Electric Cars Hardly Guaranteed To Beat Oil

I still argue that one of the best energy headlines ever came out in 2011: "Lies, damned lies, and electric vehicle forecasts."

Indeed, released just a few weeks ago, J.D. Power’s Mobility Confidence Index shows that Americans are still not exactly in love with the machines that we are supposed to just assume will end oil's century of dominance in transport.

Consumers are not as optimistic about the future of plug-in cars and self-driving vehicles as analysts and the media are portraying.

Among other concerns, electric cars are too expensive, rely on a precarious supply chain (some immorally using child labor), lack a significant used car market, and have worrying short-range issues. "24 Things Wrong With Electric Cars Millennials Choose To Ignore."

J.D. Power finds that just 39% of Americans would buy an electric car and 51% do not see electric cars as reliable as oil-based ones.

On a scale of 100, electric cars scored a Mobility Confidence Index reading of 55, with self-driving cars scoring even lower at 36 points.

The length of time to charge an electric car and the miles range that charge brings were cited as the biggest problems.

Electric cars are really just toys for the rich: "Electric Car Subsidies Hurt Middle Class Americans."

Indeed, even with huge tax breaks to encourage their adoption, the U.S. still only has just over 1 million electric cars, compared to more than 250 million oil-based ones.

I mention many times how the future energy world will simply not be handed to renewables and electric cars

They will have to fight for it.

Already overwhelmingly entrenched in the massive U.S. energy complex, fossil fuels will surely "not go gentle into that good night."

They will rage.

Another great line to remember: renewables and electric cars will not be competing against coal, oil, and gas as they are now but...as they will become.

Oil-based cars, for instance, are evolving their peformance just as quickly as electric ones: "Reports Of The Death Of Oil's ICE Are Greatly Exaggerated."

The reality is that the "transport revolution" might not be an electricity-based one at all.

For example, electric cars already lost the transportation race to oil a long time ago

So, the assumption that they will surely win the new one seems overly presumptuous.

Most Americans probably do not realize that nearly 40% of U.S. cars in 1900 were electric, only to be ultimately be beaten out by oil.

In any event, more electrification and more electric cars will obviously increase the need for electricity, increasingly dominated by natural gas.

"Nonstop Records For U.S. Natural-Gas-Based Electricity."