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The hybrid seems a much better alternative, since it results in more power and less gas use than the ICE, but without the range and charging issues of the EV. Regardless of the percentage of EVs in the future, fossil fuels will still be needed. Consider the number of gas and diesel powered boats and ships, construction equipment, trains and buses, and home/garden/farm equipment, planes and helicopters, military vehicles and the other uses , most with no electric alternatives. For example, in Florida there are over 1 million registered boats, here in Washington, 237,493. In the 2022–2023 winter, about 4.96 million households in the USA used oil to heat their homes.
The EV is even more power and even less gas use than ICE when compared to a hybrid. The question about the range and charging issues depends a lot on what your driving patterns are and whether you can charge at home. For about half the households in the US, and likely a majority of the new vehicle buying audience, EV charging isn't an issue but rather an advantage that grants two large bonuses. One is that it's generally much cheaper per mile to operate an EV that it is for the equivalent ICE vehicle. The other is that you have the convenience of waking up to a full tank every morning from home which makes "refueling" stops unnecessary.
There are a lot of gas powered boats, ships, semis, construction equipment, aircraft, military vehicles, etc. which is a large part of why it's incredibly foolish to waste petroleum resources on mass market consumer vehicles. Leisure boats though, and other short range vessels, will also likely go electric fairly soon as would rail and short-haul semis. Same with some construction vehicles and farming equipment. End of the decade will probably also see short haul flights move there. The military is already keen on solar power, batteries, and electric vehicles in its operations, but it very much needs petroleum resources for many of its operations. Same with civilian median and longer-distance, commercial OTR freight and long-distance maritime operations. Those do actually need petroleum and will need them for a while.
Related to the question of dependency on OPEC+ controlling prices, greatly reducing reliance on petroleum for large parts of the US that currently uses but has an easy pathway towards switching to an alternative (and electricity is an alternative that has many, many pathways towards production) is in a sense an overarching national security measure. There are certainly some conditions where EVs aren't there yet and might be a while before they do such as living in climates that have Fairbanks, Alaska kind of deeply cold and long winters, but it's otherwise a foolhardy thing on a macro level to keep producing mass market consumer internal combustion engine vehicles. It's way too disruptive and thus costly to do a complete 180 immediately, but the gradual phase out we're doing is arguably much too gradual.
What I meant by vertical processing is that gasoline we use in cars is not the primary product. There are several stages of oil processing before and after gasoline, and those are needed for everything else we use. All plastics, pharmaceuticals, health care products, electronics, tires, roads, jet fuel, heavy oil for ships, etc. need oil from those first few stages. Even if we all switch to EVs, the production and refining of oil won't stop. Pollution, which is a big issue, would be solved for sure. That only is a good reason to 'push' electrification to some extent.
This is simple, but will give you an idea of what I meant by stage processing of oil:
Transportation consumption is a plurality of US oil consumption and consumer end is a majority of that. This is a significant double digit portion of US petroleum use, so what are you confused by here and how did you equate to that "hardly a drop of oil less would be used"? Are you trying to set up a strawman and pretend people are saying that switching to BEVs means that there is no longer *any* consumption of petroleum products? Even using this video is ridiculous because it makes no sense to think of these systems as if there was a set proportion for all other non-gasoline uses or that heavily curtailing demand for one of the primary uses does not change profitability overall. It just as well can change market conditions for all other products to be less profitable and thus petroleum-derived products in other spaces less competitive. Talking about systems thinking and then handwaving large changes in parameters within the system is incredibly foolish since rather than having a limited one-to-one linear correspondence in change, it may actually instill far greater changes than expected rather than far lesser changes. We spend a lot of resources modeling things like this, and it's insane to talk about system thinking and then pretend, with no actual underpinning presented, that the overall pricing structure and competitiveness of oil will remain the same even when a massive demand driver for one of its products is greatly diminished.
And no, US oil production vs OPEC doesn't make much sense as an analogy with Montana vs Florida in orange crop yield. There is zero commercial orange production in Montana and it is most certainly below consumption / demand within Montana which is very different for the US in regards to oil. The elasticity of petroleum as a product in the US is also incredibly different from that of oranges. Your argument strategy of trying to grossly exaggerate either one way or another borders on straight out lying given the magnitude differences between what you're saying and what the effects actually are.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-05-2023 at 11:14 AM..
What I meant by vertical processing is that gasoline we use in cars is not the primary product. There are several stages of oil processing before and after gasoline, and those are needed for everything else we use. All plastics, pharmaceuticals, health care products, electronics, tires, roads, jet fuel, heavy oil for ships, etc. need oil from those first few stages. Even if we all switch to EVs, the production and refining of oil won't stop. Pollution, which is a big issue, would be solved for sure. That only is a good reason to 'push' electrification to some extent.
This is simple, but will give you an idea of what I meant by stage processing of oil:
Interesting. Essentially, you are saying that if everyone stopped eating all meat except for cow tongue, we would still need the same amount of cows to meet the demand. Fair analogy?
I am not a petroleum engineer, so I would love to hear from one on the topic. In the absence of that, and this would clearly need to be verified, I asked GPT-4 about this scenario and here is the interaction. It disagrees with your YouTube guy.
Quote:
SkyDog: You will answer my question as though you are an expert in petroleum engineering. Assume demand for all other petroleum based products remained the same, but demand for motor gasoline went to zero. How would you expect this to impact demand for barrels of oil? Provide a quantitative and qualitative answer. Be sure to address the concept of vertical processing.
.
GPT-4: This is a very interesting question. To answer it, we need to consider how motor gasoline is produced from crude oil and what are the implications of eliminating its demand.
Motor gasoline is one of the main products of crude oil refining, along with distillate fuel oil, jet fuel, residual fuel oil, and other petroleum products. Crude oil refining is a process of vertical processing, which means that the crude oil is separated into different fractions based on their boiling points and then further processed to obtain the desired products. ¹
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2022, the U.S. consumed about 8.81 million barrels per day (b/d) of finished motor gasoline, which accounted for about 45% of the total petroleum consumption. ⁹ The U.S. also produced about 9.3 million b/d of motor gasoline, which was about 46% of the total petroleum production. ⁷
If the demand for motor gasoline went to zero, while the demand for other petroleum products remained the same, the U.S. would face a significant oversupply of motor gasoline and a potential shortage of other products. This would have several impacts on the demand for crude oil and the refining industry.
First, the demand for crude oil would decrease, as less crude oil would be needed to produce the same amount of other products. The EIA estimates that in 2022, the U.S. consumed about 19.6 million b/d of petroleum products, of which about 10.8 million b/d were imported. ⁷ If the motor gasoline demand was eliminated, the U.S. would need about 10.8 million b/d less of petroleum products, which would reduce the crude oil demand by about the same amount, assuming the same refining efficiency. This would lower the crude oil prices and make some oil fields unprofitable to operate.
Second, the refining industry would have to adjust its operations and configurations to cope with the changing product mix. The refineries would have to reduce the production of motor gasoline and increase the production of other products, such as distillate fuel oil and jet fuel. This would require modifying the existing units, such as catalytic crackers and reformers, or adding new units, such as hydrocrackers and alkylation units, to increase the yield and quality of the desired products. ¹ This would entail significant capital and operational costs for the refineries, as well as environmental and regulatory challenges.
Third, the refining industry would have to find alternative markets for the excess motor gasoline, either domestically or internationally. The domestic market would be limited, as the demand for motor gasoline would be zero by assumption. The international market would be competitive, as other countries would also have surplus motor gasoline due to the global decline in demand. The refineries would have to lower the prices of motor gasoline to sell it, which would reduce their profit margins and revenues.
In conclusion, if the demand for motor gasoline went to zero, while the demand for other petroleum products remained the same, the demand for crude oil would decrease, the refining industry would have to restructure its operations and configurations, and the excess motor gasoline would have to be sold at lower prices. These impacts would have negative effects on the profitability and sustainability of the oil and gas sector..
As for the Florida/Montana comparison, it's wholly inaccurate. What is closer is saying the US compared to Brazil for orange production, but even then, it's not a great comparison because the US is not a full one third of Brazil like we are to OPEC's production, and we are not #2 like we are to OPEC.
What is true is that the US is a huge player in the oil market and the single largest producer of oil. Where we differ from the other oil-rich states is that we consume everything we produce.
Transportation consumption is a plurality of US oil consumption and consumer end is a majority of that. This is a significant double digit portion of US petroleum use, so what are you confused by here and how did you equate to that "hardly a drop of oil less would be used"? Are you trying to set up a strawman and pretend people are saying that switching to BEVs means that there is no longer *any* consumption of petroleum products? Even using this video is ridiculous because it makes no sense to think of these systems as if there was a set proportion for all other non-gasoline uses or that heavily curtailing demand for one of the primary uses does not change profitability overall. It just as well can change market conditions for all other products to be less profitable and thus petroleum-derived products in other spaces less competitive. Talking about systems thinking and then handwaving large changes in parameters within the system is incredibly foolish since rather than having a limited one-to-one linear correspondence in change, it may actually instill far greater changes than expected rather than far lesser changes. We spend a lot of resources modeling things like this, and it's insane to talk about system thinking and then pretend, with no actual underpinning presented, that the overall pricing structure and competitiveness of oil will remain the same even when a massive demand driver for one of its products is greatly diminished.
And no, US oil production vs OPEC doesn't make much sense as an analogy with Montana vs Florida in orange crop yield. There is zero commercial orange production in Montana and it is most certainly below consumption / demand within Montana which is very different for the US in regards to oil. The elasticity of petroleum as a product in the US is also incredibly different from that of oranges. Your argument strategy of trying to grossly exaggerate either one way or another borders on straight out lying given the magnitude differences between what you're saying and what the effects actually are.
OyCr. I appreciate your posts, but nitpicking is impossible on an informal 'family' blog, like this. I am using these exaggerations intentionally to make a point to some who really think that all oil is the same all over the world (a lot of people). Thus Montana/Florida exaggeration. Also, vertical production of oil is unknown to some and of course there would be a decrease in overall oil use, if everybody switch to BEVs, etc., but it is far from a fantasy world that many 'environmental enthusiasts' are dreaming about (ending oil dependency and such). Yes, transportation is a significant chunk, but if you want to be precise and define your 'plurality' a bit more, here it is:
1. 27% of energy is used on transportation.
2. Now. 52% of that 27% is gasoline, which is roughly 13-14% of gasoline-derived energy spent on transportation.
3. Further, 'transportation' includes a lot of things, personal passenger cars being only a fraction of. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/...sportation.php
So, magically switching to BEVs would save a few percentages of oil consumption, but would vastly improve air quality. Thus, the benefit from pollution reduction would probably be larger than savings from a few percentage points of gasoline less consumed.
BTW, "We spend a lot of resources modeling things like this". My 9 to 5 is about explaining to folks what models mean, how to use them, and how not to be overly certain about anything. However, this is an average Joe blog, not dedicated to that sort of stuff.
OyCr. I appreciate your posts, but nitpicking is impossible on an informal 'family' blog, like this. I am using these exaggerations intentionally to make a point to some who really think that all oil is the same all over the world (a lot of people). Thus Montana/Florida exaggeration. Also, vertical production of oil is unknown to some and of course there would be a decrease in overall oil use, if everybody switch to BEVs, etc., but it is far from a fantasy world that many 'environmental enthusiasts' are dreaming about (ending oil dependency and such). Yes, transportation is a significant chunk, but if you want to be precise and define your 'plurality' a bit more, here it is:
1. 27% of energy is used on transportation.
2. Now. 52% of that 27% is gasoline, which is roughly 13-14% of gasoline-derived energy spent on transportation.
3. Further, 'transportation' includes a lot of things, personal passenger cars being only a fraction of. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/...sportation.php
So, magically switching to BEVs would save a few percentages of oil consumption, but would vastly improve air quality. Thus, the benefit from pollution reduction would probably be larger than savings from a few percentage points of gasoline less consumed.
BTW, "We spend a lot of resources modeling things like this". My 9 to 5 is about explaining to folks what models mean, how to use them, and how not to be overly certain about anything. However, this is an average Joe blog, not dedicated to that sort of stuff.
When these exaggerations are that far off, then they no longer become a way to highlight a reasonable point but are instead misleading.
You replied to SkyDog77 that "If we all switch to EVs, hardly a drop of oil less would be used..." which is an incredibly excessive exaggeration even as it's understood that you did not literally mean a single drop of oil. This is what seems tantamount to lying. This could be applied to the Montana vs Florida oranges analogy though that one at least can be excused a bit more from you just not really having thought it through since it's a very poor analogy given the point you were trying to make with it.
You've shifted things around here. You're talking about energy now when it was about petroleum. They are not equivalent. Petroleum is considered an energy source, but it is far from the only or majority of energy used in the US. You need to get your arguments straight because clearly the discussion had been about petroleum and not energy overall. It's not clear if you actually do not understand the distinction, you are purposefully trying to obfuscate things by swapping petroleum to the larger category of energy, or this is just a straightforward error on your part.
When it comes to petroleum, as SkyDog77's links pointed out, clearly a large portion of it is going towards transportation. If the transportation sector consumes 67% of petroleum product and of that 67% the source is 62% gasoline and 22% distillate fuel oil (likely majority diesel) then that already works out to 56% of petroleum product being used in transportation via a gasoline or distillate fuel oil vehicle. The distillate fuel oil does run a gamut of uses in transportation usage that includes but goes well outside consumer vehicle usage, but gasoline not so much. So this establishes a 56% ceiling.
Let's work backwards on this with your link from EIA which notes that "Light-duty vehicles account for about 53% of total U.S. transportation energy use". Let's do a rough approximation where petroleum products are at this moment is virtually the entirety of the US transportation sector's energy use since LNG and electrified transport are still drops in the bucket at this point* (an actually appropriate use of the exaggeration denoting a tiny minority of the energy spent). That means a rough approximation can be done by applying that 53% of light-duty vehicle energy use towards the 67% of petroleum products used in transportation since non-petroleum based transportation energy use is proportionally negligible. That's about 35% of petroleum products towards light-duty vehicle usage. About 35% qualifies a a few percentages? Who are you kidding here? Again, if you exaggerate so much that it is counter to the actual point that can be made, then you're pretty much lying at that point. And as stated earlier to RayAK, light-duty vehicles are unlikely the only part of the transportation sector that is up for electrification.
This is also still brushing aside the unfounded jump you tried to make that the multiple uses of petroleum products means that something that's not a one-to-one linear correspondence due to other factors means that cutting out one of the major demand drivers for petroleum would mean that systems thinking would precipitate a slower than linear decline rather than a faster than linear decline in demand. If part of the main demand drivers for petroleum products disappear, then it may also be the case that it helps make petroleum less competitive in other sectors as well. There can be complex linkages within the pricing mechanisms for all these different petroleum products, but there's no overwhelming proof that greatly reducing one of the primary consumers of one of the primary petroleum products would have a seemingly *undersized* effect. No explanation of that is given by you nor the video you posted. The pricing mechanism *is* very complicated and I do think there needs to be some way of incorporating current externalities into the price for multiple reasons, but I'm aware it's complex enough that I do not simply trust that a likely nonlinear scaling with demand drop for light-duty vehicles means that consumption patterns for the other petroleum products usage necessarily skews one way or another.
*note that it's not just low fleet composition numbers that make electric vehicles a currently negligible part of overall US transportation energy consumption, but also that these vehicles are incredibly efficient in comparison to their internal combustion engine equivalents and EIA calculates energy usage of motor vehicles based on the potential energy of the fuel itself rather than energy that went into useful work
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-05-2023 at 01:10 PM..
When these exaggerations are that far off, then they no longer become a way to highlight a reasonable point but are instead misleading.
You replied to SkyDog77 that "If we all switch to EVs, hardly a drop of oil less would be used..." which is an incredibly excessive exaggeration even as it's understood that you did not literally mean a single drop of oil. This is what seems tantamount to lying.
"...You need to get your arguments straight because clearly the discussion had been about petroleum and not energy overall. It's not clear if you actually do not understand the distinction, you are purposefully trying to obfuscate things by swapping petroleum to the larger category of energy, or this is just a straightforward error on your part...."
I am well aware of the distinction and I pointed to the source, stating it is 27% of all ENERGY (not petroleum) to provide the context. The reason for that context is that if all transportation sector magically switched to electricity, that electricity would have to come out of somewhere, shifting that ratio. Again, that was just for the context, because it is the first pie chart in my link. SkyDog showed the data for petroleum only and we can assume now that 27% is a 100% and go from there.
My point was about vertical processing of oil, which doesn't make things as simple as reducing the consumption for only one aspect of said oil processing.
Please refrain from personal accusations of 'lying' as it is impossible on a topic that has nothing to do with any of us personally. All we are doing is expressing opinions and presenting data about something we are not in charge of. I have provided the link and you can make your own conclusions.
Similar discussion with you happened after my comment that here in CA, out of every kWh produced, only 1/3 comes from renewables (making each BEV a hybrid in a sense), to which you responded in a similar manner. Please provide the source and quick explanation of how you understand the data instead.
Now, in addition to a variety of sources of EV production, we have vertical oil processing issue. How exactly does anyone plan to 'flip the switch'? Physics doesn't care about our wishes.
"...You need to get your arguments straight because clearly the discussion had been about petroleum and not energy overall. It's not clear if you actually do not understand the distinction, you are purposefully trying to obfuscate things by swapping petroleum to the larger category of energy, or this is just a straightforward error on your part...."
I am well aware of the distinction and I pointed to the source, stating it is 27% of all ENERGY (not petroleum) to provide the context. The reason for that context is that if all transportation sector magically switched to electricity, that electricity would have to come out of somewhere, shifting that ratio. Again, that was just for the context, because it is the first pie chart in my link. SkyDog showed the data for petroleum only and we can assume now that 27% is a 100% and go from there.
My point was about vertical processing of oil, which doesn't make things as simple as reducing the consumption for only one aspect of said oil processing.
Please refrain from personal accusations of 'lying' as it is impossible on a topic that has nothing to do with any of us personally. All we are doing is expressing opinions and presenting data about something we are not in charge of. I have provided the link and you can make your own conclusions.
Similar discussion with you happened after my comment that here in CA, out of every kWh produced, only 1/3 comes from renewables (making each BEV a hybrid in a sense), to which you responded in a similar manner. Please provide the source and quick explanation of how you understand the data instead.
Now, in addition to a variety of sources of EV production, we have vertical oil processing issue. How exactly does anyone plan to 'flip the switch'? Physics doesn't care about our wishes.
I left room open for not just exaggerating so much that it's tantamount to lying, but also the possibilities of you simply not understanding the distinction or that you're making a more straightforward error.
You specifically replied, "If we all switch to EVs, hardly a drop of oil less would be used..." This is not the same thing as the conversion means that total energy swap out would be about the same regardless of source, but that there will be virtually no changes in oil consumption. Of course, SkyDog was talking about petroleum--why wouldn't he when your response was "If we all switch to EVs, hardly a drop of oil less would be used..."?
I then went through, with the sources that were already used, showing a ceiling and a rough approximation of how much of that petroleum goes towards transportation energy use especially light-duty vehicle usage. To say that amounts to hardly a drop of oil even a very forgiving sense of the phrase where one might expect small single digit or less than single digit percentage petroleum consumption is just plain inaccurate. It's dozens of percentages. Physics doesn't care about what you think of it--it just is what it is. Again, you can simply have been in error and didn't realize it rather than intentionally being misleading. Whichever the case though, the idea that a fleet change to EVs would result in "hardly a drop of oil less would be used" seems unlikely to be accurate in any reasonable sense.
I also don't think you have an accurate understanding of what the "vertical processing of oil" means. You do understand that reducing consumption from one aspect does not mean a completely linear one-to-one reduction of oil usage because there are many other uses and factors to be considered. However, in a complex modeling of this, having a heavy reduction on one of the primary uses of petroleum, which is *not* reasonably said to be "hardly a drop of oil less would be used", does not necessarily mean that there then becomes a straightforward belief that it's going to be a lesser effect on oil consumption reduction rather than a magnified effect. If the market demand for one of the primary uses of the product goes down, one that was at one point had a fairly inelastic baseline usage needs, then it can also potentially disrupt the competitiveness of oil refining and production in general such that it can alter prices for other petroleum products that they become *less* competitive within their respective non-automotive niches.
Making a BEV a hybrid because not all of the electricity used is generated from renewables is an inaccurate statement and trying to put that behind "in a sense" is not a reasonable way of thinking about this. This is obviously not how the terminology is used in the context of an automotive forum. A BEV is not a hybrid. There are plug-in hybrids that can operate as BEV only, but that's a different matter. In the automotive context, hybrids without putting plug-in in front of it is shorthand for a vehicle that has an internal combustion engine for its powertrain that derives its energy from one of two refined petroleum products (gasoline or diesel), though in the US automotive market, that's pretty much exclusively gasoline with sometimes an ethanol mix and other additives that is a minority of the fuel used.
One of the good reasons for moving mass market consumer vehicles to BEVs is that electricity can be sourced from many processes and resources. This can be renewable energy sources, this can be nuclear energy, this can be coal, natural gas, or petroleum products. BEVs have a lot of flexibility in where that energy source is derived from which is what helps it undermine the ability of OPEC+ to introduce price shocks as it sees fit. Deriving it from nuclear energy or fossil fuels though does not change BEVs into hybrids. What you're looking for is an emissions-free vehicle throughout the life cycle of the vehicle, but that's not equivalent to what a BEV is.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-06-2023 at 02:39 PM..
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