Thursday 18th of April 2024
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after many years in the doldrums due to the oil monopolies...

the revival...

Electric cars are already cheaper to own and run than petrol or diesel cars in the UK, US and Japan, new research shows.

The lower cost is a key factor driving the rapid rise in electric car sales now underway, say the researchers. At the moment the cost is partly because of government support, but electric cars are expected to become the cheapest option without subsidies in a few years.

The researchers analysed the total cost of ownership of cars over four years, including the purchase price and depreciation, fuel, insurance, taxation and maintenance. They were surprised to find that pure electric cars came out cheapest in all the markets they examined: UK, Japan, Texas and California.

Pure electric cars have much lower fuel costs – electricity is cheaper than petrol or diesel – and maintenance costs, as the engines are simpler and help brake the car, saving on brake pads. In the UK, the annual cost was about 10% lower than for petrol or diesel cars in 2015, the latest year analysed.

Hybrid cars which cannot be plugged in and attract lower subsidies, were usually a little more expensive than petrol or diesel cars. Plug-in hybrids were found to be significantly more expensive – buyers are effectively paying for two engines in one car, the researchers said. The exception in this case was Japan, where plug-in hybrids receive higher subsidies.

“We were surprised and encouraged because, as we scale up production, [pure] electric vehicles are going to be becoming cheaper and we expect battery costs are going to fall,” said James Tate, who conducted the research published in the journal Applied Energy with Kate Palmer and colleagues at the University of Leeds, UK. “It is a really good news story.”

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/01/electric-cars-alread...

Another aspect of electric cars is the likelihood of reducing the need for "wars about oil" which have plagued the world since the beginning of the 20th century...

 

riding on the electric camel...

 

The world’s biggest oil producers are starting to take electric vehicles seriously as a long-term threat.

OPEC quintupled its forecast for sales of plug-in EVs, and oil producers from Exxon Mobil Corp. to BP Plc also revised up their outlooks in the past year, according to a study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance released on Friday. The London-based researcher expects those cars to reduce oil demand 8 million barrels by 2040, more than the current combined production of Iran and Iraq. 

 

Growing popularity of EVs increases the risk that oil demand will stagnate in the decades ahead, raising questions about the more than $700 billion a year that’s flowing into fossil-fuel industries. While the oil producers’ outlook isn’t nearly as aggressive as BNEF’s, the numbers indicate an acceleration in the number of EVs likely to be in the global fleet.

To see BNEF’s report comparing long-term EV adoption forecasts, click here.

“The number of EVs on the road will have major implications for automakers, oil companies, electric utilities and others,” Colin McKerracher, head of advanced-transport analysis at BNEF in London, wrote in a note to clients. “There is significant disagreement on how fast adoption will be, and views are changing quickly.”

 

 

read more:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-14/big-oil-just-woke-up-...

 

Image at top: Article about electric cars in the French magazine Marianne September/October issue... It points out that before the advent of petrol stations and big oil cartel, there were nearly 60,000 electric vehicles in Europe and in the US by 1915... see also: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

and:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/26526

back to the future...

When Labor announced its plan to boost the number of electric cars in Australia over the next decade, an election campaign battleground opened up.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison accused his rival of wanting to "end the weekend when it comes to his policy on electric vehicles"; Bill Shorten returned fire by accusing the Government of running a "scare campaign". 

But electric cars aren't new — they've been around for more than a century.

And for a moment at the advent of the automobile industry, they even threatened to become the dominant mode of transport.

Inventing electric

From the late 19th century, electric cars began to trickle onto the streets of major American cities, representing a formidable part of the automobile trade.

A carriage could now be transported by electricity instead of horse — the culmination of centuries of technological innovation and invention.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-02/the-history-birth-death-resurrect...

 

Read from top and read also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/26526

 

The UK has become the first country in the world to declare a national climate emergency following protests and acts of civil disobedience from a grassroots environmental group that launched in October.

It's a spectacular success for the Extinction Rebellion, while most climate protests have failed to capture the attention of the public, media and politicians. Although the declaration on its own does not mandate action on climate, it was the first of the protester's three demands, along with reducing emissions to net zero by 2025, and creating an assembly of citizens to lead the government on climate issues.

On Wednesday in the UK, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn called on the government to declare the climate emergency: "We are living in a climate crisis that will spiral dangerously out of control unless we take rapid and dramatic action now."

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/uk-becomes-first-country-in...

 

Read also: this is why we have to stop adani... in stop the stopper who stopped the stop adani coal mine...