[BrianC]

China Reaches Peak Gasoline in Milestone for Electric Vehicles (bloomberg.com) 100
Posted by msmash on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @02:00AM from the moving-forward dept.
Chinese oil giant Sinopec last month made a surprise announcement that mostly flew under the radar. It's now expecting gasoline demand in China to peak this year, two years earlier than its previous outlooks. The main culprit? The surging number of electric vehicles on the road. Bloomberg:
Calling peaks is often a no-win endeavor for industry analysts. The call will either be correct but seem obvious after the fact, or wrong and lead to years of mockery. But this isn't an analyst calling a peak; it's China's largest fuel distributor. Sinopec knows the fuel business, and more importantly, it has an interest in the business remaining robust. Saying it's all downhill from here for gasoline is quite a statement.

China has been the largest driver of global growth for refined oil products like gasoline and diesel over the last two decades. But EV adoption rates in China are now soaring, with August figures likely to show plug-in vehicles hitting 38% of new passenger-vehicle sales. That's up from just 6% in 2020 and is starting to materially dent fuel demand. Fuel demand in two and three-wheeled vehicles is already in structural decline, with BNEF estimating that 70% of total kilometers traveled by these vehicles already switched over to electric. Fuel demand for cars will be the next to turn, since well over 5% of the passenger-vehicle fleet is now either battery-electric or plug-in hybrid. The internal combustion vehicle fleet is also becoming more efficient due to rising fuel-economy targets.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newslett ... c-vehicles

[Plantagenet]

This is most excellent news.

Good job posting this article.

But unfortunately much of China is powered by dirty coal-fired electrical plants, so the switch to EVs doesn't do much to dent China's enormous CO2 emissions, which are currently the largest in the world by far.....

All those nice new EVs in China have a huge carbon footprint to build, and then once on the roads they produce even more CO2 emissions when they charge up with electricity produced by coal-fired power plants.

And just to make it worse, China is still building new coal-fired electrical power plants.

Currently China is permitting two new coal-fired power plants......each WEEK.


China mostly uses coal-fired power plants to process lithium and to build EVs. Then the EVs are mostly powered with electricity from still more coal-fired power plants.

SHEESH!!!!!

[BrianC]

Gasoline, Diesel Vehicles Dominate India's Auto Market, EVs Lag (reuters.com) 88
Posted by msmash on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @08:30PM from the closer-look dept.
India's road transport minister on Tuesday warned local and foreign automakers to either cut production of polluting diesel vehicles or face higher taxes and levies, setting alarm bells ringing in the world's third-largest car market. From a report:
Here are some facts about India's automotive market, the biggest after China and the United States, where players such as Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors and foreign giants such as Mercedes and Volkswagen operate. In India, about four million passenger vehicles were sold in the fiscal year that ended in March, according to data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.

Petrol vehicles have been the top sellers in recent years -- increasing their market share to around 68.4% in January-July 2023 from 42.5% in 2014, according to data from automotive market intelligence provider JATO Dynamics. Cost-conscious Indians are preferring to buy petrol cars as they are cheaper than diesel, even though diesel cars offer better fuel efficiency. In the luxury segment, though, which includes cars and SUVs made by Mercedes, BMW and Audi, petrol variants have accounted for 62% of sales so far this year, down from 68% in 2021, according to JATO Dynamics.

Tuesday's warning from minister Nitin Gadkari targeted diesel carmakers, whose market share has seen a steady decline to nearly 18% of passenger vehicles in January-July this year from 47.9% in 2014. But when it comes to luxury cars, diesel variants remain in vogue, with their market share rising to 33% so far this year from 31% in 2021.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... 023-09-12/

[theluckycountry]

Petrol use may be in decline but diesel is essential, you can't mine without it, or run truck fleets without it. Unfortunately Gasoline does not come out of the ground by itself, it comes out as a fraction of the oil barrel. What this means is that when oil is processed in the refinery to get the much needed diesel and heavy oil products (Asphalt for roads, ship fuel) the Gasoline fraction will still come out too.

This article explains it succinctly.

While decomposing heavier substances (found lower down the list above) is technically possible with a lot of energy and additional hydrogen inputs (usually both coming from natural gas), fusing lighter components into heavier ones is practically impossible (you can do it in a lab, but never at an economic scale due to large energy inputs and losses). In a nutshell: there is a certain ratio of gasoline to diesel (and other oil products) in any given barrel of oil, one which cannot be fiddled with too much.

https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/ ... um=reader2

So... What do you do with the gasoline still being produced? I won't go into that here as it's well covered in the article but the consequences are obvious if you think about it. The devil is always in the details and gasoline production will continue apace as long as we use diesel, which is essential for modern life.

[theluckycountry]

This really should be in the EV thread.