Will Electric Cars kill the global oil industry by 2030?

The NMA Foundation presents The Car of the Future weekly feature:

Stanford economist Tony Seba released a study this week that the emerging electric vehicle ‘transportation as a service’ business model will kill the global oil industry in a ten year period. In the study, Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030: The Disruption of Transportation and the Collapse of the ICE Vehicle and Oil industries, Seba explains why the business model, transportation as a service, will triumph over any other current model.  He believes that by 2030, 95 percent of U.S. passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand autonomous electric vehicles (A-EVs) owned by companies providing transport as a service (TaaS).

Seba goes on to claim that in 2030:

  • The average American household will save $5,600 per year by giving up their gas-powered cars and travelling A-EV TaaS.
  • Fewer cars will travel more miles. He estimates the number of cars on the road will drop from 247 million to 44 million.
  • Using TaaS will be four to ten times cheaper per mile than buying a new car.
  • Using TaaS will be two to four times cheaper than operating an existing paid off vehicle.
  • Cost of TaaS will include utilization rates that are 10 times higher
  • A-EVs lifetimes will exceed 500,000 miles and require far less maintenance, energy, finance and insurance costs.
  • Other revenue sources from advertising, data monetization, entertainment and product sales will open a road to free transport in a TaaS Pool model, as private and public transportation begin to merge.
  • Cost saving will also be the key factor in driving consumers to adopt TaaS.
  • Adoption will start in cities and radiate outward to rural areas. Non-adopters will be largely restricted to the most rural areas, where cost and wait times are likely to be higher.

The Study also states:

“Behavioral issues such as love of driving, fear of new technology or habit are generally believed to pose initial barriers to consumer uptake. However, Pre-TaaS companies such as Uber, Lyft and Didi have invested billions of dollars developing technologies and services to overcome these issues. In 2016, Pre-TaaS companies drove 500,000 passengers per day in New York City alone. That was triple the number of passengers driven the previous year.

The combination of TaaS’s dramatically lower costs compared with car ownership and exposure to successful peer experience will drive more widespread usage of the service. Adopting TaaS requires no investment or lock-in.

Consumers can try it with ease and increase usage as their comfort level increases. Even in suburban and rural areas, where wait times and cost might be slightly higher, adoption is likely to be more extensive than generally forecast because of the greater impact of cost savings on lower incomes. As with any technology disruption, adoption will grow along an exponential S-curve.”

The study is worth a read and could possibly be a seminal work.

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If you are interested in learning more about the Car of the Future check out the following NMA resources:

NMA Driving News Feed—Over 50 Car of the Future stories are placed each month in the NMA Driving News—the go-to source for all your driving news information from around the country.

NMA’s Flipboard Magazine called Car of the Future—Over 50 stories are placed each month in this magazine devoted to the Car of the Future.  Stories featured include future car politics, industry news and thought pieces.

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