Oil won’t be impacted by electric vehicles? Wrong. Of course it will be impacted.
Will big oil survive electric vehicles? Probably, for a time.
Why is oil so resilient? Because demand growth for oil in sectors like petrochemicals, heavy industry, aviation and other heavy transport keeps expanding significantly. And these segments are largely insulated from fuel switching.
Inevitably, with enough investment, consumer support, and corporate fleet turnover, electric ground transport will impact oil more dramatically. But any short term worry does seem to be misplaced.
In our lifetimes, we will see transportation leap forward in a way it hasn’t in about a century. Maturing tech will change transportation, and global economies, due to:
- Self-driving consumer vehicles and taxi services
- Self-driving trucking operations
- A.I. traffic management
- Electric consumer vehicles
- Electric trucking vehicles
But are these big industries enough to make a painful impact on fossil-fuel businesses? The high energy concentration and quick release capability of fossil fuels remain unmatched in the electric world.
But keep an eye out for battery energy storage innovations. Because that’s the game changer to really threaten the dominance of fossil fuels.