Adding Electric Vehicles Into the Oil Consumption Equation

In my last two posts on the subject, I looked at the US light duty vehicle fleet and oil consumption followed by projections of oil consumption going forward based on extrapolating the past. This time I’m going to add electric cars to the equation to determine their impact. For this calculation, I’ll assume that a third of all vehicles sold annually will be completely electric by 2030 and take those out of the equation.

Here are the light duty fleet sales I used for the projections in my previous articles.

I will assume exponential growth from now until 2030 for electric cars until they reach a third of car sales:

Taking EVs out of the sales gets us this:

Adjusting the oil use charts for this gets:

Basically, in the US oil is currently at peak. At the latest by 2025, I expect the oil decline to steepen. Even if these projections are not precise for the near future thanks to the present administration falling for lobbying and other industry shenanigans, the future of oil is murky. Join my subscribers to receive emails with my posts. My hope for the next in the peal oil series is to look at global oil consumption. While oil usage will decline in the developed world, will develop nations contribute to enough an increase to nullify this?