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7 comments on The Bullroarer - Friday 24th October 2008
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7 comments on The Bullroarer - Friday 24th October 2008
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Brisvegas,
Its the new vehicle owners that have high VMT. Since the capacity to produce new PHEV, HEV and EV will be limited for the next 5 years there will still be many people waiting to buy even if new car sales decline dramatically from the 1million last year.
Those few unemployed are not going to be driving much whatever vehicle they own, probably one of those older than 10years. Its my guess that the more fuel efficient vehicles like Mazda 121 will stay on road ,much longer than the Commodore and Falcon wagons.
While the US may be in the worst economic crisis since 1930's, China with ONLY 9% annual growth is not and neither is Australia. If China was to have NO growth in next year they would still need to import the same amount of commodities as this year, and the US in recession is still gobbling up more than 20% of worlds resources.
A world wide slow down will allow EV and battery technology to catch somewhat will potential demand, and give us a little longer time at the Peal Oil peak.
Neil,
With year-on-year oil production declines somewhere between 2-3% p/a and 8-9% p/a from circa 2010-2012 (if not sooner due to the impact of the credit crunch on new o&g projects), declining world oil exports at approximately 6% p/a, and Australia already 50% import dependent, even without considering the increasing likelihood of sudden oil shocks, you're dreamin' if you think EVs will solve the problem.
You're right that the financial crisis is yet to flow into the real economy here in Australia (or China), but we are going to see huge job losses starting in the next couple of months when it does. Mainstream pundits are predicting anywhere between 200,000 and 1 million job losses by the end of next year. We are actually in more debt than Americans; the average household owes approximately 160% of annual income. House prices are set to fall about 30%. New developments are falling off the radar by the day.
We might have a year or two before the worldwide economic recovery and oil demand start to bump back into the oil depletion curve triggering the next oil price spike (again, assuming no oil shocks, big OPEC cutbacks etc in the meantime). Retail, tourism, housing, construction, automotive, airlines and road transport, to name a few, are going to TANK, big time. And you think getting a few EVs on the road from 2012 is going to solve this? How about electric trucks? Electric planes? Electric farms?
Too little, too late, sorry. If EVs had been hitting the road in big numbers a decade ago they might have made a big difference, but they didn't. I'll probably own an EV myself one day, but a belief that this will save the economy is a delusion. We need to focus on much more important problems than how to keep cars on the road.