IF and when electric cars would pose a threat to oil consumption – wizards are divided? Yet, the issue is interesting, intriguing and inevitable. Following a 5% decline in sales from 2014 to 2015, US electric vehicle (EV) sales jumped by 37% in 2016. Globally, growth has been even stronger. Since 2014 global EV sales have more than doubled. Following the 72% growth in 2015, 2016 saw a 41% global increase with EV sales touching the 777,497 mark. And Norway, the small Scandinavian country, with a total population of 5.2 million is leading the march. While only 321 electric cars registered in Norway in 2007, there are now more than 100,000 electric cars on its road. Norwegian EV market has nearly doubled year-on-year since 2011. Right now, nearly 40 percent of all new cars sold are electric, and sales are edging towards a 50 percent tipping point. The Oil and gas-rich Norway plans to phase out fossil fuel cars altogether by 2025, reports Lars Bevanger. Globally too, many see the transition approaching - sooner rather than later. Yet, the pace of transition depends on the state of battery technology, most agree. At a recent energy event in Calgary, the energy capital of Canada, Peter Tertzakian, executive director of ARC Energy Research Institute, was quoted as saying by Geoffrey Morgan that there are currently more than 1 billion cars and trucks in the world - a quarter of those are on the roads in the US and electric vehicles currently make up less than one percent of the mix. However, Steve Koonin, the former undersecretary at the US Department of Energy, predicts that 50 percent of the vehicles on the road in 2050 would be electric. Larry Burns, a former General Motors executive, was of the view that fuel efficiency regulations in the US could hamper the demand for petroleum in North America by between 30 and 45 percent by 2025. Burns pointed out that car manufacturers across the board are working to boost efficiency by reducing the weight of their cars, building electric cars or hybrids and also by engineering more driverless cars, which are being designed to be lighter than conventional vehicles and therefore more fuel efficient. "Just over 1 percent of the gas being burned (in your car) is moving you, the rest is being used to move the machine," Burns said. ARC Energy Research head Jackie Forrest was quoted as saying at the conference that one of the biggest impediments to electric vehicle adoption is price, as electric cars are twice or three times as expensive as gasoline-burning cars. "They do have lower operating costs but it's hard to justify the initial capital cost," Forrest said. Energy materials expert Dr. Linda Nazar insists that batteries have come a long way over the past few years. «It›s really more a question of the infrastructure at this point." Some of the recent web headlines in this regard are interesting: Telsa Inc. has shipped a record 25,000 cars in the first quarter; 20% of new buses in China are now electric; Smart cars going 100% electric in the US; Sydney Airport orders 40 more electric buses; Vattenfall (the Swedish utility) converting entire vehicle fleet to electric. The number of electric vehicles on the roads has risen six-fold since 2014 with 550,000 new plug-in cars sold last year, admits the IEA. Yet, the OECD energy watchdog also underlines that electric automobiles made up less than one percent of all new cars sold last year. Electric cars won't cause oil demand to peak anytime soon, the IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, said last December. "The oil demand growth is not coming from cars, it's from trucks, aviation, and the petrochemical industry and we don't have major alternatives to oil products there," Birol said, adding "I don't buy the argument that electric cars alone will cause a peak in oil demand at least in short and medium term." The IEA hence does not see oil demand peaking at least until, 2040, with the number of EV cars rising from 1.3 million in 2015 to a cumulative total of 150 million by 2040. BP's base case foresees even a lower number - 100m electric cars by 2040 - some 5% of the global car fleet. Yet, it is up from the 57m projected in the company's outlook last year, mainly because of falling battery prices, although even BP admitted there was a large uncertainty over the numbers. ExxonMobil Corp, on the other hand, projects that 10 percent of cars on the road in 2040 will be electric. However, some other analysts believe the transition may be quicker. Bloomberg New Energy Finance's see more than 200m electric cars globally by 2035. Royal Dutch Shell Plc is of the opinion that in view of the renewable energy and disruptive technologies gaining traction, oil demand could peak in as little as five years. "We've long been of the opinion that demand will peak before supply," Shell Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry told the press, adding, "the peak may be somewhere between 5 and 15 years hence, and it will be driven by efficiency and substitution, more than offsetting the new demand for transport." The falling cost of electric vehicles and solar technology will halt demand growth for oil and coal from 2020, says a report issued by The Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and Carbon Tracker. «Fossil fuels may lose 10 percent of market share to PV (photovoltaics) and EVs within a single decade,» Carbon Tracker said. A 10 percent loss of market share caused the collapse of the US coal mining industry and Europe›s five biggest utilities lost more than 100 billion euros ($108 billion) in value from 2008-2013 because they were unprepared for renewable energy growth, it added. The report said that electric vehicles could make up a third of the world›s road transport market by 2035 and that solar PV could supply 23% of global power generation by 2040. Growth in the number of electric vehicles could lead to 2 million bpd of oil demand being displaced by 2025, the report estimates. A new technology could be of great help in this emerging revolution. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have unveiled a new, lithium or sodium -glass battery technology that could be a game-changer. "I think we have (now) the possibility of doing what we've been trying to do for the last 20 years," says John Goodenough, the 94 years old eminent scientist, the co-inventor of the battery, adding, this could result in "an electric car that will be competitive in cost and convenience with the internal combustion engine." Co-developer Maria Helena Braga, a visiting research fellow at UT Austin and engineering professor at the University of Porto in Portugal, underlines the glass battery charges in "minutes rather than hours." The energy world is faced with a revolution
