(may be broke/outdated!)
As hybrid cars become more popular and accepted as an alternate to gas-guzzling autos, how would the gas companies react? How would the economy benefit from this? What are the disadvantages?
Check out this article… Toyota’s working on a 100MPG car!
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveonaCar/The100mpgCarIsComing.aspx
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3 Responses
Energy is energy and the main source at this time is oil. Eighty percent of the energy made in most states comes from generators run on diesel.Electric powered cars are fine if the power comes from somewhere besides hydrocarbons. If not add an additional 30% to oil consumption because of losses in conversion. There is a relatively good way to power America but nobody mentions it much anymore and I don’t mean nuclear.
As always, there are numerous trade-offs. Some are foreseeable, some aren’t. Here are a couple of scenarios that could play out.
1) As more people switch to more fuel efficient cars, the demand for oil delcines and the prices follow right behind incenting less people to buy the more fuel efficient cars.
2) As more people switch to fuel efficient cars, China and India keep growing like gangbusters and driving the demand for oil, while OPEC and US environmentalists restrict growth in new oil supply to meet the growing demand.
But, since we have more fuel efficent cars we find that we can drive further for the same cost as with the less fuel efficient cars. This leads to another ring of growth the suburban belts surrounding major metro areas as the new cars have enabled them to move further from their jobs and we all load up the cars for long weekend trips that we didn’t take when we had less fuel efficient car. Net-net, we actually demand more oil because we figure out ways to drive further.
My guess is that #2 is the most likely scenario. There’s precedent for the second part of it. Over the past 50-60 years we’ve figured out how to use electricity and natural gas much more efficiently by building efficient homes. So, what do we do? We build larger homes. 2,500 sq ft homes were mini-mansions 30 years ago, but are now fairly typical new suburban stock. We also figure out news ways to use it. We have computers, big TVs, plasma screen TVs, etc. etc.
Long story short, don’t think that improved efficiency is the answer to rising oil prices. It could possibly even make it worse.
The oil companies invest in the alternative fuels and jack up the cost for them too.