EV's and Transportation as a Service to kill Alberta economy by 2030?

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Here's another question - what is the government's role in this?

They already barely do anything for oil and gas. There's some exploration credits (that are going away). Some specific drilling tax credits. Every other tax credit/subsidy that people talk about (like write-offs or CCA's) are available for every single corporation.

They can get rid of those, then what?

Is the end-game for you guys for the government to tax, block actions (eg. drilling/expansion/pipelines) and basically choke our O&G companies to death so that we can usher in this new EV utopia?

My opinion is much more Libertarian. If oil companies can't adapt to the this new EV and TAAS economy, then they should go bankrupt. The government should not be forcing oil companies to close. It feels like that's what a lot of you guys are suggesting, albeit in a very indirect way, but maybe I'm wrong.

Hell no...there is no reason for the Government to do anything to slow the O&G sector. In fact, policies to help the industry to become more competitive make total sense.

However, it is also the Governments role to identify how markets may evolve and lead in efforts to develop economic capabilities that industry is ill-suited to make. SAGD would likely never have been developed if industry was left to its own devices...it required AOSTRA to make it happen.

You are very wrong if you think that anyone is suggesting that O&G companies should be further encumbered by policies...it is simple market forces and the power of disruptive technical change that we are concerned about.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

I presume those 44 million cars will be made by farmers?

Pro Wrestlers?

McDonalds?

Are you being purposely obtuse here? Surely you can understand that an 80% drop in market would have a considerable effect on automakers?

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

I can't believe we are up to nine pages. If there was any merit to this automakers would be scrambling to spit out EV's as the walls would be crumbling around them. Instead it's business as usual as it is will oil companies.

Hey, I'm as pro oil as they come, but this isn't entirely correct. Shell has made a huge shift out of oil and into natural gas.

This, more than any EV invention, scares the crap out of me. They're pretty much saying natural gas is the energy source of the future. I believe that to mean they think electricity (via burning natural gas) is the transportation fuel of the future.

Natural gas is the only way we can generate the tremendous amount of electrical energy required to power EV's en masse.

[Tinordi]

And another good discussion paper from BNEF on the systemic disruption that the EV future represents, the whole article is worth a read but here's the relevant part to the thread topic:

Oil companies and oil exporters
The flip-side of additional electricity demand from electric vehicles is of course reduced oil demand versus the 100 percent liquid-fuel-based fleet. In our central NEO scenario, there is a reduction of 13 million barrels of oil per day by 2040. Of course, there are other moving parts when it comes to absolute levels of gasoline demand, including the impact of GDP growth on car ownership in emerging markets, further improvements in the efficiency of internal combustion engines, modal shifts in transportation, and penetration of compressed natural gas, biofuels and other alternative transport fuels. But what is clear is that a rapid shift to electric vehicles, on the scale we are expecting, would be bearish for oil demand.

Last month, Wood Mackenzie reported that upstream investment in the oil industry between 2015 and 2020 was slashed by over $1 trillion in the aftermath of the 2014 oil price crash. The orthodox view – certainly held by Ali Al Naimi, Saudi oil minister at the time his country decided to open the taps – is that the oil price must inevitably soar again in due course, as demand growth absorbs excess capacity and new supply fails to materialize. A rapid uptake of electric vehicles, such as the one we envisage, makes this a whole lot less likely.

The very fact that there is now a scalable technology competitive with internal combustion vehicles means there is a cap on long-term oil prices – currently around $80 per barrel but dropping fast. Never mind “lower for longer”, oil prices could well be “lower forever”. That would drive a lot more downsizing and consolidation among international oil companies and oilfield service providers, as well as deep pain and the need for economic restructuring among oil-exporting nations. Venezuela is unlikely to be the last oil-producing state to require international rescue.

https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreic...-not-just-car/

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

Are you being purposely obtuse here? Surely you can understand that an 80% drop in market would have a considerable effect on automakers?

Unless they replaced it with an alternate business model like running a TaaS.

You know this thread is about disruptive technology, right? We're talking about the ability for this new technology to disrupt the traditional business landscape.

The CEO said that while Ford's core business still has growth potential, especially overseas, mobility services like Chariot could decrease car usage in major urban areas.

"That's why we're embracing the sharing and the services part of our business, because we think it will allow us to grow and compensate for any kind of detriment we see in the actual number of vehicles in downtown areas," Fields said.

He also said that the acquisition is "completely aligned with what I call our 'why' of our company, which is all about making people's lives better and changing the way the world moves."

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/09/ford-...p-chariot.html

The transportation services market is presently dominated by traditional taxi cab companies, disruptive multi-billion dollar private firms such as Uber and Lyft, and assorted smaller startups. Traditional automakers are exploring rival ventures, including Ford's own ZipCar-like test trial in the U.K., called GoDrive, and GM's car-sharing project in Chicago, New York, and Europe, dubbed Maven.

The race to develop driverless cars is also heating up in the auto world. On Friday, GM (GM, +0.93%) said it is buying Cruise Automation, a three-year-old, 40-person startup known for its autonomous vehicle software. A source with knowledge of the deal told Fortune's Dan Primack and Kirsten Korosec that the terms of the deal exceeded $1 billion.

Toyota (TM, +0.20%) this week said it is hiring the entirety of the workforce at Jaybridge Robotics, another automation software firm. The Mass.-based business consists of 16 researchers who have been tapped to work on the company's self-driving vehicle projects.

Ford's new mobility unit will be based alongside its research labs, also in Palo Alto, Calif. The research team, which has grown to 100 employees from 15 when it was created in 2012, has been developing autonomous driving tech as well."We're very clearly going from an auto company to an auto and mobility company," Fields told Fortune. "This is just another manifestation of how we're organizing the company, not only to keep core businesses running and strong, but aggressively to go after these unmet opportunities in the mobility services area."

http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/ford-s...steelcase-ceo/

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Minivans are cheaper, and better in almost every category than SUVs. Yet people will spend twice as much on an SUV largely because of image. I wonder how that human aspect will play into the whole personal vehicle ownership decision.

I'ts hard to give much credence to predictions about technology that fail to take into account humanity's unrelenting appetite for status. Just look at social media.

Automated electric vehicles? Sure. Private vehicles entirely supplanted by fleets of generic shared vehicles? Wonderful idea - wrong species.

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I'ts hard to give much credence to predictions about technology that fail to take into account humanity's unrelenting appetite for status. Just look at social media.

Automated electric vehicles? Sure. Private vehicles entirely supplanted by fleets of generic shared vehicles? Wonderful idea - wrong species.

Who says that you can't have TaaS' that tap into that ego? And really, private vehicles supplanted by generic shared vehicles has already arrived (taxis, Uber etc).

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Thanks to freeways, cities became something to get through instead of something to get to. Now, as the next transportation revolution — from rivers to trains to cars to autonomous cars — promises to change the face of our cities, what happens to car culture, infrastructure, and more?

Who owns what, who pays? And what about the design — and product management — challenges, whether it’s designing for user trust, city adoption, or an ever-moving target thanks to constantly evolving tech?

This episode of the podcast (in conversation with Sonal) covers all this and more, featuring: a16z’s Frank Chen, who recently shared 16 questions about autonomous cars; Taggart Matthiesen, director of product at Lyft who covers the core platform as well as development/strategy for autonomous vehicles; and Carl Pope, former executive director and chairman of the Sierra Club — and author (with former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg) of the upcoming book Climate of Hope: How Cities Businesses and Citizens Can Save the Planet. Will curb space be the new shelf space? When we value the “iPhone-ness” over the “carness” of cars, what changes? And… will we all drive less, walk more?


http://a16z.com/2017/02/08/transport...s-cars-cities/

[homestand]

In the news a few weeks ago,

Successful first flight of a VTOL electric jet

https://lilium.com/

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Fozzie_DeBear

Who says that you can't have TaaS' that tap into that ego? And really, private vehicles supplanted by generic shared vehicles has already arrived (taxis, Uber etc).

I wouldn't say supplant, they're just filling the niches that have always existed in the era of private cars; like for people who only occasionally need a car ride, out-of-towners, alcohol, going to the airport, damaged car, etc.

But whenever the autonomous private car comes along, some of those niches go away.

[HotHotHeat]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

I would never discourage anyone from getting an EV but just one thing to keep in mind depending on how much disposable income you have is that EV resale value is horrendous so if you get one be prepared to own it for a long as possible because 3 year old EV's typically return less than 20% of it's original purchase price. This is another issue facing EV's that not many people talk about.

Source?

From April 2017:

Tesla Model S sells faster as used car — and for more money — than peers do, study finds

Used Model S sedans had the briefest time on the market of all vehicles included in the survey, taking, on average, 87 days to sell. That was about 5% quicker than the average for vehicles in the model’s peer group, which included the Audi A7, the Porsche Panamera, the BMW 6 Series, the Mercedes-Benz CLS and the Lexus LS 460.


The listing prices of used Tesla Model S sedans were between 3% and 5% above their peer-group average for the past year, after controlling for price differences among the models, Autolist.com said.

“We would expect top-performing vehicles in a peer group to have prices [about] 2% above our adjusted expectations for the segment. But 3% to 5% above, and maintaining that level of performance over the past year? That’s surprising,” Alex Klein, Autolist.com’s vice president of data science, said in emailed comments.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/use...ays-2017-04-12

[Azure]

Originally Posted by GGG

An interesting question would be do you continue to subsidize mass transit in a world of automated cars?

If a commuter car becomes a 3 wheeled pod that drives itself within inches of the nearest vehicles you get the density of transit plus the flexibility of cars.

I don't think automated cars will ever be as efficient as mass transportation like trains, buses, etc to get a bunch of people from point A to point B.

We'd have to imagine that all mass transit options will also get smarter and more efficient as time goes on similar to how cars will.

[HotHotHeat]

Tesla's stock now getting outperform ratings from analysts:

25% margins on the Model3 would basically flip the auto market on its head.

Tesla will do in three years what took Porsche a decade to do, an analyst said Monday.

The electric car maker is an "extreme growth story" that cannot be valued in the same way large automakers are, said Evercore ISI analyst George Galliers said in a research note.

Following the buildout of the Model 3, Tesla has the potential to achieve sustainable gross margins comparable to those of high-end German auto brands, while growing more like a rapidly advancing Chinese automaker, he said.

The rates at which Tesla's top-line metrics are growing are unrivaled, Galliers said. Tesla's unit sales grew just over 50 percent last year and automotive revenues rose 70 percent. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said he expects this rate of growth to continue.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/08/tesla...s-analyst.html

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by HotHotHeat

Tesla's stock now getting outperform ratings from analysts:

25% margins on the Model3 would basically flip the auto market on its head.

Because Tesla sells at retail, they have higher gross margins.

But because Tesla sells at retail, they have higher Selling, General and Administrative expense. It's so high in fact that it usually completely cancels out the gross profit.

[calumniate]

Anyone know the typical maintenance costs of ev vehicles? I could only see it improving. The cell battery requires no oil changes etc, and power to the floor from a cell seems so much more simple compared to your typical gas engine

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Originally Posted by calumniate

Anyone know the typical maintenance costs of ev vehicles? I could only see it improving. The cell battery requires no oil changes etc, and power to the floor from a cell seems so much more simple compared to your typical gas engine

I can't speak to electric cars, but in a presentation from BYD they talked about the typical bus powertrain having about 70k parts, and the EV equivalent having only 7k parts. So the cost savings to municipalities was significant.

[bossy22]

Originally Posted by calumniate

Anyone know the typical maintenance costs of ev vehicles? I could only see it improving. The cell battery requires no oil changes etc, and power to the floor from a cell seems so much more simple compared to your typical gas engine

For our Tesla, the only cost so far has been washer fluid. We've had the car for 16 months. 35000kms on it. I change the wheels over myself.
Meanwhile my tacoma has cost me over $300 in service so far. It has 24000kms. That's for two services.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by Fozzie_DeBear

Who says that you can't have TaaS' that tap into that ego? And really, private vehicles supplanted by generic shared vehicles has already arrived (taxis, Uber etc).

Agreed. TaaS will make high end sports cars available for regular people to try, don't have to buy at all.

Just because driverless EV's are around the corner doesn't mean people can't satisfy their car tastes. Hell, you already see it the concept in action with Uber and their various offerings for the type of car you want a ride in.

[HotHotHeat]

Originally Posted by accord1999

Because Tesla sells at retail, they have higher gross margins.

But because Tesla sells at retail, they have higher Selling, General and Administrative expense. It's so high in fact that it usually completely cancels out the gross profit.

If this is the case, why not let both sales models coexist and allow Tesla to fail? Why has NADA attempted to block direct sales in nearly every US state?

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by HotHotHeat

If this is the case, why not let both sales models coexist and allow Tesla to fail? Why has NADA attempted to block direct sales in nearly every US state?

This isn't really related to gross margins, which is an accounting issue, but my guess is that the dealerships are afraid that allowing it enables the other auto manufacturers an opportunity to cherry-pick the best locations and markets for themselves.