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Electric Vehicle Market Forecast – 10 Year Horizon Looks Strong

by Donal 2/1/2012 - 8:03 pm

 

[Triple Pundit]
- We have not only moved into the decade of the hybrid, but plug-in hybrids are now key and the most aggressive manufacturers will be selling more plug-in hybrids than traditional ones by the end of the decade.
- By 2025, 35% of all cars sold will be electric, 25% of which will be hybrids and 10% pure EVs.
- China will host 32% of all electric traction motor suppliers, with the USA hosting 28%. The next nearest country in terms of supplier volume is way down in the single digits.
- Energy harvesting will become increasingly important. Up to now, most attention has been focused on getting better battery energy density, but recovering wasted energy will increasingly pay dividends. This will include routine use of regenerative braking, energy generation from shock absorbers, heat harvesting (thermoelectrics) and wider use of photovoltaics. Multiple energy harvesting technologies are seen as key to working around battery limitations.
- Greater use of range extenders will take place with up to 30 million vehicles being fitted with them over the next decade. At the moment, the most famous example is the gasoline powered engine fitted to the Chevrolet Volt – there only for the purpose of generating electricity. But, the concept of merely modifying existing piston engines (as with the volt) will fall by the wayside. They are not the best tool for the job since they were designed to turn wheels, not produce electricity. Expect to see more designed-to-purpose piston engine extenders, or even mini-turbine extenders.
- We are already moving beyond electric vehicles being viewed as a “one-day-maybe” business – in Japan, 25% of all cars sold are electric, most of them hybrids.
- Electric vehicles will increasingly go beyond cars. Big growth markets will likely be in military applications, heavy forklifts, and hybrid-electric power trains in seagoing leisure boats. The non-car electric vehicle business will rise beyond 50% of where it is today.
 
Overall, IDTechEX’s report is very bullish about the future of EVs. Even so, they mention that the price premium of electric vehicles and hybrids must become small to non existent to be successful, and the electric-only range of vehicles must be a useful one – not a token gesture – to be compelling.
 
Read the full article at http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/02/electric-vehicle-market-forecast-10-year-horizon-looking-strong/

Donal, I am glad that you continue to cover different aspects of our country's and the world's problems related to energy.Considering the enormity of the troubles we can expect as we enter the downside of peak oil, I consider it to be a very under-covered subject.

 From Wikipedia:

 

 The Department of Defense was the largest single consumer of energy in the United States in 2006.[34]

In FY 2006, the DoD used almost 30,000 gigawatt hours (GWH) of electricity, at a cost of almost $2.2 billion. The DoD's electricity use would supply enough electricity to power more than 2.6 million average American homes. In electricity consumption, if it were a country, the DoD would rank 58th in the world, using slightly less than Denmark and slightly more than Syria (CIA World Factbook, 2006).[35]

The DOD is responsible for 93% of all US government fuel consumption in 2007 (Air Force: 52%; Navy: 33%; Army: 7%. Other DoD: 1%).[35] The Department of Defense uses 4,600,000,000 US gallons (1.7×1010 L) of fuel annually, an average of 12,600,000 US gallons (48,000,000 L) of fuel per day. A large Army division may use about 6,000 US gallons (23,000 L) per day. According to the 2005 CIA World Factbook, if it were a country, the DoD would rank 34th in the world in average daily oil use, coming in just behind Iraq and just ahead of Sweden.[36] The Air Force is the largest user of fuel energy in the federal government. The Air Force uses 10% of the nation's aviation fuel. (JP-8 accounts for nearly 90% of its fuels.) This fuel usage breaks down as such: 82% jet fuel, 16% facility management and 2% ground vehicle/equipment.

 As striking as the above figures are, they actually represent much less than the total military related/dedicated use of fossil fuel. Consider the fuel used by the infrastructure of the military industrial complex to build the weapons and equipment used by our military. We spend an enormous amount of money importing a product, oil, which we then burn up as quickly as we can in the long term counter-productive effort to be able to destroy other country's infrastructure, the vcarious *works of man*, which were built with a great deal of energy input and which will be rebuilt with even more energy imput if it is possible to do so. We do this today largely because we know that the world is running out of this same form of energy.  
 We are using an enormous amount of precious liquid fuel to attempt to keep control of and leverage on the remaining world's supply of liquid fuel. Twelve million, six-hundred thousand gallons a day used directly by our military would be enough so that 40mpg cars could drive 184,325,000,000 miles a year. That is close to the total annual mileage driven in autos in the U.S. in recent years.
 This is not to say that we should do away with our military so we could continue to drive expensive and inefficient people movers. It is to say that IMO we should do away with about 80% of our military and count on the remaining 20% to be able to keep the Mongol hordes from our shores while we invest the rest and more into preparing for the day that we cannot buy enough oil on the world market.

by A Guy Called LULU 2/2/2012 - 3:31 pm

Also, at one point I recall hearing that the Armed Forces and McDonald's were #1 and #2 US consumers of beef (which now includes red slime, I suppose).

One fellow started with a National Geographic quote: "Overall, it takes three-quarters of a gallon of oil to produce a pound of beef."

3/4 gallons of oil is equivalent to 0.11 Giga Joules (GJ) of energy. A pound of meat averages about 1000 kilo calories, which equals a measly 0.0042 GJ.

Twenty six (26) units of fossil fuel energy goes into producing one (1) unit of food energy in the form of beef.

 

Another fellow has been charting the correlation between oil and food prices:

by Donal 2/2/2012 - 3:53 pm (re: A Guy Called LULU)

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