When mature, electric vehicles mean the cost of fuel is essentially zero. Whenever there has a been a massive drop in energy costs, there has also been an economic boom. Electric vehicles also mean no more air pollution from vehicles which means a healthier population and fewer medical bills. Then you have the whole AI thing which promises to drastically reduce, if not eliminate, accidents as well as reduce traffic congestion.
SpaceX is getting pretty damn close to a reusable rocket which will drastically reduce the cost of entering orbit. If that happens, then it is likely that space will become a viable market for private enterprise: tourism, mining, etc.
There is a lot of work going on in energy including some designs for fusion that should be commercially viable. I don't know what is going to happen with energy, but there are way too many people working on it for nothing significant to happen in the near future.
In healthcare, it seems like every few days I am reading about a person being cured of blindness with stem cells, growing or 3D printing an organ in a lab, or some new insight into how the body ages.
I could keep going, but I am tired of typing letters. The point is that "Every other sector has gone cold or even backwards since ~1970" is a false statement.
> When mature, electric vehicles mean the cost of fuel is essentially zero. Whenever there has a been a massive drop in energy costs, there has also been an economic boom.
But the first sentence is wrong -- it only means the cost of energy for a vehicle is equal to the cost of the same energy on the electric grid, plus the cost of wear on the onboard storage system (battery, etc.)
Unless your definition of "mature" for electric vehicles includes existing in a world where energy costs on the electric grid are essentially zero (which is a whole lot bigger of an advance than electric vehicles, and applies a lot more broadly!), mature electric vehicle technology doesn't mean that the energy cost for vehicles in essentially zero, either.
> plus the cost of wear on the onboard storage system (battery, etc.)
That falls under vehicle maintenance and does not play into the cost of fuel.
> it only means the cost of energy for a vehicle is equal to the cost of the same energy on the electric grid
Yes, I was exaggerating but it is already pretty cheap. If memory serves, it is about $0.08/kWh in the US or $6.80 to charge Tesla's largest battery pack which is way cheaper than $40-60 per gasoline tank. And if you extrapolate a little, that cost is going to go down by the time electric vehicles are mature because the literal energy cost should be less and electric vehicles should be more efficient. But maybe I am wrong about that, only time will tell.
> > > plus the cost of wear on the onboard storage system (battery, etc.)
> That falls under vehicle maintenance and does not play into the cost of fuel.
Whenever you talk about "fuel" with an electric vehicle, you are doing so by loose analogy; the battery electrolytes are the closest thing to "fuel" in an electric vehicle. I suppose one could quibble over the degree to which the battery is analogous to the "fuel tank" vs. part of the "fuel", the main point, in any case, is that even the electricity isn't even approximately zero cost.
> Yes, I was exaggerating but it is already pretty cheap. If memory serves, it is about $0.08/kWh
Which is equivalent (by GGE [1]) to $2.67/gallon of gasoline, which, while lower than current gasoline prices, is so by less than factor of 2, so its an incremental improvement improvement, not the kind of orders-of-magnitude implied by "essentially zero", even allowing for a bit of artistic exaggeration.
Unless I'm mistaken you're glossing over the fact that electric motors are significantly more efficient than combustion engines. An electric motor doesn't turn more than half of all the energy in the batteries into heat.
"essentially zero" is an exaggeration, but electric cars are dramatically cheaper to fuel. They use much less energy and the energy they use is in a much cheaper form (electricity vs gasoline).
But electrics are much more expensive and are less flexible than gasoline powered cars. That's why sales of electrics have stalled at less than 4% of the market.
Sales of electric cars have not stalled, they are growing rapidly. They are also a very small segment of the market but as price drops and range increases that will cease to be the case.
I agree with your point, but I think an interesting aspect is that a shift toward pushing our transportation energy through the grid might (maybe) lead to some additional economies of scale that could bring down energy costs more broadly. That said, there might instead be diseconomies of scale that dominate - so certainly not a sure thing.
> I think an interesting aspect is that a shift toward pushing our transportation energy through the grid might (maybe) lead to some additional economies of scale that could bring down energy costs more broadly.
I do think that both the economies of scale that this involves and the fact that it makes the shift to alternative (whether "cheaper" or "cleaner" or both) fuels one that involves changing grid inputs without requiring changes to vehicles, fueling infrastructure (once you have the electric charging infrastructure in place), etc., are big gains.
When I was dismissing the idea that electric vehicles had a near-zero energy cost, I wasn't intending to dismiss the idea that electric vehicles offer some real opportunities for improvement.
When mature, electric vehicles mean the cost of fuel is essentially zero. Whenever there has a been a massive drop in energy costs, there has also been an economic boom. Electric vehicles also mean no more air pollution from vehicles which means a healthier population and fewer medical bills. Then you have the whole AI thing which promises to drastically reduce, if not eliminate, accidents as well as reduce traffic congestion.
SpaceX is getting pretty damn close to a reusable rocket which will drastically reduce the cost of entering orbit. If that happens, then it is likely that space will become a viable market for private enterprise: tourism, mining, etc.
There is a lot of work going on in energy including some designs for fusion that should be commercially viable. I don't know what is going to happen with energy, but there are way too many people working on it for nothing significant to happen in the near future.
In healthcare, it seems like every few days I am reading about a person being cured of blindness with stem cells, growing or 3D printing an organ in a lab, or some new insight into how the body ages.
I could keep going, but I am tired of typing letters. The point is that "Every other sector has gone cold or even backwards since ~1970" is a false statement.