[ref http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/article-Electric-Vehicles-And-Disinformation-td4690472.html ]
I placed the text of Paul's link at the bottom of this post for evdl archival purposes (news items are routinely removed or cleansed/purged off media sites), I place it here for the record. Like Peri, I am surprised it came from Forbes. Previous to Paul's link post I found one from boomberg (via a s.African -subscription- outlet) that is worded like (we now have a social conscience, and not on Koch Bros payroll) speaking of plugin wars : - https://www.afr.com/business/energy/oil/big-oil-and-utilities-square-up-for-electric-car-war-as-both-offer-charging-20180702-h125w1 Big Oil and utilities square up for electric car war as both offer charging 20180702 The Australian Financial Review-4 hours ago [image] (j1772) Vehicle charging points are a way to bring drivers to oil companies' retail forecourts. However, Pod Point's Fairbairn estimates only 3 per cent of car charging will ... Jul 3 2018 at 8:02 AM Updated Jul 3 2018 at 8:02 AM Big Oil and utilities square up for electric car war as both offer charging Vehicle charging points are a way to bring drivers to oil companies' retail forecourts. However, Pod Point's Fairbairn ... Vehicle charging points are a way to bring drivers to oil companies' retail forecourts. However, Pod Point's Fairbairn estimates only 3 per cent of car charging will occur while drivers are in transit, with the overwhelming majority plugging them in overnight at home or wherever they leave their vehicles sitting idle. This directly plays into the hands of existing utilities. Pat Scala by Kelly Gilblom and Anna Hirtenstein A red-hot electric vehicle market has triggered a face-off between Big Oil and utilities. Oil majors, who've sold fossil fuels to cars for a century, are now moving into an electricity sector that's preparing for exponential growth. The problem is that utilities, the primary power suppliers for a century, have the same idea. BP predicts electric vehicle sales will surge by an eye-watering 8800 per cent between 2017 and 2040, making it an attractive business for oil companies as demand for gasoline and diesel are forecast to slow. Big Oil will have to battle the traditional utilities for charging at people's homes, on the road and even offices of green-car owners. "It's the banging together of" industries "in a way that's never happened before", said Erik Fairbairn, the founder and CEO of Pod Point , one of the UK's largest electric-vehicle charging companies. Power providers are, for the first time, meaningfully interacting with car companies and the oil industry "is realising if they get this wrong then the requirement for them in the future is significantly diminished", he said. The logic for oil companies is clear. Gasoline and diesel sales have been a backbone of their business since the internal combustion engine went commercial at the turn of the last century. But with drivers now becoming more conscious about emissions and the environment, most analysts forecast growth in demand of these fuels to slow and eventually drop. Vehicle charging points are a way to bring drivers to oil companies' retail forecourts, keep the cash registers ringing and also bring in revenue from the sale of coffee and snacks. Tufan Erginbilgic, chief executive officer of BP's downstream business, estimates about half of the gross margin at its retail sites comes from non-fuel sales. The British oil major said last week it would spend about $US170 million ($230 million) to buy electric-vehicle charging company, Chargemaster, with plans to add the technology to its existing network of retail stations. It follows similar moves by Royal Dutch Shell, the world's second-biggest oil company by market value. The deal "makes sense", Oswald Clint, an analyst at Sanford C Bernstein wrote in a report. "BP wants to remain a fuel retailer of choice, therefore they need an EV offering as those vehicle types rise in number." Charging at home However, Pod Point's Fairbairn estimates only 3 per cent of car charging will occur while drivers are in transit, with the overwhelming majority plugging them in overnight at home or wherever they leave their vehicles sitting idle. This directly plays into the hands of existing utilities. For power companies, EV charging is less of a hedge against losing customers and more of an opportunity to capitalise on what will likely be a big surge in electricity demand. Sweden's Vattenfall and Finland's Fortum Oyj are currently installing chargers at homes and outside offices. "What we see is that most charging takes place when the car is parked for four hours or more," said Tomas Bjornsson, vice president of e-mobility at Vattenfall. "Essentially at home, at work or at a destination like if you're going to a shopping mall, football game or whatever it could be. So this is really where we want to make sure that EV drivers get access." Both utilities are also vying to provide drivers with charging infrastructure along highways such as at fuel stations, and rivalling the oil majors' plans. "We are covering much of the value chain," said Rami Syvari, head of international sales and business development at Fortum Charge & Drive, a division focused on electric vehicles. "Not all customers are able to charge at home or at the office; it is an overall package." Big Oil and utilities could, of course, coexist with fuel retailers dominating on-the-road charging and utilities taking on homes and offices. But the oil majors' ambitions are likely to be bigger. Shell estimates 40 per cent of vehicle charging will occur at home and another 40 per cent at work. So last year it bought First Utility, the seventh largest power-provider in the UK, taking what is perhaps the most direct shot at existing electricity suppliers' market share. The deal "should come as no surprise," Mark Gainsborough, executive vice president of New Energies at Shell wrote in a LinkedIn post in December. In October, Shell said it was buying NewMotion, Europe's largest electric-vehicle charging provider. In late November, it reached an agreement with IONITY - a Munich-based venture between BMW Group, Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen - to start charging stations in 10 European nations. As the battle for market share heats up, Aleksandra O'Donovan, an advanced transportation analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, believes both Big Oil and the utilities will have a part to play, and demographics and geography will determine each sector's success. "It won't be one solution fits all," O'Donovan said. "The split will vary from country to country depending on how people live. It will be a different story in Norway versus Tokyo." Bloomberg - - https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2018/07/03/electric-vehicles-and-disinformation/#4bed2c0c31e5 Jul 3, 2018 @ 06:25 AM 19,486 The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets Electric Vehicles And Disinformation Enrique Dans , Contributor Teaching and consulting in the innovation field since 1990 Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. FILE - In this Sept. 17, 2015, file photo, Darshan Brahmbhatt, plugs a charger into his electric vehicle at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District charging station in Sacramento, Calif. California utilities will invest nearly $768 million to expand a network of charging stations and other infrastructure for electric vehicles as the state moves toward a goal of 5 million zero-emission cars on the roads by 2030. The California Public Utilities Commission voted 5-0 Thursday, May 31, 2018, to fund programs statewide, with an emphasis on building facilities in disadvantaged communities. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File) Two serious media outlets such as The Guardian or CNBC write about the oil and automotive industries’ increasingly crude attempts to spread misinformation about electric vehicles in a bid to protect a business model increasingly recognized each day as harmful to the planet and to each and everyone of us. Lies along the lines that electric vehicles are bigger pollutants than conventional vehicles, which has been disproven time and again, especially given that more and more states and countries are generating their electricity from sustainable sources. Even when electricity is produced from fossil fuels, reducing emissions to zero through the use of electric cars is still means a major reduction in air pollution in our cities. Another lie is that transportation is not the issue, and that the real causes of pollution are heating or industrial emissions. Wrong. Cars and trucks account for more than a third of polluting emissions, a good part of which happens precisely in the places where we live and work, so any reduction is likely to have a positive effect on our quality of life. Then there are the claims that electric vehicles are too expensive or don’t have sufficient range: a lie once again refuted by the growing autonomy of electric vehicles, which is already approaching or even surpassing that of their fossil fuel counterparts. Mercedes says its next electric vehicle will have a range of 500km, and some Teslas, like the next Roadster, are expected to have around 1,000km. Even though these examples are not precisely cars for regular people, you can see the trend. With the progressive increase in the density of batteries, these figures can only evolve one way: upwards. Batteries are also the targets of misinformation campaigns: some of my readers say batteries rely on supposedly scarce mineral sources and can’t be recycled. First of all, batteries can be recycled, their elements are perfectly reusable, and also, contrary to what many think, batteries do not degrade with use or over time. Rigorous scientific studies show battery degradation of around 1% every 30,000km, making them much more efficient than their internal combustion rivals. In many cases, this lie has led leasing or renting companies to offer bad deals (based on a supposed residual zero value at the end of the contract) to people interested in electric vehicles, thus discouraging sales. As more batteries are produced, the technology is improving and prices falling, while other technologies, such as solid state batteries, offer even more potential. Then there are the fearmongers spreading lies about our inability to generate enough electricity to charge all those electric cars. Another LIE, fortunately already refuted by no less than the UK’s association of energy providers, which says its members will be more than able to meet the demand of arrival of several million electric vehicles in the coming years. Maintenance? internal combustion engines are cuckoo clocks with more than ten thousand moving parts that must be permanently lubricated and periodically replaced. As any car owner knows, replacing spare parts is extremely. A typical electric vehicle has around eighteen moving parts, with very low degradation and drastically lower maintenance needs. We need to move forward quickly and efficiently to using electric vehicles, bypassing hybrids completely, which are inefficient and are meant only to extend the life of the internal combustion engine, which is already an out-of-date technology, part of the problem, not the solution and that need to be banned sooner rather than later, for everybody’s sake. Anybody considering buying a car should forget diesel, gasoline or hybrids. Go electric, now. So let’s stop peddling the same old lies, please. In some countries, such as Spain, the motor industry is still using trotting out arguments based on its fictional “technological neutrality” that are anything but neutral, and are essentially designed for an extremely lengthy transition period to protect a traditional industry that has already exceeded all limits of ethics and corporate social responsibility, with senior managers in jail for criminal practices. Let’s have a discussion about the future of transportation, by all means: and let’s do so based on the facts, not rumors, half-truths and outright lies. Enrique Dans is Professor of Innovation at IE Business School - For EVLN EV-newswire posts use: http://evdl.org/archive/ {brucedp.neocities.org} -- Sent from: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/ _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
