Originally Posted by MartinSE
(Post 2076909)
Yes, he is sort of right. EVs, Computers, Phones, etc, etc, etc. need lots of are earth minerals. And China has been aggressively acquiring rights to rare earth minerals around the world for the past few decades, by cuddling up to poor countries building infrastructure in exchange for those rights. We on the other hand haven't been building those relationships, and will find it hard to move forward with out them. I will suggest (and I am sure it will start a political war here), but... the fossil fuel companies have spent a LOT of money lobbying to keep us addicted to fossil fuel and not allowing the government to build an alternative source of energy. it makes sense, it is in their interest to keep us tied to them for energy.
Now, on to predictions,
The fuel for the majority of power plants, factories, gas ovens, furnaces, etc etc etc will probably NOT happen in 30 years.
In talking about EVs, there are a couple issues to be resolved -
1. Batteries. Higher density, faster charging, faster production - the batteries we have now are ALMOST good enough. But, we certainly need higher production rates - more factories etc. Tesla is building new battery plants trying to catch up, but it will help when GM, Ford, Mercedes, VW, et all start making batteries too. This is just developing better tech, and that will happen if there is demand. Right now Tesla can't make enough batteries, and the demand is very high, so there is motivation to develop battery tech. If the other auto companies join the EV push, they will need batteries, that will help since GM, Ford et al, have the cash (or credit) to build massive battery factories.
2. We need a startup (maybe) that provides a cost effective mechanism to covert "gas stations" into recharging stations. That has logistic problems like getting Electricity to the gas stations with high enough current rating to super/fast charge. One alternative to that is the industry comes to a standard battery pack that can be swapped by a "robot"/automatic battery swapping station. So, you drive in, pull up on the platform, robot arms come out, remove the battery pack from your EV and insert a new one. Lots of design considerations, like to you "own" the batteries, or are you renting them. Etc etc.
3. Distributed electrical generation is a MUST have. When I was working at Palo Verdre Nuke plant in AZ there was a lot of debate over distributed generation, where every house, or at most every neighborhood has it's own power generation. The way we do it today is very vulnerable to outages (and sabotage) and expensive. Unfortunately, power companies kind of lose control if everyone (or every neighborhood) has it's own generation - be it Solar, geothermal, wind, hydro, etc, etc.
The big thing we need to understand is that no one thing is a silver bullet to solve our energy problems. Every location needs to customize the solution to what works best for them.
So, with all that in mind, I say, the majority of Automobiles sold in the US will be EVs within 20 years (maybe 10 if there is a lot of government support, but I don't see that happening).
I see private ownership of automobiles going away within 20 to 30 years. With FSD we will see "timeshare" cars. Where you pay a flat rate per month for use a a car - high subscription, more miles. When you want to go someplace you can schedule a car to arrive at a fixed time every day (good for commuting to work) or you can call a car and it will arrive in 5 to 10 minutes. The car takes you where you are going and then returns itself to the "pool". If you go on a shopping trip, there will be cars waiting to be summoned in the parking lots, so you shop, call the car while checking out, and walk outside and it is waiting to take you home. ETC. This will result in no more insurance, no more maintenance, no more drunk drivers, no more driver caused accidents, and much improved traffic flow both in town and on highways since the cars will all communicate and coordinate with each other.
Oh, and commercial truck drivers will cease to exist as FSD replaces them, making lower insurance, higher efficiency (truck on the move 24/7). etc.
That is my vision of 20 years or so (Maybe 30 for the truckers to be replaced).
Now, for the rest, power plants, factories, air flights, international cargo shipping etc. We will be hard pressed to replace all of they with electric of some other non-fossil fuel alternative in less than 50 years, maybe longer. If we simply ran out of oil, it would happen MUCH sooner. But, oil is too cheap (despite todays high prices) too easy to transport, and too high of an energy density to be replaced any sooner.
Sadly all that is the majority of pollution generated by Fossil fuels. But, we will NEVER get there is we don't start. For example, there are not going to be charging stations every where until there are EVs and there are not going to be enough EVs to support charging stations everywhere until there are charging everywhere. Catch 22. This is where government incentives come in to play, by making it more desirable it will happen sooner. Whether we see those and whether they are enough - I dunno.
All of that assumes we remain with the same battery chemistry - we won't. All of that assumes new sources (space) of rare earth minerals don't become available and financially practical to mine - they will.
So, there are a LOT of connections, like a spider web that will begin wiggling as we begin transitioning and those wiggles will result is massive changes in technology.
One of the difficulties in predicting technology changes, is that historically tech advances at an exponential rate, while we think about it in a linear rate. So, it "seems" like things are changing slowly, while in reality they are changing faster every year. AI is going to be play a BIG role in the design of new batteries and chemistries, and new power generation systems, etc etc.
It would NOT surprise me if 20 years from now Fossil fuel burning is outlawed. But, I can't tell you how we will get there. But it wouldn't surprise me. We made it to the moon in a decade, when everyone said it was impossible. SpaceX is up to 12 reuses of recovered launch vehicles and 10 years ago everyone laughed at the idea. Things can change fast - if we don't prevent it. And Fossil fuel companies have a very big incentive to prevent change.
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