Many car companies and utilities have been preparing for the inevitable transition to electric vehicles (EVs), but oil companies have been dismissive about EV potential.
Until recently. This week, at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York City, the Chief Energy Economist of Total SA said that the company expects EVs to make up potentially 30-percent of all new vehicle sales as soon as the end of the next decade. Total is the world’s fourth largest oil and gas company and one of the world’s largest producers of crude, and hasn’t before forecast falling demand.
Yet he warned that demand for fuel oil “will flatten out” and “maybe even decline” at that point.
We have to remember that mobility demand will increase—miles driven will rise worldwide as populations around the world grow and get wealthier.
That would normally drive much higher demand for oil to provide that mobility. But what we will see—thanks to electric vehicles and thanks to fuel efficiency improvements—that increase in transportation demand will result in much slower increases in fuel demand, and probably a point in time after 2030 and before 2040 when that demand will flatten out and maybe even begin to decline, depending on how rapidly the penetration of EVs occurs.
Oil demand will peak in 2020s "then we'll have a shrinking oil industry" as vehicles are electrified, says Statoil boss Eldar Saetre #OM2016 pic.twitter.com/LFAQaPVkzR
— Andrew Ward (@andrew_ward1) October 18, 2016
These perspectives stand out in the oil and gas industry, as evidenced in this graphic from a presentation at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference.
What car companies and oil companies are saying about the future of mobility is diverging quickly. Somebody is wrong. #bnefsummit pic.twitter.com/ywfW8L2Wf6
— Colin Mckerracher (@colinmckerrache) April 24, 2017
Particularly interesting to note that Volkswagen, which was actually late getting into the EV production game relative to other manufacturers like Ford, Chevy, and Tesla, is expecting that within eight years, a full one-quarter of its cars sold will be electric.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s own research has predicted that EVs will make up 35-percent of new car sales by 2040.
It’s worth noting that some analysts think that all of these predictions are far too conservative. Like Tony Seba of Stanford, who expects all new vehicles purchased to be electric vehicles by 2025, citing plummeting purchase and life cycle ownership costs, and other similar technological disruptions.