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Petrol cars will be obsolete in 8 years, says US report
You'll probably want to read the article first....
My comment is..
I take the eight years bit with a grain of salt, but there are many aspects of Sebo's vision or foresight that do seem likely to come true.
I like the parallel drawn with digital cameras - celluloid film cameras were gone by lunchtime.
Equally awesome - and deeply concerning - could be widespread potential poverty in new areas, or dramatic shifts in the world balance of power - the sudden, and drastic reduction in income and status of major oil producing countries, such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria etc.
However I think there are some bits in the equation Tony Seba (or the newspaper report) gets wrong.
"No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years."
That might be true for new cars, but there is no way that huge numbers of people in the bottom earning 50% of the western populations (let alone less developed countries) will be able to trade in used cars, whose value has rapidly diminished to virtually zilch, for electric cars selling at $20,000.
On one hand their existing car is rendered virtually worthless, on the other these folks can't afford, or can't get, credit, to jump to $20,000.
Or, if retired, perhaps the largest section of western poor, they may baulk at the risk of spending such a large portion of their rainy day capital on a car, when their actual amount of driving is anyway declining.
So I suspect however expensive petrol becomes, it will take far more than eight years for the car owning world's poorer half to let go of petrol cars. And if their value gets cheaper and the market is flooded with them.... well for a few years anyway it will be a buyers market. Anyone for a BMW ?
Trained mechanics may become less by virtue of no new ones being trained , but there will still be mechanics and that sort of know-how around, for a decade or two, and a good living to be made, official or backyard.
It will need a great many five, ten and fifteen year older second hand electric cars on the market, to bring down prices to accessible levels , yet the insinuation of the article is that is they never wear out (so to speak) and this will surely slow the rate of upgrading that goes on
Nor will they have been produced in sufficient quantity (at the present time ) to flood the market in eight years time. Indeed if electric cars take off that fast any 2nd hand electric car will be in demand and hold its price.
This suggests that even if fuel is expensive (and that keeps the remaining service stations happy) the poor and those on fixed incomes, pensions etc - will find it easier to hang onto their car and pay by the week, just use it less.
Logically the extra finance charges of buying new, will be more than compensated by cheaper electricity, but who is to say it will stay so low.
