In this particular case I don't think that is the message. I think it is is closer to what I alluded to, in that the technology is good, and likely inevitable, but here is where reality meets hype, and you aren't getting the whole truth along the path.

1. More electric cars will hardly dent oil use

Transportation makes up 16.2% of global carbon emissions, and 11.9% is road transportation (1), so he isn't wrong, but it is false to paint the narrative that switching to EVs isn't necessary because it won't do enough. Every industry is trying to get to net-zero carbon emissions. We hear about EVs because that is what we need to do, but every industry is facing regulations and pressure to adopt new standards.

2. Electric cars are not all that green

Anyone who says they are driving a zero emissions vehicle is potentially ignorant, while being entirely accurate to say that there are no direct emissions because there are no tailpipes. If they believe it is simply a greener car then they are right, most likely. Studies have compared EVs to ICEs for end-of-life carbon emissions when both receive energy from fossil fuels, and even then, EVs are significantly greener, but if EVs receive power from renewables, it isn't even close. There is no future for ICEs where we could carbon capture CO2 to produce e-fuels that would make less carbon emissions than EVs. They have even compared the benefits of maintaining an older car than selling it and buying an EV, and the EV is better. It is also better to remove local emissions from cities that cause respiratory emergencies, asthma and death, killing around 53k a year (2). The crossover point in miles depends on whether someone is replacing a Prius or Geo Metro with a Hummer EV, but if someone compares like-cars to like-cars then it is no contest. Here is a comparison from the Argonne National Laboratory based on 100% renewables, US mixed grid and 100% coal (3). The crossover point for a Model 3 vs Corolla (which is not a one to one comparison because the Model 3 is replacing more Camrys and BMW 3 series than Corollas, but okay), the crossover point is 8.4k miles, 13.5k miles or 78.7k miles, respectively, so the 60k miles quoted by VW is probably the worst case scenario.

3. Batteries are lousy at storing energy

Batteries will likely never be as energy dense as fossil fuels, but they don't need to be. They need to be energy dense enough for our convenience. If we can recharge a battery, and they get us down the road far enough then we are fine. Fast charging and battery swapping would eliminate any issue with its deficiencies in mileage. It is worth remembering that BEVs are far more efficient at using energy, which is the point too, and that is why a BEV powered by coal is better than an ICE over the life of the car. This is because only about a third of the energy of fuel goes to moving the vehicle, and the rest is waisted emissions and heat. If we ever get to room temperature superconductors then energy losses with transferring electricity would be even lower.

4. Miracle batteries powerful enough to replace fossil fuels are a fantasy

We have solid state batteries coming, lithium-ion silicon batteries coming, and we have light weighting of other products like the radial flux motors. Once people get away from the idea that everyone needs to own a tank then battery size won't be as big either. The idea that we need 400 years worth of batteries is also off. Musk has said the world needs about 50-100 gigafactories, which worldwide, it isn't a lot and has gone up faster than 400 years, and if he is referring to batteries to store electricity for the grid, the grid doesn't need 400 years to develop batteries because it doesn't need that many lithium-ion batteries. Batteries from cars get charged throughout the day at home and in parking structures, and they can be timed to charge off-peak times. Rondo batteries use bricks to store excess energy and are like 80% cheaper than lithium-ion batteries and last for 100 years, so we don't need lithium-ion batteries; there are many alternative solutions.

5. We just don't have enough electricity for all electric cars

We don't now, but we will in 40 years when the majority of cars on the road are electric. Only 6% of cars on the road are new cars, and the goal is 100% new cars sales are electric by 2035 in California and 50% electric by 2030 for everywhere else, so this is 3% by 2030 in the US and 6% by 2035 in California. We need to add enough energy to the grid to cover 6% more cars on the grid, and this is entirely achievable. We have added this rate in the past. The good news is solar and wind are cheaper than coal, nuclear and natural gas, so prices in the long run should be cheaper and more stable, and it also means the economics of building more utilities mean investors will opt for solar and wind in order to save more, so they can make more.

BTW, those lines of people in Poland trying to get coal isn't a result of green energy policies like this video would like you to believe. Poland enacted an embargo on buying coal from Russia because of its invasion of the Ukraine, which is what led to a supply deficit and rising prices of coal. Many people in Poland burn coal at home instead of wood.

FWIW, we need to reduce demand on oil consumption because we only have around 47 years of known reserves left at current consumption rate, which means less if poorer areas increase their consumption, so we should be aggressive about moving off of oil, regardless of the climate issues.

This has been repeatedly proven wrong....we are not running out of oil
https://www.discovermagazine.com/pla...ing-out-of-oil

Yea, this has almost been as consistent as the prediction of flying cars. "in 15 to 20 years...".

Here's a decent history of those predictions.

I do think we need to get off petroleum, but supply doesn't seem to be a primary driver. If it was, it likely would happen faster.

This is like me saying the gold rush is over, and we are running out of gold, and you saying how we will never run out of gold. And I say, but it takes more and more capital to produce gold, which is why gold production is not as simple as picking pieces off the ground or panning in the river like it once was, which is why production had to be industrialized, yet even industrial scale mining has plateaued.

Unfortunately, it is a truth even echoed by the article, and his rebuttal, while relevant, doesn't dissuade from the fact that we will be running out of oil soon. It is on a scale of decades--not centuries, not millennia--decades.

We will ever run out of oil? Of course not. We can't extract it all or prevent more from being made. There will always be oil, but like the article mentions, either demand will drop, or it will get prohibitively expensive to extract and refine oil, even if demand is high, and people will look to alternatives

Right now, only about 50% of the oil can be extracted: first using natural pressure, second using artificial pressure, and third using artificial pressure and heat to make viscous oil easier to extract, but in the end, the costs to extract go up and up, as profits drop when operational costs increase to extract more oil. Science can't fix the fact that more energy is needed to extract oil, nor can it ignore the fact that any energy they put into extracting more oil might be better put into directly charging batteries and be more profitable to do so.

Part of the issue with technical known reserves is the cost to extract, the water use to extract, and the damage to the environment and human health from fracking. More expensive oil is not exactly going to make people want ICEs when electricity via solar and wind and EVs will be getting cheaper and cheaper.
https://css.umich.edu/publications/f...uels-factsheet

https://energyskeptic.com/2020/oil-d...wer-bloomberg/

As you can see, we are under a billion barrels a year of new discoveries, and only 10% is from fracking or oil sands. We are using over 35 billion barrels per year, but discovering only about 6 billion barrels on average. This is not sustainable, and it gets worse every year.

https://planetforlife.com/images/growinggap.jpg
https://energyskeptic.com/wp-content...tad-energy.jpg

Some of those predictions were correct. About 43% of the oil we produce is imported, so some of those predictions would have been right if we hadn't increased imports, hadn't developed more fuel efficient cars or didn't find more reserves or creative ways to extract oil. This one was true: in 1970 the US hit peak conventional oil production...

We use about 20 million barrels/day. We are heavily dependent on tight oil extraction at this point. If we didn't have this source then the US would have hit peak production in 1970. Even if we can extract 100% of tight oil from the Bakken Formation, then we have 150 billion barrels to use at 20 million a day is 20.5 years of tight oil left. Hamm states we likely have 24 billion barrels, which is only, which is more oil than all other conventional oil reserves combined. That is a sobering fact considering that is only 3.28 more years of tight oil, and it is the largest reserve. We only have 44.4 billion barrels total, excluding the 0.77 billion barrels of strategic reserves, so we have a total of about six more years of conventional oil reserves left. Time to invade Venezuela.

Now, we have 2.175 trillion barrels of unconventional oil in the form of shale in a waxy substance called kerogen. It is the largest known reserves in the world, and at 100% extraction, it would last the US 300 years at 20 million barrels/day. Shale helps to stabilize oil prices, so as conventional oil reserves drop and prices naturally would increase, shale production can take over. This overall is good for the long term stabilization of the price of oil, and it is good for long term oil production for many products and industries that require oil, but shale production is necessarily more expensive than conventional oil by several factors with conventional costing about $10/barrel and unconventional costing closer to $50/barrel, as a break-even point (not including profits). That could change in the future, and I don't know if this means a gallon of gas would be five times higher if the world only had unconventional oil. If that was the case then demand would plummet, as the world would move off oil. This is the case of us not running out of oil, but running out of affordable oil, which is the same thing. Investment would drop and then supply would drop more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_re..._United_States

https://d32r1sh890xpii.cloudfront.ne...do58_large.jpg

As were some of the predictions for flying cars but I still can't get one!

I'm just saying that I believe that we have enough petroleum to get us through what will be a long transition. ICE sold in 2023 (unless requlated off the road) will still be on the road in 2043. Heck, I own two very capable vehicles that are 20 years old and show no sign of needing replacing soon. The versions sold today (a Mustang and a Suburban) would easily be running in 2043.

Get us through a faster transition than you might be thinking—probably faster than the 47 years worth of time we have left of oil, and hopefully we can buy cheap oil from other countries for a while since US supply is so small, or the move to EVs might be even faster. In 12 more years we will hit the 2035 mandate for California, which will change a lot for the country , so at that point around 5% of ICE cars will be replaced per year, which means somewhere around 20-25 years to replace most cars with EVs. Less than 1% of cars on the road are 25 years old or older (1. Conveniently, we will be transitioning to EVs before the world runs out of oil.

You said this previously:

As I stated, it may be happening within the time we will run out of oil, but if it is happening only for climate change then we have waited quite a while to put words and scientific warnings to action in that tegard, yet here we are kind of doing the same thing with oil—ignoring warnings and suggesting things aren’t so bad. Data seems pretty clear.

At the same time, I can’t say how many times companies and individuals have run their accounts straight to zero requiring bankruptcy despite clear warnings to change their spending habits. How many millionaire athletes have burned through their cash despite having account balances and ledgers to look at? It is rather odd how denial and wishful thinking can’t stop someone from running right off a financial cliff. Seems like we could do that with oil to an extent. Procrastination and denial are natural and predictable.

CATL launches superfast charging LFP battery Shenxing; mass production by end of year

https://www.greencarcongress.com/202...0817-catl.html

CATL is the major supplier for Tesla of LFP iron batteries and supplies 35% of batteries with BYD at less than half that, so they do well. These are going into production this year. Things could get interesting. Currently a Model 3 will add 175 miles in 15 minutes, so 250 miles in 10 minutes is a 50% improvement to both. LFP are good batteries in terms of temperature, longevity, safety, etc, so this is big news.

I’m also interested to know more about the superconducting compound. I don’t know if we are really talking about a room temperature superconductor, or if we are just talking something that conducts far better than average.

The name CATL might be familiar for earlier this year when they announced a 500 Wh/kg battery:

CATL launches ultra-high energy ‘Condensed Battery’

https://www.electrive.com/2023/04/19...ensed-battery/

Burn more gas, eat more animals and avoid vaccines.

In order to?

Avoid being french