China's oil demand to fall

In this piece, I talked about how it had taken 15 years for plug-ins to reach 10 million total sales in China, and about how this year, another 10 million would be sold.   The S-Curve in action. The chart below, from Our World in Data, shows the percentage of plug-in (EV and PHEV) cars on the road in China, but it only goes to the end of 2023.  Let's assume, conservatively, that the percentage rose again by 3% during 2024.  This means that plug-in share of the car fleet reached 11% at the end of 2024, and will rise to 22% at the end of 2025.  That means that the demand for oil in China to fuel cars will fall by 11% this year.  That is not the only end-use of China's local and imported oil, because oil is used in petro-chemical manufacture, for heavy-duty vehicles, and for shipping, domestic and foreign.   I don't know how much these are, but at the very least, Chinese oil demand has probably stopped growing.  China contributed much of the growth in global oil demand in the previous 20 years.

This is the impact just in China.  But plug-ins outside the USA have reached price parity with ICEVs.  As they fall in price, their sales will grow faster and faster.   For the world as a whole, plug-ins reached 3% of the car fleet at the end of 2023, so perhaps it reached 4 or 4.5% by end 2024.  It's an S-curve, and will continue to rise exponentially.   

Global oil demand has peaked.  Initially, the decline will be small--1% a year for vehicle fuel, which is about 40% of total oil demand -- but it is likely to accelerate every year thereafter.

China's consumers to buy 10 million plug-ins this year

 From CleanTechnica, with my charts below.

March signals the end of the low season in the Chinese EV market — due to the timing of the New Year celebrations. This year, plugins scored almost a million units in the last month of the quarter (in a 1.9-million-unit overall market). They had a 39% growth rate, a positive outcome in a total market that expanded 12% YoY, especially considering that ICE sales dropped some 76,000 units YoY in March.

ICE deliveries down, EV deliveries up — looking good….

Digging deeper into the numbers, BEVs were the fastest growing technology, going up by 51% to 646,000 units, while PHEVs grew 25% and EREVs grew 4%.

This pulls the year-to-date (YTD) tally to over 2.4 million units. So, we should see plugins end the year well above 10 million units. In China alone….

Share-wise, March saw plugin vehicles cross the 50% market share threshold, reaching 52%! Full electrics (BEVs) alone accounted for 34% of the country’s auto sales, while PHEVs had 27% share and EREVs 8%, making BEVs the best selling powertrain in China, above petrol vehicles and HEVs

This good result in March pulled the 2025 share up by three percentage points, to 48%. BEVs alone also jumped by 3% share, to 30%. Expect to see plugins above 50% and BEVs at around 33% in the first half of the year.

(Could China finish the year above 60%?)[At the current growth rate, yes!]

10 million plug-ins sold to December 2024.  And another 10 million this year.  It took 15 years to get to total cumulative sales of 10 million, and will take just one more year to get to 20!   The energy transition is really speeding up.  Note that these data do not include exports, which are growing even faster.

 

20 million plug-in cars sold in China

 By the end of 2024, there had been 10 million plug-in cars (EV and plug-in hybrids) sold in China.  This year, it looks as if another 10 million will be sold.  It took 14 years to get to the first 10 million, and will likely take just one year to get to the second 10 million.

This fun video shows how the US had the lead in EVs and comprehensively lost it to China.

Oh, and you should prolly sell your oil shares.  Over the last 20 years, China has been responsible for most of the increase in the demand for oil.  Oil demand is going to fall really fast, as EVs bite.

EU Clamps Down On Fake PHEV Models

 

From CleanTechnica

Volkswagen has become the poster child for automobile manufacturers who try to circumvent rules and regulations in any way possible, even by engaging in illegal activity if necessary, but the truth of the matter is that just about every manufacturer is guilty of gaming the system. We just learned last week Hyundai and Kia have recently been drawn into the diesel cheating scandal. Some years ago, Mitsubishi admitted it had been cheating on fuel economy tests for 25 years!

European manufacturers were famous for using aggressive tactics to boost fuel economy ratings. They used narrow tires and inflated them to ridiculous pressures to reduce rolling resistance. They used special brake calipers that kept the pads far away from the discs to reduce friction. Then they sealed the drivers inside and covered every gap between body panels with clear tape to lower aerodynamic drag. They disabled alternators, A/C compressors, and power steering pumps. When they were done, the cars were almost impossible to drive on public roads, but they did get impressive fuel economy.

A few years ago, the EU imposed new emissions regulations designed to promote the sale of battery electric and plug-in hybrid cars. But the automakers soon found a way to game the system (again!). Last year, Transport & Environment reported that many PHEV cars for sale in Europe actually use their gasoline engines almost all the time, leading to far more emissions than claimed.

Regulators always have a problem defining what it is they want to regulate and how to do it. In theory, a plug-in hybrid has a smallish battery that allows it to travel on electric power alone for 20 miles or so without using the internal combustion engine at all. Since many drivers travel less than 20 miles a day as part of their normal routine, the cars would hardly ever use any gasoline. They would be plugged in to a normal wall outlet at night and start the next day with a full charge.

The Chevy Volt had a battery-only range of 52 miles. GM engineers were concerned that some of those cars might never use the onboard internal combustion engine (some of our readers who own a Volt report they only use about 5 gallons of gasoline a year!), so they programmed the engine to start every 3 months just to keep all the internal oily bits properly lubricated.

But many of the PHEV models recently sold in Europe use the gasoline engine almost constantly. Need to merge with highway traffic? The engine kicks in. Need to go when the light turns green? Let the engine help. Need to keep up with traffic? The engine can assist you with that.

This week, Transport & Environment is reporting that the EU has agreed to assess PHEV emissions based on how much they actually emit on the road. Currently, regulators assume (we all know about the word “assume,” don’t we, boys and girls?) that PHEVs are driven far more in electric mode than is actually the case. Beginning in 2025, the EU will significantly reduce the so-called utility factors, which is the share of electric driving that regulators use for calculating CO2 emissions of PHEVs. From 2027, the utility factors of plug-in hybrids will be fully aligned with how they are driven in the real world. (Translation: manufacturers will be able to continue cheating the system for another 5 years.)

Anna Krajinska, emissions engineer at T&E, said: “For years, the emissions of plug-in hybrids were based on unrealistic driving conditions. The new rules reflect the reality that PHEVs pollute far more than carmakers claim. Governments which still incentivise the purchase of these fake electric vehicles need to stop those harmful subsidies now.”

The latest data shows that, on average, privately owned PHEVs emit three times more carbon dioxide — and therefore use three times more fuel — than recorded officially. For company cars it is even worse. Plug-in hybrids emit five times more than their official ratings. (Note: a plug-in hybrid is just an ordinary car with an internal combustion engine if you don’t plug the damn thing in!) Carmakers have blamed drivers for high emissions, but in reality PHEVs are poorly made with small batteries, weak electric motors, big engines, and usually no ability to fast charge, T&E says.

Anna Krajinska adds, “We welcome the end of the myth that plug-in hybrids are low emissions vehicles. Carmakers will no longer be able to sell high volumes of PHEVs for the sole purpose of weakening their climate targets. If they want to avoid EU fines, they will have to sell genuinely green cars that help reduce our oil consumption.”

The EU also decided to review its new utility factors in 2024 based on data collected from on-board fuel consumption metrics, which will give a more comprehensive assessment of the share of kilometers driven solely on battery power. This will provide an opportunity to further amend the 2025 and 2027 utility factors agreed upon today.

Shysters, shonks and hypocrites.   Shamefully dishonest.  While they pretend to care about the environment, and make loud committments to net-zero, it's still business as usual.  Boycott them.

Petrol/diesel cars now just 10% of sales in Norway

 From a Twitter feed by Glen Peters

10% of new car sales in Norway in 2021 have been diesel or petrol. Let that sink in.

It is normal to buy an electric car in Norway, an outlier to buy diesel or petrol. With policies, things can go fast.

10 years ago, EVs were really expensive compared to petrol/diesel cars.  Now they're on the verge of price parity.  So Norway had to start the transition with incentives.  For example, plug-in cars were exempt from sales tax.  In other countries without incentives, such as Australia, the shift is starting now.  But if substantial incentives were introduced, the shift which took 10 years in Norway could happen in 5.  

We are not helpless against the climate emergency. 

This is the sneeze

 From a Twitter thread by Michael Liebreich.  Liebreich was the founder of BNEF.

The share of BEVs plus plug-in hybrids in Germany jumped from 3.1% in 2019 to 13.6% last year. And the Tesla 3 only just made it into the top three models. 

Remember the sneeze? The first 1% takes forever; up to 5% is like waiting for a sneeze. Well, this is the sneeze:

Here is the sneeze, for those wondering what the hell I'm talking about: it's the point at which substitution curves suddenly accelerate.  Substitution curves: "The first 1% takes forever; 1% to 5% is like waiting for a sneeze – you know it’s inevitable but it takes longer than you think; then 5% to 50% happens incredibly fast. Clean energy is entering this period of rapid transformation.

In response, Wolf-Peter Schill, posted the monthly chart for 2020 which shows just how rapidly EVs and PHEVs  are penetrating the market.   As Liebreich says, 50% penetration is not far away.  2023?  And 75%?  2025?

Under a new president and administration, the USA  will accelerate the take-up of electric cars with tax credits; Europe is well on the way to 50% penetration; and China has an aggressive EV policy.  These giant markets will drive costs down the learning curve.  EVs will dominate sales by 2026 or 2027, globally. 

Achieving a 50% cut in emissions

Toyota RAV4 plug-in hybrid, with 60 k's of electric range

This is from a comment I wrote about a piece in Melbourne's The Age newspaper.  It's specifically about Australia, but the same forces are operating everywhere.  A 50% cut in emissions by 2035 is easy.  The next 50% (to be achieved by 2050) might be a little harder.

In 2009, new-build solar cost 3.1 times as much as new-build coal (US data, Lazard). Now it costs 1/3rd. The ratio has completely inverted. In fact, in several countries, new-build wind and/or solar are cheaper than the *operating* cost of coal power stations. In other words. it costs more to dig up, transport and burn the coal than it does to build a new wind/solar farm from scratch. The implication is that for *economic* reasons, coal power stations are going to be closed down over the next decade. The government could, were it not a wholly-owned subsidiary of coal companies, make a virtue of the inevitability of this. "See, we're cutting emissions by a third! Aren't we green! We really care!"  Not that they do, of course.

What about the variability of wind/solar? Three points:

1. Wind and solar are complementary, in fact negatively correlated. The wind often blows when the sun doesn't shine, for example during winter in southern states. So a 50/50 wind+solar powered grid has an output profile much closer to baseload than either by itself.
2. A continent-wide grid produce much less variable output than a local one. When the wind isn't blowing in western Victoria, it is in east Gippsland. When it's raining in Sydney, it's sunny in Broken Hill or Port Augusta.
3. Battery cost are plunging. Over the last 30 months, they've fallen 60%, even after the cost impact of the fall in the A$. Storage costs are falling fast, which means the costs of "firming" the grid are too. It is now normal in the US for new solar farms to come with 4 hours of storage. As battery costs continue to slide--they should halve again over the next 3 years--solar farms will add even more storage to allow them to provide power overnight (o/n demand is 2/3rds of day demand, so in principle, 8 hours of storage will be enough)

One final point. Already simple hybrids cost only $1500-$2000 more than their (automatic/CVT) petrol equivalents (for example, the 2020 Toyota Corolla sedan), but they use 40-50% less petrol in urban driving. If your fuel bill is $100 per month, the higher cost of the hybrid engine will pay for itself within 3 years. And transitioning our vehicle fleet to simple hybrids will cut total emissions by another 10% (transport emissions are ~20% of the total.)  Plug-in hybrids are even more fuel efficient, cutting tailpipe emissions by 80% plus.  They cost just a couple of thousand dollars more than an ordinary hybrid.  A small tweak to the tax system could cut emissions from transport by 75%.

By 2030 or 2035, we could cut emissions by 50%, at no extra cost to ourselves. And look good while doing it.  But our conservative government is so beholden to fossil fuel interests that it cannot bring itself to acknowledge this.

Emissions plunge. For now.

From a Twitter thread by Bloomberg Green:

The sectoral breakdown is interesting:

The interesting point from the second chart is how much transport emissions have fallen.  Over the next decade, emissions from power production will decline sharply, simply on cost grounds.  And if we could transition land transport to cars with electric motors, we could substantially decrease global emissions.  As I've said before, they don't even have to be full EVs: hybrids will cut emissions by 40-50% and plug-in hybrids by 80%. 

Fossil fuel car sales collapse in Europe

[Excludes pure hybrids]

In France:

France, the world’s 8th largest auto market, just hit 11% electric vehicle market share in January, a year-on-year growth of 4×. Meanwhile, diesel and gasoline vehicle sales crashed by ~25% year on year.

The massive year-on-year market share jump from January 2019’s 2.7% to 11% was boosted by manufacturers releasing EV stock that had deliberately been held back in late 2019. Manufacturers need to push hard for EV sales now that we’re into 2020, in order to meet the new European CO2 emissions targets that start this year.

Whilst the 11% figure thus partly represents a spring-back effect from recent suppression, it’s also likely that France’s full year 2020 EV  market share [excluding pure hybrids] will achieve at least 5% overall (from 2019’s full year figure of 2.8%). Whether 10% or higher can be sustained over the coming months, we will have to wait to see.

[Read more here]


In Germany:

Europe’s largest auto market, Germany, saw January fossil fuel vehicle sales drop by over 15% year-on-year, with gasoline vehicles alone down over 17%. Meanwhile, EVs increased their market share to 6.5% from 2.5%. Europe’s big five markets are now at a combined 6.0% EV market share. What progress will full year 2020 bring overall?

Parsing out the electric vehicle mix, pure battery electrics took 3% market share, with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) taking 3.5%. Regular hybrids and mild-hybrids also saw good growth, to 9% market share, but we do not include them under the “electric vehicle” umbrella. [I.e, the percentage of cars with an electric engine is now 15.5%]

As I’ve recently discussed elsewhere, non-plug-in hybrids can certainly boost the efficiency of old-school combustion engines, which is sorely needed, as Germany’s average CO2/km still came in at 151.5 grams, almost 60% above the European fleet target for 2020. However, non-plug-in hybrids are not able to meet the more ambitious emissions targets that will phase in over the current decade. This will require plug-in vehicles with a range of ~50 km (~30 miles) or more.

[Read more here]

Europe and China have ambitious targets for EVs.  This is surely the beginning of the end for oil.  More than half global oil demand is for transport.  As cars with an electric motor gain market share over the next decade, oil demand is likely to plunge.

Electric vehicle sales triple in Oz

From The Guardian:

Electric vehicle sales in Australia more than tripled last year but were still far lower than in a majority of developed countries, industry data shows.

The Electric Vehicle Council says 6,718 full electric and hybrid plug-in vehicles were sold in 2019, up from 2,216 the year before. Sales of combustion engine cars fell 7.8% over that period.

The release of the industry group data follows Britain this week announcing it would ban new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars from 2035. The Electric Vehicle Council said the spike in sales in Australia from a low base suggested consumers wanted the technology despite it being yet to receive the support offered elsewhere.

“The good news is that the number of Australians buying EVs is surging despite a lack of government incentives or support,” the council’s chief executive, Beyhad Jafari, said. “The bad news is that even with this strong growth, EVs still only represent 0.6% of sales. That compares poorly with 3.8% of sales in Europe and 4.7% of sales in China.”

Support for EVs was a significant point of difference between the major parties at last year’s federal election. Labor promised a target of 50% new car sales being electric by 2030.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, accused the opposition of wanting to “end the weekend” by forcing people out of four-wheel drives, while the minister for small business, Michaelia Cash, told tradies only the Coalition would “save their utes”.

[Read more here]

Note that these data do not include simple hybrids (HEVs), which are making up an increasing portion of sales:

Customer deliveries of Toyota’s hybrid electric vehicles in 2019 are on forecast to be well in excess of 20,000 vehicles, doubling the total of 11,590 hybrid vehicles sold in 2018.

Hybrid deliveries this year are expected to exceed 10 per cent of Toyota’s overall sales, up from 5.3 per cent last year and 3.9 per cent in 2017.

In the first fourth months of this year, sales of Toyota’s hybrid vehicles have risen by 85 per cent compared with the same period a year ago.

The 2019 tally of 5,613 hybrid cars represents almost 8.7 per cent of the brand’s total sales and compares with 3,029 hybrid cars or 4.4 per cent of sales at the same time last year. In April 2019, Toyota sold 1,458 hybrid vehicles or 9.6 per cent of its total sales for the month.

Hybrids account for almost half of all Camry sales this year (45.4 per cent), up from 39.6 per cent last year and 20.7 per cent in 2017.

A similar trend has emerged for Corolla, with hybrid variants now comprising 31.4 per cent of 2019 sales compared with 12.5 per cent last year and 5.8 per cent in 2017.

[Read more here]

There are no easily accessible data for EV sales in OZ, but this (old) chart from RenewEconomy shows how sales have progressed since the introduction of the Nissan Leaf in 2011.  Again, these data exclude hybrids.  Sales of 6700 (but including plug-in hybrids) in 2019 is a big jump on the 1400 in 2016.   Sales of cars with an electric engine (EVs, PHEVs, HEVs) are likely to double every year from now on.

The pattern, duplicated across many countries, is clear.  Petrol/diesel sales are slumping, prolly because consumers are waiting to buy an EV/PHEV/HEV, while sales of cars with some sort of electric engine are exploding.  And many consumers are settling for HEVs because EVs are still too costly but with a hybrid, they can still cut their greenhouse gas emissions as well as their petrol bills. 

Diesel emissions 1000 times normal level

Source: Transport & Environment.
Note: logarithmic scale

From Transport & Environment:

New diesel cars’ pollution is peaking at more than 1,000 times their normal levels, tests of two top-selling vehicles show. The dangerous spikes in particles can instantly stress the heart and are a result of the cars cleaning their filters, which may occur in urban areas, last for up to 15km, and are effectively ignored by official emissions tests. More than 45 million cars carry these filters in Europe, causing a total of 1.3 billion filter cleanings a year.

Transport & Environment (T&E), which commissioned the independent lab tests, said lawmakers must accept that diesels are still highly-polluting and should make emissions limits and testing more stringent.

The Nissan Qashqai and Opel Astra, the second and fourth bestsellers in their segments respectively, were 32% to 115% over the legal limit for particles when they cleaned their filters in the independent tests. But a loophole means that the legal limit does not apply when filter cleaning occurs in official testing, meaning that 60-99% of regulated particle emissions from the tested vehicles are ignored.

Anna Krajinska, emissions engineer at T&E, said: “These tests show that new diesels are still not clean. In fact they are spewing out highly-dangerous levels of particles in our towns and highways everyday. Carmakers are being given an easy ride but people’s lungs are paying for it. Manufacturers should clean up their cars if they want to sell them.”

Harmful total particulate emissions from the Nissan Qashqai and Opel Astra further increased 11-184% when the smallest unregulated ultrafine particles were measured in the lab. These ultrafine particles are not measured in official tests but are thought to be the most harmful to human health – as they penetrate deep into the body – and have been linked with brain cancer.

Filter cleaning, to prevent the diesel particulate filter from clogging, can occur in all driving conditions, including in urban areas. In the tests, the number of particles continued to be higher during urban driving for 30 minutes after the cleaning had ended. Both models tested respected the legal limits for NOx.

ICEVs (petrol and diesel vehicles) don't just add to atmospheric CO2, bringing climate catastrophe ever closer, they also contribute to air pollution which kills millions every year across the globe.  Time to go electric.  Even if we switch to hybrids, we will still emissions 40% or more, and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) will cut emissions by 80%.

The tiger is out of its cage

Tesla has announced that battery cell production has begun at its gigafactory in Nevada.  Well, one in the eye for the Tesla haters, but not really earth-shattering news.  Except for this:

With the Gigafactory online and ramping up production, our cost of battery cells will significantly decline due to increasing automation and process design to enhance yield, lowered capital investment per Wh of production, the simple optimization of locating most manufacturing processes under one roof, and economies of scale. By bringing down the cost of batteries, we can make our products available to more and more people, allowing us to make the biggest possible impact on transitioning the world to sustainable energy.

[My underlining.  Read the original new release here]

Now Tesla has already reduced the cost of batteries by nearly 50% in one year.  And that's before it started producing its own batteries.  So what does a significant decline mean?  30%?  50%?  Whichever percentage, it's massive.   Up until a couple of years ago, lithium-ion battery costs fell by 15% per annum, which seemed really fast then!

Storage has been the missing link in the roll out of renewables.  For storing solar from the 9 am to 3 pm insolation peak for evening demand, or for smoothing out the random cyclical variability of wind supply, storage is essential if we are to go to 100% renewables in electricity generation, and of course it's essential for electrifying transport.   I've talked about CSP here and here.   That's a good option for utility level solar plus storage.

But for households, small businesses, and small town "micro-grids", rooftop solar PV plus batteries increasingly seems like a marriage made in heaven, and the attraction only gets hotter as battery costs fall.  I predict it will be the norm for households with solar to also have one Tesla Powerwall, which won't quite store enough for a day's usage, here in Australia, anyway, but will take us a long way towards it.  As long as the electricity suppliers pay half of nothing for the solar-generated electricity we put back into the grid, behind-the-meter batteries are going to be attractive.  That's in most countries outside the US, and especially Australia, where feed-in tariffs are sometimes zero, while electricity bought from the grid costs 25 cents per KWh.

The fall in battery costs means that the cost of an electric car will also cross that magical line where they have the same sticker price as petrol-driven cars.  They are already cheaper to run, because electric cars are more efficient, require far less maintenance, and depreciate slower.  They're far more fun to drive, much quieter and smoother, and produce no direct pollution.  If their sticker price is the same as a petrol (gasoline) car, then the only remaining negatives will be charging time and the absence of charging stations.  But those are mostly relevant only for long journeys, once you have more than 160 kms (100 miles) of range, as most ppl commute less than 100 k's (60 miles) per day, and so will only need to charge their cars at home overnight.

So if battery costs halve again over, say, the next 18 months, we are going to see an explosive growth in EV sales.  And as EV sales take off, the supercharging network will grow, and at some point petrol service stations will either close down or convert to EV charging stations offering you tea, coffee and a snack while your EV charges.  There will come a point where petrol-driven cars are less convenient than electric cars, where range anxiety will be something only owners of petrol cars experience,

Alternatively, those with electric range anxiety will buy a plug-in hybrid.  But my guess is that there will only be a brief period (5 years?) when they're financially worth it, because essentially hybrids have two engines and two energy storage devices, with all the disadvantages and expense of petrol vehicles.  Once there are superchargers everywhere, why bother about a petrol backup?

Tesla is inexorably and irreversibly shifting the energy landscape.  Thanks to them, we will all ultimately be able to live with cheap, reliable carbon-free energy.  And that shift is happening far faster than we thought, even just a year ago, let alone 5 years ago.  Trump and his dotty climate-denying, oil-loving buddies won't be able to stop it.  Actually, I don't think, after this latest news, they'll even be able to slow it.  The tiger is out of its cage.

EV sales surging

During 2013 EV (electric vehicle) sales rose 66% from 123,567 to 205,642.  (I'll give you the 2014 figures as soon as I have them)

Of course, this is a tiny percentage of global vehicle sales.  In 2013 87 million cars and commercial vehicles were produced, so EV sales are just 0.02% of total fossil-fuelled vehicle sales.  But battery costs are plummeting.  As charging stations spread, and range is increased, sales are likely to continue to grow rapidly.  If this rate of growth is maintained, EV sales will be up 12-fold in 5 years.  0.02% will turn into 2.8% and 5 years after that 1/3 of all vehicle sales will be EVs.

Pic shows GM's Volt, a plug-in hybrid, i.e., it has a hybrid petrol-electric engine but its batteries can be recharged from the electric mains.  Initially, I expect the plug-in hybrids will outsell pure electrics until range anxiety is overcome and charge stations become ubiquitous.  Meanwhile the Volt has an electric range of 60kms, enough for most ppl's daily commute.

EVs are where solar was 10 years ago.