[Revi]

We drove it around town for a couple of years. It didn't mind hills. It would slow down a little, but it would get up them.

Here's the car we're driving now:

[vtsnowedin]

I recently drove from Vermont to Atlanta Georgia with my daughter in her Toyota Camry. We drove through snow , sleet ,freezing rain, traffic congestion and seven lane 80 mph bumper cars. I can't imagine doing that in your car.

[tom_s2]

Hi Revi,

The way I came to this conclusion was 1 trillion barrels divided by the 1.2 billion vehicles = 833 barrels x 42 gallons in a barrel, divided by 3 (refined about 1/3 comes out as gasoline), times 20 miles per gallon = 233,000.

I would guess there are at least 2 trillion barrels of oil remaining. This is hard to say because nobody really knows how much oil remains in the middle east, or how much will ultimately be extracted from tar sands etc. However the figure of 1 trillion barrels is extremely pessimistic. Bear in mind that Hubbert curves etc are excluding unconventional oil and have been systematically too pessimistic in the past.

Furthermore, I expect people will respond by buying Toyota Priuses etc as oil becomes more expensive. Probably people will retire some gas guzzlers like SUVs before the end of their useful lives.

Plugging in those figures (2 trillion barrels at 35 mpg), I get ~816,700 miles remaining per car or car-replacement. At 9,000 miles driven per year, that leaves approximately 90 years of driving left at current rates (which of course won't be sustained in gasoline-powered cars).

Also, I'd guess plug-in cars will take off some time during the 2020s. Almost all major manufacturers are introducing plug-in cars now. Their sales are modest right now (about 1%), but that will change as gasoline becomes more expensive and EVs cheaper during coming decades. I think EVs will ultimately become cost-competitive with oil at $100/barrel, even if EVs do not have any special incentives. As a result I think there will be a shift to EVs as oil becomes more expensive than that.

I don't think we're on our last cars now. The only way we'd be on our last cars is if all three of the following assumptions are correct: 1) no unconventional oil is exploited and we extract only 1 trillion more barrels; 2) there is no improvement in fuel efficiency as oil becomes more expensive; 3) there is no switch to EVs in coming decades as gasoline becomes more expensive.

-Tom S

[Lore]

I recently drove from Vermont to Atlanta Georgia with my daughter in her Toyota Camry. We drove through snow , sleet ,freezing rain, traffic congestion and seven lane 80 mph bumper cars. I can't imagine doing that in your car.

Unfortunatly here in the US we lack the proper mass transportation for such trips. It would be nice to have every village and town connected by rail. Then rent a vehicle such as above for the short urban hauls.

[Pops]

Tom, you say we won't run out for 90 years? I think that is totally pessimistic, oil will last much longer than that, twice as long easily, it may never run out in fact.

If there are 2 trillion barrels left (4T URR), we've used less than half. Since we are already resorting to fracking, deep water, arctic and x-heavy, it seems pretty obvious that the majority of the next half probably won't be drilled at all but will need to be mined and processed just to make it flow, before it can even be refined.

Unfortunately oil is priced based on the flow matching the demand, when the flow falls (peak oil) price rises.

The problem with peak oil isn't necessarily no gas to get to the store but no reason to go.


How fast do you think this is gonna flow?



Compared to this

[Revi]

I recently drove from Vermont to Atlanta Georgia with my daughter in her Toyota Camry. We drove through snow , sleet ,freezing rain, traffic congestion and seven lane 80 mph bumper cars. I can't imagine doing that in your car.

Of course not. This is not a vehicle to go very far or very fast, but it does get 200 mpg equivalent. Those of us on this site know that things are going to change and driving around at 80 mpg in individual steel boxes isn't going to be possible pretty soon. We have two regular cars as well, but this little experiment shows that there is another way of getting around a town using much less gasoline. It costs a lot less also. It only costs about $10 to drive around for a year. Insurance is about $125, and maintenance is practically nothing, so it would be possible for people who can't afford a regular car to get around in one of these. They probably won't , but it's possible.

[Lore]

As they say, it beats walking!

[ralfy]

As explained earlier, it's not so much reserves as rate of flow that matters.

Some more points to consider:

Cars, including those that do not run primarily on FFs, are made and even delivered using FFs.

FFs for much of the world are used significantly for manufacturing, food production, and transport of various necessities.

[Shaved Monkey]

As I am a white middle class 1st worlder I will probably have a car after the 3rd world cant afford to pay for petrol to fill up theres.
I imagine I will probably have 1 more possibly 2 more cars.
They will use less fuel than the one I have now
I only spend $300(before price drop) worth of fuel a year and $1200 on insurance and registration,so I have a fair way to go before I cant afford to drive even if fuel prices go up by factors of of 5 or 10X.(which will knock out plenty of demand.
The electric bikes will take up a lot of slack though.
But I imagine motels may be pretty cheap/desperate if fuel prices go through the roof.

[Revi]

We may be able to figure something else out, but we had better get figuring soon. I like the idea of living in a place where you can walk around in case there is no alternative. It would be nice if this place had a regular market and places to work that can be walked to. We'll see...

[ralfy]

As I am a white middle class 1st worlder I will probably have a car after the 3rd world cant afford to pay for petrol to fill up theres.
I imagine I will probably have 1 more possibly 2 more cars.
They will use less fuel than the one I have now
I only spend $300(before price drop) worth of fuel a year and $1200 on insurance and registration,so I have a fair way to go before I cant afford to drive even if fuel prices go up by factors of of 5 or 10X.(which will knock out plenty of demand.
The electric bikes will take up a lot of slack though.
But I imagine motels may be pretty cheap/desperate if fuel prices go through the roof.

This has actually been the case for decades. The catch is that the manufacture, transport, use, and maintenance of passenger vehicles require extensive infrastructure, use of FFs, JIT systems, and significant levels of debt.

In addition, many of the components needed for these processes and systems are manufactured in developing countries, where middle classes are growing. This explains why middle classes in rich countries are experiencing greater difficulties concerning wealth and employment while counterparts in the rest of the world are consuming more, as seen in growing sales for cars, appliances, cement, and others.

Another irony is that the income and returns of investment earned by the current global middle class (around 15 pct of the world's population) may ultimately be dependent on profits earned from more sales of goods and services to a growing consumer market, and that includes the same middle classes in developing countries.

Thus, in order to have his car, house, appliances, and many other middle class conveniences, the member of the middle class will have to make sure that more of these conveniences are sold to a growing global middle class.

[Shaved Monkey]

At the moment I mainly drive to do a big shop every 3 months or so,if prices went berserk there wouldn't be anything in the shops worth driving for.

[Shaved Monkey]

I only spend $300(before price drop) worth of fuel a year and $1200 on insurance and registration,

It could get worse

Car owners could be forced to pay more for vehicle registration as a direct result of Australia's rapidly vanishing capacity to refine crude oil.

The warning, made in a state government submission to a Senate inquiry into the nation's fuel security, is that the dwindling output from local refineries will mean that bitumen for road making, a by-product of oil refining, will have to be 100 per cent imported.

That will increase the cost of building roads but likely be recouped through higher rego costs,

Australia now imports 91 per cent of its petrol and diesel – up from 60 per cent in 2000.
Just one huge oil refinery in Singapore supplies half of Australia's unleaded petrol
n its submission, the NRMA said countries like the United Kingdom and Japan were actively shoring up fuel security but Australia was going in the opposite direction.

"The UK is having a conversation about how to maintain security when the market can no longer deliver. The Australian Government has not yet initiated this conversation with the Australian public," it said.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/car-regi ... 32bv3.html

[DesuMaiden]

I am assuming about a trillion barrels left and that we are at or around the peak, but I think it's a pretty reasonable assumption considering that we are getting more and more vehicles on the planet.

But we only use 70% of refined petroleum for transportation fuel. The other 30% of petroleum is used to make petrochemical products like plastics, asphalt, pesticides, paints, toothpaste, tooth brushes (which are made of plastic), pharmaceuticals and countless other products. There is no way all of the 1 trillion barrels left will be used solely as transportation fuel because we use petroleum for much more than just transportation fuel.

[vtsnowedin]

I am assuming about a trillion barrels left and that we are at or around the peak, but I think it's a pretty reasonable assumption considering that we are getting more and more vehicles on the planet.

But we only use 70% of refined petroleum for transportation fuel. The other 30% of petroleum is used to make petrochemical products like plastics, asphalt, pesticides, paints, toothpaste, tooth brushes (which are made of plastic), pharmaceuticals and countless other products. There is no way all of the 1 trillion barrels left will be used solely as transportation fuel because we use petroleum for much more than just transportation fuel.

True but that just makes Revi's calculation/ prediction that much more likely.

[DesuMaiden]

I am assuming about a trillion barrels left and that we are at or around the peak, but I think it's a pretty reasonable assumption considering that we are getting more and more vehicles on the planet.

But we only use 70% of refined petroleum for transportation fuel. The other 30% of petroleum is used to make petrochemical products like plastics, asphalt, pesticides, paints, toothpaste, tooth brushes (which are made of plastic), pharmaceuticals and countless other products. There is no way all of the 1 trillion barrels left will be used solely as transportation fuel because we use petroleum for much more than just transportation fuel.

True but that just makes Revi's calculation/ prediction that much more likely.

And electric cars will not save the day because of the following problems

1) It takes an uncounted amount of oil to create 800 million plus electric cars to replace the current 800 million plus internal combustion-powered vehicles.

2) Electricity is NOT an energy source. Electricity is generated by burning or using some other energy source. Since the majority of electricity is generated by fossil fuels, it wouldn't make any difference to convert fossil fuel energy into electricity to use in a car that's meant to replace fossil fuels. Electric cars based on electricity produced from fossil fuels is still using fossil fuels, which we are trying to replace.

3) It is very unlikely we can transition the entire electrical grid into something that's reliant on solar and wind energy. First of all, wind is too intermittent to produce more than a small fraction of our current electricity demands. Solar phovoltatic electricity is reliant on solar panels which are made from rare earth metals. There isn't enough rare earth metals to build enough solar panels to replace the fossil fuels we burn for electricity.

So we will never be able to use wind and solar energy to replace the current electric grid based on fossil fuels to power electric cars off solar and wind-generated electricity. Also electrical cars are require batteries that are made of rare earth metals. Which are again very limited and depleting, and we are running out of these metals. Which means there will never be enough rare earth metals to make enough batteries to power 800 million plus electric cars.

Either way, electric cars will not replace petroleum-based cars, because there is simply too much demand (from an ever increasing population) and there simply not being enough resources to create a large enough fleet of electric cars to replace oil based cars. Electric cars are a nice gimmick, but they will never replace oil on the scale we would like. Nonetheless, there will always be some electric cars on the market

[Shaved Monkey]

There will be plenty of wood gas cars like there was during WW11
when price and supply makes conventional cars not viable but the desire to move over comes the effort to do so.

[dolanbaker]

There will be plenty of wood gas cars like there was during WW11
when price and supply makes conventional cars not viable but the desire to move over comes the effort to do so.

not enough trees!

[Shaved Monkey]

lol.. peak wood
They take a fair time to get started too so you have to be a bit keen to get somewhere.

Im not suggesting BAU it will not be a replacement for all vehicles, but some people will do it for themselves, the tech is pretty basic,pick up a cheap car and a few bits and pieces.

They run on coal too,theres plenty of coal and trees here



heres a coal gas car in Sydney WW11

http://www.robertsarmory.com/gas.htm