Negative oil price
 

A significant moment in human history has occurred. Demand for oil has dropped to the point where oil companies can't even give it away, they're actually paying buyers to take it. With so much western lead conflict, politics and innocent people loosing thier lives in oil based war, what does this mean for the world today? I don't know whether to feel excited or scared. How will our future change because of this? The World has sadly been over dependant on this filthy fossilised fuel for too long. Maybe this will be the change we all need.

It was on the BBC this morning that the actual cost of the crude, here in the UK, amounts to only 12.7p/litre. The rest is the transport cost, refining, fuel duty, tax and VAT.

Yea we all know we're being ripped off every time we fill our tanks, but the majority are dependent on it for personal transportation so what choice do we have? When you see average costs in regions of South America at 2 pence a litre, kinda makes you sick...

"Please fill up the car and give me $25 for storing this fuel. I will be back in a month or more depending on the lock down."

Regarding the price of fuel, I thought about this a lot as well, I don't believe that this will change the migration to electric cars. We are almost at a point where most electric cars are reasonably priced and have a long enough range; and if you find them too expensive you can buy a decently priced used one. The problem will be that there won't be enough nickel to build enough batteries for new electric cars when demand goes up, so probably we will switch to hydrogen fuel cell. Unless somehow battery technology changes and we no longer rely on rare materials to build batteries.

Oh the taxes will find thier way to electric cars believe me, its a bit of a free market at the moment with privatised electricity companies, they can more or less charge what they want. If you charge up an Audi E-Tron from 10 to 80% in certain areas of the UK, you'll be charged around £45 for using an ionity charger, 1000% more than charging at home. Fuel consumption will be just as important on an EV as it will an ice once prices reach a uniform level.

There are many labs out there working flat out experimenting with various materials, knowing if they can make the perfect battery, they'll be onto a winner. Some battery makers are doing away with cobalt, others are trying to make batteries from bio material like an Iranian company I read about recently. Although sounds like tesla are going to win the race with rumoured 1M mile batteries in development.

The first step of any EV ownership is to install an electric car charger at your house / apartment; and use the public chargers as Plan B. The cost to install a charger is about the same as paying for fuel for one year for a petro car. It's a long term investment.

Watching Fully Charged, the most fuel efficient vehicle is the Hyundai Kona which gets 5.2 miles / kWh (this is about 1.6L/100km for a petro car, Car And Driver got 2.1L/100km after converting). The next most fuel efficient is the Tesla Model 3 which is about 5 miles / kWh. The Audi E-Tron was getting 1.3 miles / kWh towing the GM EV1 on the highway; which is still very good for towing.

Just imagine what the efficiency would be like if you could put a Kona battery/drivetrain into a Volkswagen XL1 sized vehicle. With skinny tires, small frontal area and light weight; you might be able to do 1,000 miles per charge.

Yea I'm sure most owners charge from home, but in the UK, a large majority of our houses are at the youngest 100 years old, many are severel hundred, so a garage or driveway, or even dedicated parking is a distant dream for many. Living rural is also a negative for Ev's as local authorities will not invest the tens of thousands of pounds for public chargers if the demand isn't there. Example, my nearest Tesla supercharger is a 6 hour 250 mile round trip. We had a Renault dealer here in my town and Renault insisted, as they sell electric cars, that the owner pay for chargers to be installed for its customers. They wanted £80,000 and I think he'd sold one Zoe since they were launched. He pulled the plug (pardon the pun) Sad to drive past now and see an empty showroom with "To let" signs in the windows. I guess poorer rural areas like this will be the last to adapt, although we thrive on tourism, so the masses visiting in thier ev's might help persuade local authorities to finally implement local public chargers, it might help them stick around and spend more money here.

Lots of public chargers here in Scotland are free to use.

Yea that's one of the problems, petrol prices differ slightly across the country, but electricity can either be free or hideously expensive, or somewhere acceptable in the middle. The charger in my local mountain biking centre is free too. All the suppliers and charger manufacturers/installers need to agree an average price and make it uniform. You can't have one extreme to the other just a few miles difference.

That's not such a bad solution, come to think of it. These suppliers and manufacturers have better economic strategies than the parliament and the U.S. congress combined.