Energy Prospectus

Tesla's look cool and other drivers take note each time they see one, which is why most Tesla owners buy one; they want to get noticed and feel "cool". However, electric cars are not economical to own because electricity is not free. BTW most young people think it is free because their mothers didn't remind them daily to turn off the lights when they leave a room like my mother did when I was growing up. I was a poor kid growing up in South St. Louis and my parents believed "a penny saved is a penny earned". - Dan

Here is a note sent to me by one of our members:

Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it. This is the first article I’ve ever seen and it tells the story pretty much as I expected it to.

At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious.

If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than 3 houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.

This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles... Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS!' and a shrug.

If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read them the following. Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It’s enlightening.

Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors … and he writes, "For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.” Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.

It will take you 4-1/2 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph

According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.

The gasoline powered car costs about $20,000 while the Volt costs $46,000+… So the American Government wants loyal Americans not to do the math, but simply pay three times as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.
..And the enormously expensive deep-cycle battery MAY last as much as... three years!

Are we really this stupid? The wind mill and solar panel stories are equally insane. There are but a few places where they may just about break even. Pennsylvania is not one of them. We just don't have magic fairy dust energy yet folks... No matter how much the government subsides it!

“It is easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled.” – Mark Twain
---------------------------------------
My Take: I've been in the oil & gas industry for almost 40 years. Over that time, I've heard of many things that were going to lower demand for hydrocarbon based liquid fuels, primarily gasoline and diesel. None of them have come close to slowing down the annual increase in demand for oil and most of them cause more problems. We are going to see more EVs in the future, but the fact is that EV sales must double for ten years in a row (virtually impossible) before they reach 10% of the total fleet of cars and light trucks. As the article above points out, by then they will have created a serious problem for the electrical grid. However, I am bullish on lithium because I think the "Big Ticket Item" is a rechargeable battery system to power the home. I will point this out at our Houston luncheon on October 27. - Dan

Another EPG member (a professor at SMU) sent me this:
The number of electric vehicles will continue to increase over the coming decades and will reduce the growth of global oil demand (not by much), but predictions of hundreds of millions of EVs before 2030 is far-fetched. Here is why: https://www.anasalhajji.com/blog/foreca ... lculations

Big Oil Touts Its Core Business: Fossil Fuels. Wall Street Journal.
Big oil company executives asserted that fossil fuels would remain the central part of their business for decades, despite recent investments in renewables and other energy sources made in response to efforts to curb carbon emissions. “Despite the attraction of renewables, the world can’t run on them alone and won’t be able to for some time,” BP PLC Chief Executive Bob Dudley told the Oil & Money conference in London Wednesday. The remarks by Mr. Dudley and other executives at Europe’s largest oil companies represented a defense of the industry’s traditional work at a time of growing pressure from investors and activists to manage their risks related to climate change. The optimism comes as oil prices are on the rise in the recent months, closing in on $60 a barrel for Brent crude, the international benchmark, in recent days after a prolonged downturn caused by a global oversupply.


U.S. Shale Oil Industry to See Wave of Investment, says Total CEO. Reuters.
The U.S. shale industry will see another production surge in 2018 as producers have sharply ramped up bets against a fall in oil prices, major oil executives and bankers said in London on Wednesday. Activity amongst small- and mid-sized producers is ahead of last year's pace, analysts said, and a sharp increase in output could undermine the recent rally that in September pushed benchmark Brent crude to levels not seen since mid-2015. Patrick Pouyanne, the chief executive of Total, speaking at the Oil & Money conference in London, said he expected global oil demand to grow strongly again this year, by up to 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd). "Our U.S. colleagues are hedging like mad at $56 a barrel so we will see another wave of investment in U.S. shale, no doubt about it," Pouyanne said.

U.S. Crude Oil Production for 2017 is up by 467,000 barrels a day through July. In the first quarter of 2017 the EIA forecast 2017 output growth to come to 680,000 bpd. Why do so many people think EIA makes accurate forecasts?

Re: EVs

I remember when biofuels were forecast to lower the demand for oil. That was before those making the predictions remembered that humans also like to eat. If 100% of the world's farmland was devoted to making biofuel feedstock, it might lower demand for oil by 10%. I guess you could argue that most people would be dead, so maybe it would work.

I'm not a fan of EVs. But in the story it talks about the cost of electricity of $1.16 kwh.
Here in Ky my cost is about 11 cents per kwh. My last bill for a months electricity was $107 for 801 kwh. Just food for thought.
Regards

Per my last bill from Reliant Energy, I paid $0.128/kWh, but adding in all other charges it was $0.172/kWh. Are you sure we aren't comparing apples to oranges? Surely, it costs more than $2 to recharge a Tesla.

IMO the big thing holding most consumers back from considering an EV is the time it takes to recharge them, not the cost.

There are enough consumers out there who will buy an EV if the operating cost is relatively close to that of a CIE vehicle as their little way of helping the environment. This is why I like Nano One Materials Corp. They believe their technology will make batteries that recharge faster and hold more energy.

Remember that we are spoiled in the U.S. by cheap and reliable power. Most of the world's population does not enjoy the steady flow of electricity that we do.