The release of Tesla’s first affordable electric vehicle, the Model 3, marks a milestone in the EV industry that could shave off 300,000 barrels per day in gasoline demand in the U.S. by 2035, according to a report by Wood Mackenzie.
According to the research company’s analysts, the Model 3, based on the success of the Model S, and “the huge number of preorders” for the new car (around 400,000 worldwide), are a guarantee of success and the entrance of EVs into the mainstream, displacing part of the fossil-fuel guzzlers.
According to Tesla, the Model 3 will have a price tag starting at US$35,000 before incentives, will be able to accelerate to 60 mph in under 6 seconds, and will sport a battery capable of taking the car 215 miles before needing a recharge.
Production should start next July, although the date is not set in stone. Still, if indeed Tesla starts making the Model 3 in July, the first deliveries in North America will be made before the year’s end. There has been speculation, based on “hints” from Tesla’s President, Jon McNeill, that some of the new cars will be manufactured in China, which, added to reports that Asian customers will be the first to receive their preordered Tesla Model 3s, suggests that Tesla is far from focusing on its home market above all.
Regarding global EV markets, the lead author of the Wood Mac report, research director Prajit Ghosh, said that “The impact of Model 3 on the larger energy markets will not be in how many Model 3’s Tesla sells but what it has arguably done to spur wider electric-car production.”
This is where the Model 3’s game-changing potential lies, although it hardly makes Tesla itself happy as it means much more intense competition. Still, the company’s home market looks pretty rosy. According to Wood Mac, by 2035, some 12 percent of new car sales in the U.S. will be electric vehicles, a total of 16 million of them. Chances are that many of these will be a Tesla, or even most, depending on how quick its home-turf rivals are to catch up with the leader in the EV segment.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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See - I can make completely speculative predictions all day long too - but it don't make them true.
Wood Mac has obviously bought into the Elon Musk delusion since the Model 3 is just a concept car - it doesn't even exist! They'd had more credibility if they'd at least referenced the Bolt - which goes on sale in November.
Trying to predict future EV use is a dangerous game. Remember, according to Back to the Future (part I), all cars should have been powered by Mr. Fusion by now.
now the optimists are projecting out 19 years.
The energy will of course be replaced by something else, most likely coal. That is the beginning of a very significant shift that will weaken the power of oil producers worldwide. The article does not mention "clean energy" anywhere. Even if ask the displaced oil gets made up with coal, that is still going to be a transition with geopolitical consequences.
I think the analysts are way underestimating EV sales by 2035. Once the ball gets really rolling, the ICE will be rapidly swept aside.
Getting to 300kbpd isn't going to take long. 2020, 2021, including other makers (particularly Chinese domestic brands).
To shrink gasoline demand by 300,000 bpd would require roughly 9 million EVs to be on the road. I can easily see that many being on the roads by 2035
Hooray for EVs!
The Tesla 3 is an intriguing design from a remarkable company, but, good grief, can the breathless wait until Tesla has produced *one* off a high volume production line (500K a year), by a company that has never run a high volume production line, in cars using battery packs from a factory that has not yet produced *one* pack for the 3 off a high volume battery production line, by a company that has never run a high volume battery factory.
Musk himself has said manufacturing in volume is, I dunno, ten times, a hundred times harder than designing the car itself. In my experience, he's correct, and failure is certainly one of the options for a company that has mounted losses year after year.
Meanwhile, PHEVS are already in production by multiple companies that have paid the price to prove they can do high volume mfn many times over. Amazingly, GM, Toyota will continue on producing these cars and reducing oil consumption and without the aid of breathless articles.
#1, someone mentioned fossil fuel is used to make EVs. Absolutely true, but the more you drive these cars, the less they pollute per mile. The converse is true with ICE.
#2, another issue is how the electricity is generated. For example, most of the Midwest and the South are still using coal, which will certainly pollute. However, as power generation cleans up, the EV fleet gets cleaner. The prices for renewables are dropping fast, and their total percentage of overall power generation is increasing, all of which will make EVs cleaner and cleaner. ICEs will continue to pollute despite how clean the grid is.
#3, someone else mentioned the speed of charging. That can be a problem. For example, we know of someone who drives from San Jose to San Diego at least weekly. Imagine stopping half an hour at the supercharger on each trip! Luckily for most of us we don't have to suffer that fate. Instead, most of us are looking at about 100 mile max on daily basis even in the most spread out suburb. That's enough for this newest generation of EVs and certainly the Bolt and M3. Most owners that do need to drive 100 miles daily will simply charge their EVs overnight while they sleep.
As an EV driver with solar panels, I can't begin to tell you how addictive it is to be able to drive a car that you can fuel with fuel you essentially generate on your own. Put it to you this way, imagine living on an oil field, you got your own rig, you got your own refinery, and you can fuel up nightly. Except the rig, the refinery, and the pump are all maintenance free. Nor are you getting the smoke and noise and everything else that comes with these operations. I tell ya, even with my EV's lame 80 mile range, this type of generate your fuel setup is so enticing that I have managed to put 30k on the car within 22 months. And yes, we have another ICE that pretty much just sets in the garage as our second car.
Here's the facts. We have installed 5.8kW of solar panels on our house. Living in a Mediterranean climate, we've met far in excess of our electrical needs since February, even after adding an electric heat pump in May for summer cooling (and winter heating with natural gas as a back-up). We also acquired a used Prius Plug-In hybrid with an 11-mile EV-only range. Now, almost all our local miles are EV, and we fill up with gas at most once a month. Most of our fuel is "free" solar energy. Yes, we're paying off our solar system. Yes, there are subsidies. But the reality is that gas & oil are far more subsidized. We'll have paid off our solar panels in eight years––and the panels are rated to be producing in the high 90 percentage points of their originally installed capacity after 26 years! Every bulb in the house is now LED, also subsidized largely by the eight bulbs mailed to us free by the utility. We pay $11 a month for the convenience of remaining attached to the grid and not requiring a wall of batteries to store power. So, we don't waste the power and every month since February we've actually shipped quite a bit back to the grid. With the next generation Prius hybrid (let alone an electric car), we will be able to use more of that power and ALL our local driving will be EV. At that point, we might go through a tank of gas every three or four months rather than every week as we once did. Oh, and when all the subsidies were toted up, we paid for 30 percent of the cost of installing our panels. Not too bad!
The upshot is that this forecast isn't optimistic, it's probably over-cautious.
Two thirds of electrical power in the US comes from fossil fuel burning power plants. What's the likelihood that your electric car is a coal burner?