Man who famously said the same thing about EVs, even after 2 million had been sold.
Said it was just Obama making stuff up.
> LET ME BEGIN WITH A DISCLAIMER: I am neither promoting
electric vehicles nor denigrating them. I simply observe that the
rational case for accepting EVs has been undermined by unrealistic market forecasts and a disregard for the environmental effects
involved in producing and operating these vehicles. • Unrealistic forecasts have
been the norm. In 2008, Deutsche Bank predicted that EVs would claim 7 percent of the U.S. market by 2016; in 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek put the 2016
share at 6 percent. But actual sales came to 158,614 units, just 0.9 percent of the
record 17.55 million vehicles sold that year. • In his 2011 State of the Union address,
then–U.S. president Barack Obama called for 1 million EVs on the road by 2015,
and a concurrent report by the Department of Energy claimed that the country’s production capacity in that year would reach 1.2 million units. But the 2015
total came to 410,000 units, representing just 0.15 percent of all vehicles on the
road, and sales of U.S. brands reached about 100,000 cars. • And this triumph of
hope over experience continues. The worldwide total of EVs on the road reached
2 million units in 2016. If you plot the trajectory of the global stock of EVs since
the beginning of their sales to the year 2016, you will see that the equation that
best fits the data (a fourth-order polynomial) projects about 32 million units in
2025.
There was 4.2 Million EVs sold in the first half of this year. If sales remains entirely flat then between now and 2025 then just the cars sold over the next 4 years will top his prediction for installed base.
Sales won't remain flat.
> The myth that the future belongs to electric vehicles is one of the misconceptions of the modern energy era”. -- Vaclav Smil
He is still saying essentially the same about EVs ..
> "The notion that any EV is a zero-carbon car is nonsense."
or at length:
> There are no EVs. They are battery vehicles reflecting the electricity’s origins. If I were to buy an EV in Manitoba, it would be a 100% hydroelectricity, truly zero carbon energy, car. In North China it is a 90% coal car, in France it is a 70% nuclear car, in Russia mostly a natural gas car and in Denmark a 50% wind car et cetera.
His message is that we will need to burn a lot fossil fuel and emit a lot of carbon in order to eventually consume less and emit less .. and in the meantime we could stand to insulate more and drive smaller lighter cars, etc.
Yes, he's not stupid. He goes to great pains to stress that the climate change denial articles he writes for the climate change denying AEI aren't denying climate change. Good heavens no.
He's merely saying that all of the solutions to climate change are bad and all the people suggesting them are stupid. Thats just facts, not denial.
I don't even remotely see how hybrids factor in. Yes there are "plug in hybrids" but no one is required to plug them. Other than that they burn fossil fuels. That's it.
So what? Even if I cut my car's fossil fuel consumption in half, I'm still burning fossil fuels. Actually forget half. Let's cut it by 99%. I'm still burning fossil fuels. You still have a carbon footprint.
"It's more efficient" is not good enough. It has to be zero or negative carbon production.
So you will accept nothing less than 0 carbon tech, right now, in a world where there's lots of inefficient uses of fossil fuels we could replace and save money?
Seems a bit extremist.
Also, ICE and hybrids can run on e-fuels. Not ideal as they still have local pollution and arent very efficient but entirely possible without adding fossil carbon to the system. EVs (and bikes and trains) are better though.
Said it was just Obama making stuff up.
> LET ME BEGIN WITH A DISCLAIMER: I am neither promoting electric vehicles nor denigrating them. I simply observe that the rational case for accepting EVs has been undermined by unrealistic market forecasts and a disregard for the environmental effects involved in producing and operating these vehicles. • Unrealistic forecasts have been the norm. In 2008, Deutsche Bank predicted that EVs would claim 7 percent of the U.S. market by 2016; in 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek put the 2016 share at 6 percent. But actual sales came to 158,614 units, just 0.9 percent of the record 17.55 million vehicles sold that year. • In his 2011 State of the Union address, then–U.S. president Barack Obama called for 1 million EVs on the road by 2015, and a concurrent report by the Department of Energy claimed that the country’s production capacity in that year would reach 1.2 million units. But the 2015 total came to 410,000 units, representing just 0.15 percent of all vehicles on the road, and sales of U.S. brands reached about 100,000 cars. • And this triumph of hope over experience continues. The worldwide total of EVs on the road reached 2 million units in 2016. If you plot the trajectory of the global stock of EVs since the beginning of their sales to the year 2016, you will see that the equation that best fits the data (a fourth-order polynomial) projects about 32 million units in 2025.
There was 4.2 Million EVs sold in the first half of this year. If sales remains entirely flat then between now and 2025 then just the cars sold over the next 4 years will top his prediction for installed base.
Sales won't remain flat.
> The myth that the future belongs to electric vehicles is one of the misconceptions of the modern energy era”. -- Vaclav Smil