The reason they didn’t ban horse-drawn transportation when the horseless carriage came along was because people could clean the horse poop off their boots and throw it away.
But we’re running out of the places to put the poop from fossil fuels… 
Given how long cars last now, the last gasoline car sold in 2035 will be running in 2045-2050. Being an oil exploration and production guy, I severely doubt we’ll have a lot of oil in 2045-2050 to be spent on rides in monster private vehicles with one occupant. The price will be high and we will be conserving it for mission critical uses. Let’s bring on electric vehicles. My first electric vehicle will be an e-bike, not really a private car.
What will happen with the automobile in the coming 25 years is difficult to predict. But where it will be in 50 years is much easier.
The road to zero carbon emissions will be littered with casualties. The general global economy is so invested in the process of supplying fossil fuels and their associated products, the process of erasing it from the scene will be a very painful one.
The shock will be like the price of gold going to zero in a six-month period. The oil barons will not be led to the sacrificial alter willingly. They will fight it every step of the way.
The oil barons, my bosses, can think whatever they want, but here’s something they cannot fight. Every well or oil field or petroleum province in a country depletes at ~5% per year, not counting new discoveries… and new discoveries have been very, very poor over the last five years.
It’s 28 years to 2050. So 0.95^28 = 0.24. So if we don’t find new oil, we’ll be down to 24% of what we pump today by 2050. I’m not saying that will happen, but for new oil to come online, the cost will have to go up. There’s always that marginal barrel of oil to find, if you want to pay for it. Murica don’t want to pay. Murica thinks cheap oil is a birthright.
It’s just like the 19th century… they hunted whales to the brink of extinction for whale oil lamps.
With the investment they currently have, and based on their actions so far, I think it’s reasonable to expect the industry, as a whole, to resist folding their tent and going away for at least another 30-40 years.
There exists today, about 1.4T barrels of proven oil reserves oil worldwide. We use about 35.5B barrels a year. That’s 40 years of oil left. That’s too long to keep pumping carbon into our atmosphere. And I don’t trust the oil barons to do the right thing.
Check out what Clark Howard says about the electric-vehicle situation in this short video:
The one thing I don’t see the EV crowd to address is the X% of gas taxes [at least in Cal] goes to road and highway maintenance.
Without those gas taxes, how are the roads maintained? I see a use tax: X$ for every Y mile driven. Around here, the lowest income people drive the most work commute miles, so this would impact people most unable to afford it.
A week or so ago, Ford announced that they were again taking orders on the Lightning, at a $7-8,000 higher price than the current models. This week Ford announced that the prices on the Mach-E were going up $8,000. EVs may be available, may even be required, but who will be able to afford them?
I suspect as the 'EV rebates go up, so does the price. [But I’m a pessimist]
In Idaho they collect road taxes with the registration and renewals of EVs. It’s probably a lot more efficient and less prone to fraud than the collecting road tax based on fuels consumed by ICE vehicles using our road systems.
Interesting. That’s why I noted Cal. Here, a % of gas tax is used.
The use of a gas tax is a kinda indirect use tax. The more gallons one buys is proportional to miles driven. [sort of]
It’s collected as a tax on diesel and gasoline vehicles in Idaho as well. The practice of collecting it (in advance) at initial registration and renewals is just for EVs, and maybe hydrogen cars.
Interesting. Did not know that.
That article is from 2019. This is more up to date.
The wider question is who can afford new vehicles, period? 72 month financing, $1000 per month payments? Subscriptions for heated seats? No one can. They want to raise the cost of that EV by $8700, that’s more than my car is worth, mark to market right now. I refuse that costly nonsense. Buyer’s strike.
My 2008 Toyota has 64,000 miles on it, roughly 4900 miles/year. Not looking for any kind of car. Ever…
Oh I dunno… the relative prices over the years for two of life’s necessities, cars and houses, haven’t really changed that much.
In 1975 the average SFR house cost $38,100, a new car averaged $4,950. That’s a ration of 7.69
In 2022 the average SFR house costs $348,079, a new car is $48,182. That’s a ratio of 7.22
Looking at relative average costs, I’d say they are not much changed from 1975.
Housing and vehicles have both inflated beyond reason, faster than the CPI. That 1975 house would cost $197,000 if it had tracked inflation, instead almost 2x that. And health care and college and LTC… Lord what is the government measuring to come up with its inflation numbers?