Electric cars still have their limitations despite battery improvements

Fuel Fix:

Oil companies should brace themselves for rapid advancements in battery technology, which could bring more electric cars to the market and drive down the demand for oil, according to a new report from Fitch Ratings Limited released this week.

More than half of the world’s oil use comes from cars, and the oil industry is already reeling from an oil glut. While the price of oil has drastically fluctuated in 2016, the Fitch report, the industry faces a longer-term threat. If battery technology makes an unexpected leap forward, the industry will feel the effects before the adoption of electric cars spike, with global oil demand peak sooner than the 2030s, as many analysts predict. In addition to making electric cars more practical and attractive to consumers, advances in battery technology could expand the role of intermittent renewable sources, such as wind and solar, in the power grid.

The report predicts that the number of electric vehicles on the road will increase slowly, in part because today’s cars can last up to 20 years. Even if global electric car sales were to grow by more than 30 percent a year, it would still take 20 years for the vehicles to account for a quarter of the world’s cars, according to Fitch. Nonetheless, Fitch said, the adoption of electric cars could affect oil companies sooner than expected, although the report did not give a timeline.
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My daughter who lives in Northern Califonia has an electric car which she uses to commute to work.  But on a recent visit, if we decided to go out to eat in the evening we would take my car because hers needed to be charged for the next day's commute. While batteries with a longer charge time are coming out in the top of the line cars, they still have their limitations when it comes to traveling distances.

A trip from Texas to Califonia in one of these vehicles would take substantially longer than one that uses gasoline for fuel.