A contrary viewpoint is that the whole petrol production and distribution infrastructure is there and won’t go away quickly. So as there is a gradual shift towards electric cars, demand for petrol products will decline quicker than the supply side. This would make the products cheaper during this period.
If we find ourselves in the situation where there are no good alternatives to Avgas/Mogas for our planes, but cars are mainly electric, we may actually benefit from this for around a decade. In places where there is 100LL available today, the bowsers wouldn’t be dismantled unless everyone flying has switched to another, better alternative. In which case I will be happy to use that alternative.
In other words, on an individual level I don’t think plane owners have to worry as long as there is a sufficient number of others in the same situation.
It all depends on the timescales, and cheap does not mean available.
In the transition from horse powered coaches to cars the price of haybales may have dropped during the early days of reducing demand.
And they may indeed be very cheap today.
Just don’t count on finding any in your average motorway service station when you stop there with your chariot.
Peter wrote:
The subject line is specific – whether electric cars will affect liquid aviation fuel availability.
Well mister “I get to write off topic (complete and utter) nonsense about electric cars, and all answers (from people actually driving them every day) will be deleted” -administrator, I think the answer is maybe. Avgas is already a niche product from the refineries, but we will have refineries for the foreseeable future even though gasoline and diesel production will collapse within 10 years. We will still have recreational boats in need of gasoline/diesel, and all kinds of other vehicles, utility and others that aren’t easily transferred to electricity. The thing with the average car, is that it is easily electrified, and makes 100% sense. People who don’t understand it, don’t know what they are talking about – at all.
However, aircraft and boats are not easily electrified, and it doesn’t make all that much sense either. Electrifying GA and boats will hardly make any difference to the environment, since the consumption is hardly even measurable compared with cars. Still, the market is there, and someone will produce fuel, and the price will be about the same as today. The danger is that the authorities may ban sales of fossil fuels for all private use, because it is unnecessary. I honestly don’t think it will happen, but it is a very real possibility when everyone see the benefits of electric cars.
Well mister “I get to write off topic (complete and utter) nonsense about electric cars, and all answers (from people actually driving them every day) will be deleted” -administrator, I think the answer is maybe.
Who said they will be deleted? I delete almost nothing here; mostly just spam, the occassional personal attacks etc…
I moved off topic posts to the electric plane (actually mostly electric car) thread linked above – here
Peter wrote:
I moved off topic posts to the electric plane (actually mostly electric car) thread linked above – here
OK, sorry. Didn’t follow that link.
Cobalt wrote:
It all depends on the timescales, and cheap does not mean available.In the transition from horse powered coaches to cars the price of haybales may have dropped during the early days of reducing demand.
And they may indeed be very cheap today.
Just don’t count on finding any in your average motorway service station when you stop there with your chariot.
There are a lot horses where I live. People keep them at home, transport them wherever they want and feed them without issue wherever they take them. Nothing different is going to happen with planes, cars, motorcycles or anything else that people choose to keep and enjoy… as they will. It seems to me that Europeans so often choose to think along the lines of the future involving radical, disturbing, politically forced change and in that model minority interests (probably including themselves) will have to suffer. Then by some miraculous process new technology will transform our activity and everybody will simultaneously leave the past forever, having arrived in nirvana. Then when it doesn’t happen there’s a new theory, and the cycle repeats… For instance the ‘inevitable’ move to electric replacing the ‘inevitable’ (but now largely abandoned) move to diesel GA engines.
What I think actually happens is people do what they want, politicians have only so much influence regardless of their screw ball ideas and markets care more about people. There will always be people who want to fly, and for some time to come the best way to do it will be in existing gasoline powered aircraft. The fuel will be remain available to do it, and it’ll be coming out of the ground and refined to meet demand for a very long time.
AdamFrisch wrote:
2. Why oil companies haven’t already added charging stations to their gas stations is completely beyond me. If they’re that stupid and shortsighted, they deserve to go bankrupt when gas engine sales dwindles. They could have owned the Tesla Supercharger network model if they’d just acted in time, instead they’ve that away and plod on like it’s the year 1950.
Because it’s tilting at windmills.
It’s likely an electric car will always need a good half hour charge for decent range just because of the laws of physics and the huge currents and voltages to put significant watt-hours into a battery at high speed (unless the industry magically pulls together for a common battery form, so battery swaps can be done + leased batteries). So the typical petrol station would die anyway, because no one is going to sit around for half an hour twiddling their thumbs while the battery charges in the typical wasteland where most petrol stations are.
Instead people are going to charge their cars in places where they leave their cars to sit for hours on end anyway while they do other things: car park at work, the multistory carpark for the shopping centre, their own driveways and garages. Charging stations are already appearing in these places. Just last week I came across some car park charging stations in America’s most oily city: Houston. Also I don’t think I’ve seen more Teslas in one place than Houston. For about five years now there have been charging stations in car parks in the Isle of Man.
The exception would be motorway service stations, and the charging points are already appearing at those sorts of places and have been for a couple of years now.
