1971WBY

Norway is banning the sale of gas and diesel powered cars in 2025 - that is just 8 years from now. And Norway's economy is based in large part on its oil industry.
The UK is banning the sale of gas and diesel powered cars in 2040 -- 23 years from now.
23 years is not a long time in the collector car world. I suspect many members of the forum have owned their C3's longer than that, and many hope their Corvettes will stay in their families even longer.
If and when the US ever bans the sale of gas powered cars is a debate I might have with a buddy over a beer, but not an emotion-filled rant I'd like to engage in online. I doubt the US government will ever outlaw the sale of gas powered cars, but in my humble opinion five years from now when BMW, Volvo, Nissan and Tesla sales are skyrocketing, as the price of reliable long range batteries is plummeting, market forces may do what the Feds will not.
The question is what does this mean for all of us -- the lovers of classic, gas powered cars like my '71 big block.
I'm a believer that I will reach an age when (1) I'm still healthy enough to get in and drive my car, but (2) there aren't going to be many "gas stations" left.
What then? Will charging stations have a lonely gas pump for guys like us? Will collector car owners buy there own underground tanks and receive deliveries once or twice a year?

treywhite

I thought of this yesterday actually as I ventured to my local "100% pure" gasoline station. The world will never be as good as it once was. *sigh*

bazza77

Tree huggers at it again .

L-46man

The US has some 500,000,000 gasoline powered cars on the road now.

I urge you not to waste your liver worrying about something that is not going to happen in your lifetime.

Do you remember 12 years ago the huge foment about 'peak oil' and the world 'running out of oil'.....you can see where that went.

With the world running around in tremendously overpriced Teslas or #$%^ box Prius'...just think what the Vette will be worth in 25 years! LOL.....things pendulum like that!

BTW....You can run any VETTE on pure ethanol....no worries!

crawfish333

Were doomed, doomed I say!

1971WBY

I'm 46. I'm certain that the percentage of new cars put on the road in the US which are powered by gas will be small by the time I'm 66, and I hope to live longer than that. It is not so much about the ability to obtain cheap oil, as it is about how much cheaper, faster and easier to maintain electric cars will be. And it definitely isn't about hugging trees -- If I were a tree hugger I wouldn't get quite so much pleasure out of driving a car which gets 9 mpg. Gas powered cars are going to lose more and more market share to electric powered cars because Americans like me enjoy making money, and the best way to make money in the car industry in the future will be to sell electric cars which perform better and cost less than gas cars which perform worse and cost more. They will be more popular and the margins will be higher than for gas cars. Saying it isn't going to happen is a lot like saying there will never be a cellular telephone smaller than a brick with a battery life of more than 30 minutes.
As far as the 500 million gas powered roads on the car today, the average age of those cars is 11.5 years. Americans are keeping cars on the road (from new owner, to used buyer, to junk yard or off to Mexico), on average, for 11.5 years. So 250 million gas powered cars will be gone for good 11.5 years from today; how many of the 250 million cars that take their place will be gas, and how many will be electric. So as manufactures like Volvo and BMW declare their intentions to go electric, the 500 million gas powered cars figure will decline. The question is how quickly and, the real question of my post, is how will this impact our hobby. In my opinion, it won't impact our hobby all that much -- it will just require us to work a little harder to get fuel for our Corvettes -- 20 to 30 years from now.

Revi

They may ban "new" gas or diesel powered cars from being sold, but they aren't eliminating existing gas or diesel powered cars from the road.

And if banning new gas or diesel powered cars has a huge economical impact on their economy, the timeline will be pushed back.

ddawson

Norway square miles, 148,728 mi²
UK square miles, 93,628 mi²
US square miles, 3.797 million mi²

Maybe an electric car can get you across Norway but not here.

1971WBY

First - I love your car. Mine is War Bonnet Yellow and I have to say Riverside Gold is an amazing color.

Also, I agree with you in spirit. A huge part of the American car culture is getting out on the open road and taking a long trip. Right now, doing that in a Tesla requires a ton of planning.

But if we just want to think in terms of statistics, Americans drive 29.2 miles per day - just a fraction of the range of an electric car. There are cultural reasons why electric cars won't come to dominate sales in the US as quickly as they will in other countries, and the size of the US is part of it. But it isn't going to change the end result.

ENCSDOUG

I doubt we have anything to worry about in the U.S. Look at this a different way, the more electric cars on the road will drop the price of gas.
Maybe we will see gas below a buck again

449er

Don't play taps for the gasoline engine in the USA just yet, there are way to many industries that make their living & paying lobbyists to promote the automobile & its spin offs to worry about that happening anytime soon

Vettedreamer74

I've been thinking about this myself ever since the Scandinavian countries had their declaration. I agree with you that Gas will definitely be fazed out. Electric is just going to be a place holder until they get Hydrogen to a realistic price because that itself will be incredibly cheap for fuel. I live in Wisconsin and I think about fuel like Kerosene and how few places carry that still. I think it'll be something where a town of 10,000 might have one place to get gas. I agree that we're looking at less than 30% gas cars easily within 20-30 years. Probably closer to 30 years though.

As for the comment about the US being big and hard to get from one side to the other for battery charged cars, the amount of R&D going into that will result in 300-500 mile batteries within 5 years I'd be willing to bet. So, don't think that gas will stay around too long. There's a reason all these car companies are thrown billions into R&D for electric, and Hydrogen.

NewbVetteGuy

To say that Norway's economy is dependant on oil is a huge understatement. Norway's modern way of life is dependant on oil with all of Norway's precious social services including free education, the Norweigan health system, and services for the elderly dependant upon and built upon the state's ownership of and sale of oil.


But back to the core issue: many, MANY technologies "death" has ended up to be "greatly over stated". What happens is a dual existence of the old and the new as the old adapts to be more like the new. -We're seeing that already with internal combustion engines and supporting technologies changing rapidly to provide more fuel economy and less emissions and the very obvious "hybrid" category.


From a supply and demand perspective, the emergence of alternatives and countries and companies being dedicated to electric vehicles actually drives a DECREASE in the COST of oil, which makes it's survival MORE likely. The current R&D costs to drive increasing fuel economy are driving an increase in the cost of fossil-fuel vehicles, but that should be a short-term "blip" on a larger trend.

The emerging "legacy" drag of existing diesel and petrol cars won't go away, and I think we'll see increasing "hybridization" of even classic cars. (Electric drive front wheels in RWD cars, for example, will modernize classic cars and give them more torque, HP, and traction- it can improve performance AND provide big gains in fuel economy and a reduction in cost- plug-in hybrid conversions.) Most of these systems can very easily include traction control and launch control systems with wheel spin sensors added to the RWD engines.

A "hybrid" future is unavoidable.

The rumors of fossil fuel's demise are greatly exaggerated.

I haven't even covered the geopolitical considerations that make a "hybrid" future even more likely.



Adam

Torqued Off

Why are so many people in love with electric car technology? Its as if these cars will be problem free, which they won't be; have zero environmental impact, which they will (i.e. batteries don't come from heaven) and in any way are exciting?? Not to me, and I don't care anything about Tesla and their acceleration rates....still no rumble.

But, I am a dinosaur, and proud of it. Glad I lived in the time period I did. Nothing about an electric car will replace the sound of a Chevrolet 350, or a Harley Davidson engine, or a Pratt & Whitney radial aircraft engine. Nothing. For all those who believe electric cars are "better", I say that is a matter of opinion......and I disagree.

I WAS ME NOW HES GONE

The13Bats

I didnt worry about y2k, the Mayan doomsday was a fizzle,

Yeah, i know this is different but we have a country based on fuel powered vehicals, a prez who says global warming is a myth who will likely be a 2 termer who pulled the usa out of some world reduce pollution thing, a lot of top dogs make money off fuel here,
No worries the USA will have fuel powered vehicals for many decades to come,

68sixspeed

Hey, the less gas Europe uses the more there is for the rest of us. But Asia could take up any "saved" petroleum especially if supply stays up and prices stay low... I doubt if they will be as emissions friendly with it as Europe or the USA.

LT1M21Vette

Politicians virtue signaling...

1971WBY

Newbvetteguy: I agree with a lot of your points, but I'm not quite as certain as you that hybrids will eventually dominate the US car market. One key to the popularity of hybrids is they address the innate anxiety that an all electric car creates: "what if I run out of charge and there's no charging station near me?" A hybrid's ability to fuel up at a gas station is a big advantage. But their big disadvantage is complexity: compared to an all electric car, they are more expensive to manufacture and maintain.

So whether hybrids or all-electric will be the technology of the future, to me, boils down to what kind of advances can be made in home charging. If 15 years from now I can buy a Chevy branded solar panel and a GM branded "powerwall" type battery for my garage, and both work 5 or 10x better than Tesla's current versions, we will be living in an environment equivalent to the average family having an oil well AND a refinery in their back yard for a couple thousand bucks (or less). At that point, hybrids will become extinct, and gas stations across the US will replace pumps with charging stations at whatever pace is necessary to match up with the shift from 500 million gas cars on the road to maybe 450 million electrics and 50 million gas.

Gas powered cars are never going to disappear completely, that would be like saying "there are no more sailboats on US waterways". People will always love and drive gas powered cars, for reason like the ones iwasmenowhesgone mentions. (And please don't be offended by the sailboat analogy. I bet guys with $200,000 work of art sailboats love their technology as much guys with pristine, all original '63 split window coupes.) Plus, with 3D printing it is only going to get easier and easier to purchase a replacement muffler for your prized '78 International Harvester Scout (really cool SUV's in my opinion), not harder and harder, even if most cars on the road are electric. It is simply interesting to me to try to predict what impact these changes are going to have on my Corvette ownership. My prediction is: more Americans than ever will get into the "nostalgia" of gas powered classic cars, values will rise somewhat, and eventually getting fuel will require more planning ahead than it does today. With respect to the classic car hobby, I'm not suggesting any radical differences -- maybe some growth if anything.

I agree that increased MPG for gas engines is going to put downward pressure on the price of oil. But the demand for oil from China, India and Africa could offset the decline in US demand (and the nations in Europe where demand could plummet).

The question is, do we as a country have a preference about whether we drive predominantly gas powered or predominately electric powered cars? Do we want to be innovators and take the lead on electrics, or do we want to let China and Germany get out in front? Can you imagine what the answer to a question like that would be 60 or 40 years ago? It is odd to me that today Americans bristle at the question. I'd rather kick their *** and get rich (as a nation) doing it, but somehow that makes *me* the unAmerican guy in some circles: Corvette lover, gets 9 MPG in his dream car, loves the hobby and doesn't think the shift to electrics is going to hurt the hobby, wants GM and Ford to put a couple hundred million electrics on the road in order to dominate the world's auto industry like they used to, and I'm the guy making some other Corvette owners testy. That's just weird.

Whose vision resonates with us the most, that of Elon Musk or that of the leaders in our oil industry like Rex Tillerson. I think today most Americans are more impressed with an Exxon executive than a guy like Musk -- and I can't change that, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I wonder if it will always stay that way, though.

zwede

Gas cars are a fun hobby but EVs will dominate the streets in the coming years. They're just superior to gas cars. I've been driving a Tesla for the last 4 years as my main car and there's no way I'm going back to gas for my daily driver.

Vettedreamer74

71WBY,

I know I find Elon Musk to be an absolute genius and a thrill to watch. I believe this country is all about innovation, and I agree with a lot of what you said. Change is hard on people, but with change comes new exciting possibilities that we usually can't forecast.