In Part 3 of my series on Peak Oil in the US, I looked at the impact of electric vehicles on Oil consumption. The EV Sales chart in that post looked like this:
In this scenario, I had EV sales of about 170,000 in 2018 growing to over 1 million in 2024. However, I currently expect just Tesla alone to sell 250,000 electric cars in the US 2018 – roughly 50,000 Model S and X and 200,000 Model 3’s, which is more than the total of my my previous estimate. So I’ll bring some of my projections forward a little with 300,000 EVs sold in the US in 2018 and growing 30% almost every year. I say “almost” because I assume 50% growth in 2021 with the introduction of the Tesla Model Y. Here is a new chart with the adjustments:
My expectation is that I will have to constantly revise this upwards as the years go by and more electric vehicles come along, especially pickup trucks and other business oriented vehicles where TCO is more important than upfront cost. For now, just making the adjustment for Tesla’s outsized impact, here is what the gasoline consumption charts becomes:
There are some flaws in my analysis such as the assumption of oil use destruction in the same year as the cars are sold. So the charts might need to be adjusted by a year. But the point stands, oil is going the way of coal in power production and it will happen faster than we think. And beyond 2025 these charts are extremely conservative because who will want a gas car which would have no value much faster when electric vehicles are the norm. Major disruption is coming and some major auto companies could go bankrupt in the next decade if they don’t start planning for this future now. And with many auto execs claiming that EVs will fail, this seems more and more likely.