The End of Fossil-Fuelled Cars

1919 Rauch & Lang electric car (source)

This article at CleanTechnica is a fascinating look at whether EVs (electric vehicles) will be able to replace ICEVs (internal combustion-engined vehicles).  It's worth reading in full, here.

Tony Seba predicts that EVs will be 100% of (new) car sales by 2030, as does the author of the article, James Wimberley, if past growth rates continue into the future.  Busses and light commercial vehicle will probably follow the same time line.

I'll summarise the key points underlying why he thinks growth rates will remain high below (quotes from the article in blue):

• It's possible but very unlikely that the li-ion technology will stall. "EVs, like solar panels and wind turbines, are fairly simple and individually cheap devices that can be mass-produced, the ideal case for continued improvement."  There is a ferment of new technologies and research: "The workhorse lithium-ion battery, invented by Nobel non-prizewinner John Goodenough, does the job. Many other battery chemistries are being investigated, and within each chemistry new nanomaterials for anodes, cathodes, and membranes. A sudden jump in battery performance or fall in cost is entirely possible and would accelerate change. It’s electric aircraft that really need something new."
• We won't run out of lithium or cobalt. "If lithium and cobalt were mined at the same intensity as the slightly less common lead, output would be respectively 212 times and 82 times higher than today. EV light vehicles have to grow 133 times to take all the car market, so the order of magnitude looks doable. It is also reasonable to expect that raw materials will be used more efficiently as time passes."
• Government support is likely to change, but that might not matter too much. "It’s a fair risk in some countries: but not overall. Several countries like Germany are more likely to increase incentives than cut them. More important, in contrast to the early days of mass solar PV, which was completely dependent on the German market, EV sales are roughly equally distributed between the USA, a handful of European countries, and China. (Though, the US market should really be split into California and “the rest of the USA.”)  This robust dispersion provides insurance against a reversal in one market."
• Though a crash (short-term) in the oil price would slow EV sales growth, in the shorter term, oil is more likely to spike. "Peak cheap oil has already long passed; supply is maintained from more expensive sources, fracking, tar sands, offshore provinces, and secondary recovery. Any further fall in price should be self-limiting from the fall in supply. It’s more likely that the oil price will spike at least once more before the industry faces its Fimbulwinter. Demand from vehicles is still growing, and investment in exploration and development has been cut following the fall in price. Its immediate cause, the US fracking boom, is necessarily short-lived. A price spike would accelerate the growth of EVs. It’s not so obvious it would trigger another oil investment boom, as by then everybody in the industry will see the end coming. Permanently high oil prices are a possibility. Oil risks are on balance an upside for EVs." I disagree: I doubt there will be another oil price spike because the large low cost producers (Saudi, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait) have every incentive to pump while they can, given the obvious growth in EV sales.  Still, if the turnover of vehicles is as slow as Winberley posits, then it is in fact likely that that point is still a few years away, so it is possible that we could have one last spike.  Hmmm.
• There will be continued incremental technology improvements.  Battery costs have fallen from $1000/kWh to below $200 in 6 years.  This is a compound rate of decline of 23% per annum. If this rate of decline continues, batteries will cost $50/kWh in 5 years.  "The current policy incentives are designed roughly to equalise costs, not undercut fossil fuel cars. But as we saw with wind and solar electricity (and as I predicted), the price of EVs won’t stop falling once it reaches parity with ICEVs. After parity, the widening price gap will steadily boost EV sales; and as it will be driven by economies of scale, it’s a positive feedback loop – or death spiral for fossil vehicles. This looks highly probable to me. The price drop will not be as spectacular as for solar panels, however, because of the half of the car that does not change."



Source

• Many cities across the world are keen to reduce CO2 emissions as well as air pollution from transport.  "Among the serious is London, which will introduce an Ultra-Low-Emission Zone in September 2020. Vehicles not meeting a high emission standard will have to pay a daily charge of £12.50, collected in the same way as the existing congestion charge. This policy creates a solid policy pressure on fleet operators of vehicles to go electric earlier. The public transport operator, Transport for London, is already electrifying its single-decker fleet and trialling double-deckers.  Even lesser policies can be effective. Stuttgart is considering bans on diesels triggered by air pollution indicators. If you are the fleet manager of a supermarket chain relying on daily delivery, the prospect of even a few days a year of unpredictable interruptions is very worrying."  If petrol and diesel cars and lorries are banned in major cities, ICEVs will be useful only in remote areas.  The value of ICEVs will collapse if they can't be used.  The knowledge that restrictions on ICEVs will be introduced and get tighter over time will bring EV sales forward, even if they still have a higher sticker price than ICEVs. 

•  As EVs become common, the social (and political and legal) pressure to scrap dirty petrol and diesel cars will only increase. 

[Read more here]

Wimberley is pessimistic about the the rate at which the whole car fleet will transition to consisting of EVs:

The problem is that the stock of ICEVs is huge, over one billion, and they last a long time, about 20 years for cars. Even if no new ICEVs are sold after 2030, emissions from the fleet don’t hit zero until 2050. Ridesharing does not affect this problem unless it accelerates scrapping of the legacy stock. Net zero by 2050 requires extremely high growth rates to hold up; follow anybody else’s forecasts than Seba’s and mine, and the deadline is put off. The governments of the UK and France have announced ICE cutoffs for cars in 2040: this is not too bad, as cars over 10 years old tend to have low annual mileage. Net zero by 2050 also calls for extension of the technology to trucks. This is all possible, but not at all certain.

My own view is that in developed countries, once EVs make up 100% of new car/bus/light truck sales, governments will start using carrots and sticks try to get old ICEs scrapped.  In addition, the average life of a car in developed countries is anyway not 20 years but around 10.  In poorer countries it might be a different story, except that megalopolises in those countries have far worse pollution than developed countries (and it's bad enough there).

2050 is 33 years away.  That's a long time to take to cut emissions to zero.  Too long.  I suspect that once EVs have a lower sticker price than ICEVs the pressure to shift will be intense.  By the mid 2030s, global temperatures will have risen another 0.4 degrees C.  The push towards a zero carbon economy will only get stronger as temperatures rise.  It's hard to get the precise tipping point right, but I think we will be there in 2019 (Tesla Model 3, Chevrolet's Bolt, the new Nissan Leaf, Toyota Prius Prime, VW's epiphany ....)  At a 50% growth rate, EVs will be 100% of new car sales within 10 years.  At 60% it will take just 8 years.  Of course, exponential growth doesn't continue for ever, but you get the picture.