09-01-2016, 12:21 AM
The electric car revolution is already underway, and if the long-term projections are even remotely close to accurate, the effects will ripple through every corner of the global economy. A large chunk of conventional fossil fuel powered electricity generation is already uneconomic because of the surge of wind and solar installations. Nearly every major U.S. coal mining company has either filed for bankruptcy or is in financial distress, a glaring sign that the industry that powered the U.S. electrical grid for a century is dying off. Even the relatively small penetrations of solar and wind are upending electricity markets, but we are merely at the beginning of this revolution. As Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg New Energy Finance wrote on August 22, the long-term ramifications of this unfolding phenomenon are hard to overstate.
BNEF projects that EVs will capture 35 percent of the global vehicle market by 2040. But because technology is changing fast, the surprise is probably on the upside. Under a more aggressive scenario, BNEF can see a scenario in which 47 percent of all new vehicles sold in 2040 will be electric. The rapidly falling cost of batteries will be a key reason for the explosive growth of EVs. Battery costs have already declined by 65 percent over the past five years, and could fall by half again by 2025.
But while some doubters of EVs might dismiss such figures, BNEF says EVs will beat the internal-combustion engine on many more fronts than just emissions. As Liebreich writes, EVs “drive more smoothly yet accelerate better, they can be charged at home or at the office, they require much less maintenance, they help solve air quality problems, they improve the energy autonomy of oil-importing countries.” EVs also are “vastly superior” to fossil fuel-powered vehicles when it comes to autonomous driving, infotainment, and other features. “[I]t simply makes no sense to have an inherently analogue power unit – vibrating, volatile-liquid-consuming, hot-polluting-exhaust-producing – at the heart of a fully digital, sensor-pervaded, solid-state-electronics-controlled system,” Liebreich argues.
EV Revolution Set To Cripple More Than Just The Oil Industry | OilPrice.com