People will vote with their feet and their wallets and electric cars will prove to last longer than conventional combustion power. Moreover, the predicted mineral shortage just doesn't appear on any horizon. With some major deposits in Australia.

Graphene may figure in future batteries or rapid charge capacitors and may be able to be produced as a manmade synthetic?

And let's not forget thorium, the most energy dense material on the planet and unlike oil or rare earths, found almost everywhere.

Why, just 8 grams costing $100 to recover and refine, would potentially power your house and car for 100 years? And that is just $1.00 a year!

Finally, there's a possibility of miniaturisation and thorium powering many electric vehicles, which won't need a refill for 100 years!?

Bring on the (allow) thorium-powered electric vehicles and planes, ships, trucks, trams and trains. And isn't someone working on an electric jet?

Bring on thorium and allow ordinary folk to get out from under the oil barons and their legendary, predatory, price gouging practises.
Alan B.

One for you one for me and so it goes with investors and their captive energy markets. Thorium will, methinks, put an end to that.

Imagine a thorium-powered house and car, with the house equipped with a dehumidifier, Able to pull up to 4,000 litres of pristine water directly from the atmosphere daily? Why one could live anywhere on earth!?

Eventually, man will discover and perfect antigravity and vehicles that hover inches or feet above the surface, be it land or water. And with that eventuality, freedom from oppression and dictatorial leaders.

I mean. one would 't need to leave home, just hit the antigrav and UP, to wherever? And given hydroponics, (completely sanitised recycling?) your basic, life-sustaining food supply as well?
Alan B.

"Why one could live anywhere on earth!?"
Don`t worry about that AB as Joh famously, or infamously, said.
At the rate we are trashing it with rampant overpopulation we won`t be able to anyway.
There is no planet B.

Has anyone ever seem any of these fearless forecasts by economists come to pass? Have they ever forecast the melt downs we have seen in recent decades? My forecast is they have got the expansion in EVs very wrong.

Even if we started now, we could not build enough generating capacity to supply the electrons that would be required.

If we were silly enough to try to do it with windmills, there will be no electric car boom, ever, assuming the general population is still permitted private car ownership.

Perhaps he is factoring in the fact that governments want us out of our cars. The push to self drive, probably rental cars, would be the leaver to get us out. A population with no personal transport, not capable of personally controlling a vehicle would be a population much more easily controlled.

Our grand kids are going to have to fight like hell, if they are going to enjoy the freedom, rights & pleasures that we have taken for granted.

Hi Hasbeen

Yes the projections being given in this article on EV growth are from a very low base.

And Australia's distances between major cities pretty much doom current full EV technology for everyday cars.

Industry claims of 400km range and Only 2 hours to recharge your battery are unhelpful for Sydney to Melbourne, Sydney-Brisbane, Perth or Darwin trying to go anywhere.

Good news.

Australia has the second highest Cobalt reserves in the world (1,200,000 tonnes) compared to Congo's 3,500,000 tonnes. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt#Production

And we'd be a much more politically stable supplier.

___________________________________________

And where the OLO article says ""Car producers may gradually substitute from cobalt to nickel over the next two decades"

Australia has the world's largest reserves of Nickel - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel#World_production scroll down to table.

Think of all the money we'll make!

Yes Pete, and some commercial deposits of lithium and some of the purest graphene in the world not far from Sydney. Lithium/rare earth found by using side-looking radar and thorium as the indicator mineral

Recent advances in capacitor technology, produce a power storage system that can be fully recharged in thirty seconds. And with a top range of a claimed 800 klicks.

As for distance? What prevents us from placing modest 350 MW thorium reactors around 400 klicks apart on all the routes you've identified?

Or running very fast VLF trains between those destinations at supersonic speeds that reduce any and all to less than an hour?

And leave (slowpoke pedestrian) air travel to international offshore destinations.

I remember reading as a boy where English boffins had cracked antigrav.

The Chinese are still making progress on thorium miniaturisation.

With that cracked and powering autonomous cars or VLT trains or whatever? No longer constrained by the tyranny of distance or Hasbeen's fond memories or fossil fuel cars or dividend stream? Able to travel wherever we like, however we like!

VLT Could be powered by a continuous mid rail, rail gun? With a potential speed limit just south of light speed! And employed on carriers and airfields to assist take-offs? Just supersonic for now!

Imagine, an inboard thorium power source would mean we'd be able to travel/circumnavigate the Australian continent without a single fuel stop!? Include antigrav and electric propulsion and able to travel anywhere, with official permission of course?

What's missing is proactive Leaders replaced here by reactive, fifty years behind, followers,
Alan B.

The world is said to have over a billion internal combustion engines for both hedonistic tasks like holidays and essential tasks like ploughing the soil. I'd say the threat of EVs is overblown. In Australia you can buy a new petrol compact car for $18k but the cheapest EV was $44k last time I looked. You could buy a lot of petrol with the price difference. Moreover Australia struggles to keep the lights on at times let alone charge millions of EVs.

I think it will be a rocky transition to reduced oil transport. The key will be affordability not carbon emissions. Even as oil runs out the price may be modest (<$100/bbl) since the economy will have slowed. As we drive and fly less we'll wonder what happened to economic growth.

Ateday, overpopulation is not a problem.

At most the population may grow to around 11 billion, however we have left the realm of exponential population growth and are now in the linear stage. If you grasp linear growth in this sense you will realise populations cannot continue to grow beyond a certain point.

As for EV’s taking over, not in my lifetime in Australia if our current crop of hubristic politicians are anything to go by and if our even sillier green energy targets are pushed down our throats. There clearly won’t be enough power.

Australia needs an energy revolution and wind and solar just won’t do it.

Hear, hear and well said, Galen.

Last time I looked Highway capable affordable electric cars, with reasonable commute range came in at less than 7,000 AUD. (Chinese) Only government policy to protect local manufacture!? Make them necessarily dearer than that?

Yes, some cars with a bigger range and astronomical top speed were way dearer than that.

But for most of us, just getting to work, doing the shopping or visiting a nearby health professional is all we need a car for. I'd as soon drive to the nearest station if I need to travel interstate.

You've nailed it! The thing missed by the gormless pollies is affordable, reliable, dispatchable, 24/7, carbon-free power.

That is not wind or solar. Even with battery back up, given that combination removes the universal qualification of affordability and a healthy, robust, energy-reliant, manufacturing sector.

Only addressed by thinking outside the box and with that, nuclear energy! Not just any nuclear energy nor current models, but rather, walk away safe MSR and thorium.

Thorium is the most energy dense material in the world and so abundant, we can never run out of it!

Finally, MSR technology can be used to burn up all the world's stockpile of nuclear waste. And if we do it here now! Be paid annual billions for providing the service and very safely removing this highly toxic threat forever!

Leaving in its place a product with a half-life of 300 years and eminently suitable as long life space batteries.

Gormless greens waffle on about radiation, not understanding that there are three types. Gamma, Beta and Alpha. And all three used in medicine. Gamma in X rays, Beta and Alpha in conventional ontological radioisotope medicine!

Bismuth 213 is an Alpha partial isotope particle that's attached to an antibody that then exclusively targets some very nasty death sentence cancers and the most affordable source comes via MSR thorium!
Alan B.

Oh for God's sake...another claim that Peak Oil is just around the corner.

They've been predicting this for three decades and each time they're wrong, they just come out with more predictions. Its no better and just as believable as the "The End is Nigh" crowd.

Peak Oil fetishism only came about because the previous regular assertions that we'd run out of oil became untenable even for the most numerically challenged advocate. So those who just hope that oil will disappear invented a new path to their utopia.

It might be that peak oil demand will arrive in the next decade or three. But that will only be the case if the alternatives are better than oil. So why fret?

Meanwhile, EV owners all over North America have been caught out and are loudly complaining that their batteries are draining way too quickly and their range has been significantly reduced, sometimes by half, due to the extreme cold events currently occurring . Let's see how popular EVs are after someone dies because their car ran out of power in the middle of an extreme cold event.

Yes, Mhaze, Batteries are the weak link in EV's.

However, only a question of time before EV's become powered by thorium and won't run out of juice in the owner's lifetime, nor internal heating/cooling.

That said, there are some new batteries in development that double the range of the current crop of EV's? And would seem to be a combination of large storage capacitors that can be recharged in thirty seconds.

Finally, cold snaps that completely drain the battery not a regular occurrence in North America and even less likely here in oz, where most of our refined fuel is fully imported and costing a motza! 26 billion + per.

Imagine being able to put that 26 annual billions to work somewhere else? Cooperative endeavour perhaps and then allow the normal multiplier effect of cooperative capitalism to make one dollar do the work of seven or more!
Alan B.

Re reading the article they are only suggesting the growth in oil demand to stop. There is nothing about any reduction in demand.

In this they may be right. Governments everywhere are doing their very best to make motoring & car ownership as hard as possible. This will probably lead to a reduction in car ownership & driving.

More people get crammed into high rise living, in our ever less desirable major cities, & approvals are being given for buildings with less car parking spaces than apartments. Inner city living is going to become a carless life style, like it or not.

They might have a problem getting existing generations out of their cars. In new developments with smaller block sizes, & narrow streets, even homes with 2 car garages are having problems finding parking for all the family cars.

This is of course, just another reduction in our lifestyle dictated by excessive immigration & it's attendant population growth.

" only a question of time before EV's become powered by thorium"

Oh I think its much more likely that vehicles will be powered by either fairy dust or ground unicorn horn before we ever get to enjoy the wonders of thorium.

Fair dinkum, Alan. Thorium hasn't produced a single unit of usable power ever, yet you carry on as though its an established power source.

Is there no subject about which you won't insert your thorium fantasies? Seriously, I think if we had a thread about erectile dysfunction you be advocating thorium as the solution...rub a little thorium on the old-fella and not only can you go all night, but power the bedside lamp while you're at it.

Sheesh.

If you're right Hasbeen, why are new migrants being allowed to settle in overcrowded cities?

Even as small rural towns with critical labour shortages (doctors, nurses, vets, dentists, plumbers, electricians, teachers child care workers, aged care workers etc-etc) are dying for lack of critical mass population!

Moreover, there's a precedent for mandated restricted resettlement for intending migrants.

Furthermore, overstaying illegal migrants prefer large overcrowded cities where they just do not stand out or draw unwanted attention.

However, in small rural communities, strangers/new chums stand out like the proverbial dog's hind leg, usually, the raised one!

Please note I haven't mentioned MSR thorium anywhere in this comment or praised its virtues as the best possible power source for an Australia going backwards economically at a rate of knots.

Proof of the pudding will be another lowering of interest rates. As if w weren't already mired as a community in enough domestic (all-time high, record and growing) debt!
Alan B.

Tut-tut mhaze

We must respect Faith in Thorium.

Thorium faith is but a modern version of trainspotting, http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trainspotter where a Transpotter is:

Someone obsessed with trains or trainsets or more generally:

"An obsessive follower of any minority interest or hobby."

Cheers

Don't be silly Alan, if we tried to tell these unwanted migrants where to live, the greens & other lefties would be screaming from the rooftops, that we were robbing them of their human rights.

Alan small towns are dying from lack of jobs, particularly jobs with good wages, not the other way around. Get ready for an increase in that, as internet selling pulls the rug out from under the country retailers still managing to earn a living.

Country towns can't be propped by an influx of government paid people, when there is not enough need to justify the spending of taxpayer funds on them. Cheap housing has led to many of them becoming welfare havens, & retirement villages, with little gainful employment.

I recently spent some time in a number of towns of my youth. Lithgow, a coal mining & manufacturing town was the most depressing. Bathurst & Blaney, once railway towns were the almost as depressing slowly rotting away, with no reason for its existence, except Bathursts race track.

Cowra is dying more slowly. The only thriving town is Young, where a huge expansion in the cherry industry gives lots of good income small holdings. These not only offer high seasonal employment, but tend to spend in the town.

Unless we decentralise government departments & industry, expect more dying towns.