The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: July 8, 2006

340 comments on DrumBeat: July 8, 2006

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Show without comments | PDF version

odograph on July 8, 2006 - 12:28pm

That's all far future, without any mass production plug-in-vehicles on the market.

But to figure it, we'd need to know:

adoption rate
charge capacity

then we could calc out how many MW would need to be available each year.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Twilight on July 8, 2006 - 12:42pm

I am more concerned about the energy and materials needed to replace a significant portion of our automobile fleet. Beyond that, I think it makes more sense to spend it on electric rail.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on July 8, 2006 - 3:50pm

Spending "it" implies a pretty monolithic approach. There's a lot of room between here and there, including fuel taxes to fund both light rail and electric cars.

A lot depentptn how battery tech evolves in the next few years though.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Woilf on July 8, 2006 - 4:17pm

According to Matt Savinar, at http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html:

"The construction of an average car consumes the energy equivalent of approximately 20 barrels of oil, which equates to 840 gallons, of oil. Ultimately, the construction of a car will consume an amount of fossil fuels equivalent to twice the car's final weight."

So, to replace the 225 million or so automobiles in the U.S., it would require approximately 225M*20bbl = 4.5 billion barrels of oil to replace all the existing cars, or about a half-year's-worth of consumption in the U.S.

Of course, to replace all the cars in the world, it would take even more oil...

And I'm sure I'm missing some energy inputs in this calculation.

At $20,000 a piece, all these new cars would cost people in the US about $4.5 trillion. I'm sure the auto manufacturers would be into this plan...

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

TrueKaiser on July 8, 2006 - 4:24pm

The more batteries in a hybrid would greatly increase the amount of oil used to build a hybrid car compared to non-hybrid.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Todd on July 8, 2006 - 8:18pm

There was a link on TOD or some other forum that indicated that hybrids used, IIRC, 154% more energy then a regular car. Sorry, I don't have a link at my finger tips to support this. In any case, it isn't a 1:1 situation.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on July 8, 2006 - 9:23pm

I'm sorry you only heard the (marketing) survey, and not the rebuttal!!!

Those hybrid critics stacked the deck. They claimed, quite arbitrarily I thought, that a "car" lasts 100,000 miles while a "truck" lasts 250,000 miles. Those convenient assumptions lead to calculations showing a lower per-mile energy costs for a Hummer H3 than for a Toyota Prius.

Someone happened to report the real numbers:

The improvements are helping cars' longevity. In 1977, half of all U.S. passenger cars lasted until they were 10.5 years old, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates. Their travel lifetime was 107,000 miles. By 2001 -- the latest year tallied -- median longevity was 13 years for passenger cars and their travel lifetime was up to 152,000 miles.
For light trucks, the mileage rose from 128,000 to 180,000, reports NHTSA, but longevity remained 14 years, largely because more trucks were being used like cars.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on July 8, 2006 - 9:30pm

For more on the way they worked that number, look here.

To name just one other funny numeric business:

The study includes the energy put into research and development, which Art said is much higher for the hybrid than it is for the ICE. I'd like to see these numbers though. There is still research and development work going into the ICE.

So, you've got a few hundred million conventional cars on the road, their R&D all amortized ... what happens when you force an R&D accounting on any new technology? Fewer units to divide by, and higher "costs" ... even if they'd really be paid over time by higher production.

If we weren't avoiding bad words today ....

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on July 8, 2006 - 4:27pm

When we've only got a 4% per year auto retirement rate, I don't think we need to worry about anybody putting forward a serious plan to increase that to 100%. I agree that no one is going to expand the auto production by 20x, just to abandon it a year later.

So the 4% is good news and bad news. It makes "electric cars" (as some fraction of the replacement fleet) more possible, but it also makes them one of the "silver bbs" and not the "silver bullet"

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Don Sailorman on July 8, 2006 - 4:35pm

4% per year retirement rate??????????

Does this mean cars on U.S. roads average 25 years before going to the great death assembleges of vehicles known as junkyards?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on July 8, 2006 - 4:38pm

Sorry, I should have given a link the first time:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/02/us_vehicle_flee.html

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

ET on July 8, 2006 - 7:52pm

Just means cars are lasting longer than ever. They don't make them like they used to (thank goodness).

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Mad Maxout on July 8, 2006 - 9:41pm

4% retirement rate for the cars??? That would mean over 20 years for a car's average lifespan! I sure don't think so. You will be awful lucky to get 20 years of a lifespan out of a car. Even ships and planes are pushing the envelope at 20 years old. ValuJet bought up old Boeing 737s which were 30 years old. And we all know about what crocodiles in Florida call "airline food". Not good!

Given how I like to affect an Aussie accent, I liked this variation of the old ValuJet joke:

Q: "A ValuJet plane tried to make a mission to Sydney (Australia) but they missed! What did one croc say to the other?"

A: "Put another Yank on the barbie, mate!"

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on July 8, 2006 - 9:48pm

I don't know man, follow the link and see what you thing.

I do know that the older a car is, the fewer miles it is driven. There is an inverse age/VMT correlation. I suppose old cars tend to sit there in a multi-car family, or in the garage of retirees. They become the "extra cars" but aren't scrapped as long as they keep up registration.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

MikeCotton on July 9, 2006 - 4:34am

My buddy Walter Hiatt died in that crash. He was a damned fine songwriter.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Barb on July 8, 2006 - 7:49pm

Probably the best thing that we can hope for here in the U.S. for the time being is to do what is possible to encourage those who drive large, fuel inefficient vehicles is to a) drive them less, and/or b) increase the number of people or amount of cargo in the vehicle when it is being driven.

My recollection of the '70s is that the number of passengers per vehicle increased with more carpooling, ride sharing and hitchiking. However, my perspective could be warped by the fact that I was a student throughout that period.

Seriously, though, a medium-sized SUV usually sits 4 comfortably. With one person driving, the vehicle may get something like 18 mpg and 18 passenger mpg. Put 4 people in the vehicle, and you have 72 passenger mpg or about the same as two people each driving his or her own Corolla.

If we couls utilize our present SUV and mini-van fleet similarly, we'd save quite a bit of embodied energy. However, I think that gasoline prices would have to go much higher before too many folks would be all that interested.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Substrate on July 9, 2006 - 8:16am

I've commented on this before, but it's good to do again. Think about the likelyhood of finding 4 people going to the same place at the same time. Then think about the likelyhood of finding 2 people going to the same place at the same time. It's probably exponentially more likely to find 2 people going in the same direction at the same time than it is for 4 people.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

WKO on July 8, 2006 - 8:48pm

Note that it's the energy equivalent of approximately 20 bareels of oil. A lot of that energy will come from coal used in smelting the metals used in the car and to produce the electricity used to drive the manufacturing process. It's not all oil.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

LevinK on July 8, 2006 - 9:59pm

I would even suggest that most of it is not oil. I can imagine some amounts of oil going into transporting the vehicle and the parts, but too far from the 4 barrels mention.

That part of the Matt Savinars representation of PO I found a little bit biased.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

And1 on July 10, 2006 - 4:12am

Dear all
During the last 10 years, a number of Life cycle analysis (LCA)"cradle to grave" have been made on different aspects on transport. The best of these take into account most of the objections I have seen on the Drum. So no need to guess- but rather critizise.
One of the better LCA's is this , made by the VW. It is in german- but the numbers are self explaining.
http://www.volkswagen-umwelt.de/_download/sachbilanz_golf_a4_deutsch.pdf

The Functional unit (the is 1 car driven 150.000 km (93.300 miles) The Primary energy ( energy at the source- oil well, coal mine, iron extraction- including end- of life- that is scrapping and recycling)- cost for 150.000 km is between 70 to 150 MWh. This value is cradle to grave- that is raw material extractiuon and production, production of the vehicle, use + maintenance of the vehichle 150.000 km and scrapping and recycling. As a rule of thumb 1 kilo car cost presently 4 kilo +/- 0.5 kilo oil to produce.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on July 8, 2006 - 4:22pm

I'm pretty sure I typed "A lot depends on" correctly. I think that one was my net connection.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Mad Maxout on July 8, 2006 - 9:19pm

Are you all ready for a very contreversial proposal to cut population? There is after all a way to cut oil use, being to cull off some population, an obviously ugly topic.

What you do is you pass needed laws that both allow for suicide facilitation and allowing suicide kits to be sold in drugstores. That way, as people finally give up during the "powerdown" they have an "out". If Cuba means anything, a powerdown will be nasty at best. North Korea is a powerdown at an approximate worst.

Of course, you want to discourage childbirth. Any powerdown scenario is going to be some ugly stuff.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Don Sailorman on July 8, 2006 - 11:20pm

Oh Max, don't be so morbid: I've already posted a couple of weeks or so ago the obvious solution--just convince everybody that oral sex is better than the kind that leads to babies. Combine that innovation with new technology that allows couples to determine the sex of their offspring, and Bingo! Now the problem becomes long-term population decline, rather than the reverse.

No need to kill off billions--though Malthus was right, in the long run.

But wait a minute . . . in the long run, we're all dead, as John Maynard Keynes pointed out.

Note that the Roman Empire did not fall due to overpopulation--just the reverse!

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Nate Hagens on July 10, 2006 - 9:19am

Don, I sorry I missed your original post. As Im sure youre aware, the neurotransmitter cocktail brought about by the symphony of traditional sex, at least from the female perspective, is much deeper and richer, and therefore more satisfying than the oral variety. Not a bad idea though...

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Don Sailorman on July 10, 2006 - 7:19pm

Oral sex trumps genocide.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Rose Selavy on July 9, 2006 - 3:28pm

I agree; while we should focus on replacing our auto fleet with much more efficient models, those of us in "developed" countries (especially the US) should also start strategizing now on how to live with fewer cars overall.

Spending more on electrified rail systems, and urbane, mixed-use neighborhoods around rail stations, could eliminate the need for a lot of replacement cars in metropolitan areas -- and preserve a lot of greenbelt land that we will need for local food production.

Car-sharing is another option that is finally catching on in US cities. It is a membership service, where one can use a car from a nearby "pod" and pay only for the miles you drive. Each car serves a lot more people, and our local nonprofit car share organization found that a third of their members' households get rid of a car -- sometimes their only car, and sometimes an infrequently-used second car. Car share organizations also have pickup trucks and vans in the fleet, so folks who can usually get by with a small car but occasionally need to haul something big can use the larger vehicle only when they need the extra capacity.

I know, I know -- alternatives like these won't work for everyone or in every setting, but as we accelerate into peak oil and global climate change, we need to simultaneously embrace a broad range of effective strategies for sustainability.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

totoneila on July 9, 2006 - 5:43pm

Hello Rose Selavy,

Well said. These alternatives transport methods will obviously help, but the headwinds created by the desire of personal convenience and time savings of one-two person transport will oppose this shift. To what degree is hard to determine as fuel prices increase, but I expect to see an future explosion of bicycles, scooters, street-legalized quad ATVs, and motorcyles in places of urban sprawl [like my Asphalt Wonderland].

I have posted before about keeping your used pickup or SUV for the occasional hauling of large loads or 3 or more people [or when the weather is simply atrocious], but buying a used small scooter/ATV for one-two person commutes or errands. Bicycles best of all, of course. I presently feel this is the most cost-effective way to be prepared if gasoline suddenly spikes out of sight.

My eleven year old pickup is only worth maybe $2000-2500, but only has 115,000 miles on it-- many years of life left on it. My recently bought used 2004 scooter: only 1600 miles [yes, only sixteen hundred!]-- estimated lifetime virtually unlimited until gas prices rise so high that some punk shoots me while I wait at an intersection to then steal my little scoot.

As a plus, sparetime hauling stuff for cash has easily paid for all the pickup's running expenses, and provided me with beer money. A lot of people would rather pay someone than rent a U-Haul pickup to do it themselves. Phx has a lot of 'bling-bling' pickups and SUVs with very expensive aftermarket accessories; I call them an ornate 'chrome penis'-- the last thing they want to do is fill the storage area with manure or crushed desert rocks for landscaping.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.