efficiency non-plugin hybrids all combine with biofuels to dent the market demand.

seltzered_ 3y ago

It may be worth considering that while Norway's 'motor fuel sales' went down supposedly their 'oil consumption' use per EIA has remained flat (and supposedly gone up recently) - see this chart by Nate Hagens in https://twitter.com/NJHagens/status/1669072120939159553 https://twitter.com/NJHagens/status/1669072120939159553 which is figure 2 in https://fictitiouscapital.substack.com/p/a-sticky-situation-our-chronic-oil https://fictitiouscapital.substack.com/p/a-sticky-situation-... which says "But look at the interesting case study of Norway, where oil consumption has remained flat (it has one of the highest per capita oil consumption levels globally — 3x China & 10x India) despite EVs being 90%+ of new car sales and 98% electricity coming from hydropower."

lostlogin 3y ago
I can see the list of things they use it for, but why is oil consumption flat lining? What is increasing their usage (as ICE car usage declines)?

soniman 3y ago

What happens when the electricity goes out? And the food in the fridge goes bad and nobody can get to the store because the electric car isn't charged? Have we really thought this through? Redundant energy sources makes sense.

thebruce87m 3y ago
My car rarely goes lower than 70% charged. I charge it to 80% every night (recommended) and use less than 10% every day. On average, my EV is fuller than my diesel was at any random point.
randerson 3y ago
With many cars now you get V2L charging, so you can use the giant battery in your car to power your fridge. You have to keep your car charged, but that is easy to do if you have a charger at home.
- soniman 3y ago
  So you're saying that something like Powerwall will be the backup power solution? An additional $15,000?
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    No, they're saying the EV can act like a powerwall, a free bonus capability.
  - ljf 3y ago
    A power wall 3 is 13.5kWh, many evs are 40 to 100kWh
speedgoose 3y ago
You always have some battery left in the car. There is no need to go to 0% as it can be very inconvenient and it can also damage the battery on some types of chemistry. Most people never reached home with 0%. So if electricity goes out, you most likely have more than enough range to drive to a nearby store or fast charger. If electricity goes out for an extended amount of time in a large radius around you, that sucks and you may have to find alternative solutions such as walking, running, skiing, biking… It’s not scary or considered as big issues in Norway. Many many people enjoy that kind of activities even with electricity. Electricity goes out rarely too. I think I had two short incidents in the last 10 years.

pppp 3y ago

Where I live (in the USA), they are still building new gas stations. Are they expecting the government to bail them out? What kind of business person sees the impending end of fossil-fuel cars and builds a gas station?