Electric cars can't compete with fracking

IBD:

If you were among the brave few who bought a Tesla Roadster in 2008, you purchased your government-subsidized $100,000-plus electric car when a barrel of oil cost as much as $162 in today's dollars. "Peak oil" was an article of faith — as crude supplies ran out, ever-higher oil prices would destroy demand for the internal combustion engine and other fossil-fuel monstrosities.

But now, if you're one of the 500,000 wannabe Tesla owners who, according to CEO Elon Musk, has put down a $1,000 deposit on a $35,000 Model 3, the company's new mass-market electric sedan, you're probably just as familiar with a fashionable new green conceit. Now the article of faith is "peak demand" for oil, the idea that electric cars will soon make oil obsolete.

Funny how green logic seems to work. It doesn't matter whether there's too much demand for oil or too little — either way, oil is doomed.

Sadly, for Mr. Musk and all the true believers, peak demand for oil, supposedly driven by Tesla's and other automakers' rapid rollout of electric vehicles, is mostly hype, just as peak oil was a decade ago.

Yes, cost reductions in battery technology have lowered the price for electrics and will continue to do so, but the shale revolution in oil production — virtually unimagined in 2008 when Tesla debuted its first model — has cut global crude prices by more than half, making increasingly efficient conventional vehicles unbeatably cost-effective.

At today's oil prices, which are still high by long-term historical standards — there is no economic incentive to pay a premium price for electric. For example, even assuming oil at $50 per barrel, a 2017 Ford Focus with a conventional engine is about $6,000 to $7,000 cheaper in terms of total cost of ownership over 15 years, compared to the all-electric version (without subsidies), or even the hybrid.
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This is not to mention one of the obvious drawbacks to electric cars.  They have a limited range and their recharge time makes them impractical for long trips.  You would not want to be trying to evacuate ahead of a hurricane in an electric car.  They are going to need better and lighter batteries that can recharge in minutes to become truly competitive.