Any future forecasters out there ? Oil crisis in Saudi Arabia - will people switch to the Clarity ?

I absolutely agree. And if, as some predict here, 30 more years of ICE dominance in the US- you can kiss the US economy goodbye- if that is, there is a stable enough climate to support an industrialized economy.

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Iirc gm discontinuing the volt was due to them shutting down the factory that produces them. I believe they also went on record saying they're going all in with BEVs and not "wasting r&d" with phev.

I wonder how much Honda makes per Clarity. If they really wanted to sell them at volume, they would definitely have to bring production stateside to lower overall costs. I think dealer pushback is a big part of it as well. BMW worked really hard getting dealers to sell the i3 and while some welcomed it, others not so much.

 

And now BMW has said that the i3, like the Volt, will be discontinued. However, BMW remains confident in the BEV market. Perhaps their dealers will be more likely to embrace the upcoming Tesla-competitor i4. Long before that car appears in 2022, BMW will release the all-electric MINI Cooper SE, which they plan to sell worldwide (unlike the Honda e).

 

I don't think this saudi attack has had much of an impact on gas prices. which is quite weird.

we usually have quite high gas prices here in montreal, and for the past several months it's been hovering around 1.25$ per liter.
They usually don't need any excuse to increase the price overnight by 10-15 cents per liter, but since this saudi attack, prices have not moved, still around 1.25$ per liter.

 

In Southern California, the gas prices jumped 10-15 cents overnight. And they're still going up a few cents a week.

 

I assume you're talking price per gallon.

15 cents per gallon is something like 4 cents per liter. That's nothing compared to what we're experiencing on a weekly basis in Quebec.

When i say our usual swings are up to 15 cents overnight per liter, that's like 60 cents per gallon.

So anyway, 15 cents per gallon increase doesn't seem much when we're talking about the loss of a large percentage of the world supply of oil.

 

Gas did jump here about .14 cents per gallon, but at $2.17 per gallon, its hardly enough of an increase to notice. I don't buy much fuel for my Clarity, but still buy fuel for my wife's Jeep Cherokee which averages around 25 mpg.

Wish I could convince her to trade in the old Jeep for a Chrysler Pacifica PHEV which is the only PHEV available in this part of the US.

 

GM would have to clarify what they mean by “all in” on BEV. Most likely it means dropping PHEV’s which are not profitable, to focus on BEV’s.

In the big picture, GM sold close to 3 million cars last year, nearly 1 million of those were pick up trucks and large SUV’s. These are the money makers.

Honda may be a few percentage points ahead of GM on the intelligence scale, but it is unlikely they’ve devised a way to make a profit on the Clarity.

 

The gas station near the office changed the prices to over $4 a gallon. I saw a Clarity pull in there, but it was the BEV model. I guess they wanted snacks or something.

 

Or just reminiscing?

 

Or maybe just gloating. My wife came home from work 2 days ago and started to say that gas prices had really jumped, then she stopped and said, "I guess you don't care, do you?" And I had to happily agree with her, I haven't paid much attention to pump prices for the last 8 months.

 

There is a lot to consider here (sorry if this rambles).

@craze1cars mentioned the historically low gas prices, which is sort of true, but it was much cheaper (roughly by $1 of today's $) through most of the 90's and part of the 2000's. Many/most current commuters probably didn't endure the '80 - '85 price spike due to the oil embargo, but would remember the recent spikes in the past 8 years, which have subsided quite a bit. https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2019/09/23/gasoline-volume-sales-and-our-changing-culture
https://i1.wp.com/inflationdata.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Inflation-Adjusted-Gasoline-Jan-2016.jpg
But his point is still valid - a spike <<$1/gallon will not be a big crisis.

But another aspect I find interesting to consider is how much these market forces will not only affect EV/PHEV sales, but also what will the end result be with more EV/PHEV cars on the road. Does driving more efficient cars have the perverse effect of people driving more, and thus offsetting the gains. This aspect can fall under the broad topic of 'adaptive behavior'.

[off topic...]
This is easy to see on the topic of risk such as wrt driving. There have been so many innovations such as air bags, seat belt legislation, ABS, daytime running lights, crumple zones, blind spot notifications, etc., but the death rates still hover around 35K/year in the US. So one could conclude that as the risk gets reduced, people drive a little more carelessly ('moral hazard', 'Peltzman Effect'). When Sweden decided to have people switch to driving on the opposite side of the road, the death rate plummeted for 2 years and then went right back to where it was before the switch. On the other hand that high US death figure conceals the fact that there are many more miles driven per year, and so the deaths per mile driven has really dropped over the decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_traffic_deaths_per_VMT,_VMT,_per_capita,_and_total_annual_deaths.png
Another reference to driven miles vs gasoline cost: https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2019/09/25/vehicle-miles-traveled-another-look-at-our-evolving-behavior


As with regards to energy, the same kind of scenario is argued by some. They say that as efficiency innovations are made it will reduce demand for energy and the costs will drop and people will actually end up using more energy than they did before the innovation ('Jevons Paradox'). I believe there is a certain amount of truth to that scenario but it only amounts to a fraction of the overall saving due to the efficiency. If you want to geek out on the Jevons Paradox: https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-86-is-transition-worth-it/, or just watch a brief summary:



To me it makes sense that the efficiencies with these new technologies more than make up for any subsequent rebound effect as she said, but it is interesting to think it through.

Sorry if all this is considered OT - I think they are all interrelated in terms of the effect of outside circumstances on consumer behavior. I guess I find the paradoxes of moral hazard, Jevons paradox, etc. very interesting to consider, and I tend to geek out on some of these tangential topics...

 

Shale oil is keeping OPEC from hiking prices, OPEC tried to kill shale operators back in 2015 via an oil flood. There's just too much cheap easy oil right now, even with Iran and Venezuela off line it's barely budging prices. Permian has a boatload of oil and USGS just doubled their recoverable estimates a year ago, that was huge news.

Battery prices need to continue to cheapen, this is what will make EV's compete....or raise oil taxes.

 

Wouldn't this period of cheap oil be a good time to end oil subsidies? The outcries would be louder after oil prices rise, as they inevitably will. [Fill in favorite political epithet here.]

 

Why stop there? Let’s eliminate all subsidies, not just the ones we don’t agree with.

 

Then politicians will be out of a job.

 

Perhaps the subsidies that hasten global warming (including food production as well as oil production) are more important to address first.

 

Do you now regret the division to buy a PHEV instead of a straight BEV? By your own admission you never put gas in it anyway.



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Because you directed your question specifically to @4sallypat I've been struggling for hours not to contribute my 2 cents worth (well, maybe 1 cent worth) regarding your second sentence. I hope he answers soon.