Or there's the third option, where I'm trying to be sure you actually know what you're talking about. Because I don't know a time when many people (if any) disputed that we could make electric cars. Pretty sure it was about the logistics of scaling it up and moving freight, as well as being affordable. Long, long way to go, and evidence grows that efficiency for the energy storage has climaxed.

No, it's more a problem with YOUR imagination. As in, too much of it.

"the battery will not move an 18-wheeler. ... So that's out." - T. Boone Pickens



Nope, sure didn't

Citation please. ... Also note, there's 900 million combustion engine vehicles to replace. That will not be timely, nor logistically viable.

Again... not much, not affordable... never mind that batteries still aren't an alternative energy source, instead just a different way to transform burned fossil fuel.

Estimated by whom? Providing a link focused on the wondrous hopes and dreams from the industry itself is convincing of little. From your own link:

"Certain statements in this Press Release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and beliefs and are subject to a number of risk factors and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include the risk for the Company to complete its development work, as well as the risks inherent in commercializing a new product."

As a question of energy density, even the most high-tech batteries just don't compare to gasoline. Measured in kW/h per kg, gasoline is about 100-400 times higher than that of a lead-acid all the way up to lithium-ion (Axiom's PbC, for example). Don't expect batteries to rival the energy density delivered by fossil fuels -- ever.

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsn...ectriccars.cfm

Despite their many potential advantages, all-electric vehicles will not replace the standard American family car in the foreseeable future. This was the perhaps reluctant consensus at a recent symposium focused on battery research.

Hosted by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the conference, titled “Beyond Lithium Ion V: Symposium on Scalable Energy Storage,” took place in Berkeley from June 5 to June 7. An estimated 300 scientists and engineers attended the symposium.
...
Researchers agreed that the lithium-ion chemistry used in today’s generation of batteries for electric cars–and laptops and cell phones–is reaching maturity, and that only incremental improvements can be expected in energy density, which needs to be higher, and cost, which needs to be lower, for widespread use in battery-electric vehicles

If it can't do so for the car, it certainly can't for the truck.

I'd like to see your sources. I've seen some charts from several individual wells and the refracs reduce the production decline quite significantly. I also personally know of wells being refracked up to 4 additional times. And the cost is not always that high. Some operators use packing plugs to isolate particular perforations and simply refrac the best zones, making the refracs just single stage jobs.

Jiggs, you don't need to remove all oil dependence. Hybrids are a perfect example - they still use gas, but they use the battery to dramatically improve fuel efficiency. Improving fuel efficiency means demand for oil goes down. It means the effects of higher oil prices are diminished. And so on and so forth.

Average fuel efficiency has gone up by something like 20% over the last 10 years and is still increasing.

Where are yours? You made the initial claim.

http://ecowatch.com/2013/03/05/must-...king-colorado/

It is extremely important to note that water use by the industry is like no other. When they use water, they destroy it for any other use. When cities and agriculture use it, about 50 percent of it is returned to sustain streams and be reused by those downstream. So, while 41,000 af would be enough water for the domestic needs of about 410,000 people only half of it is actually consumed, with the other half being available for, in this example, another 410,000 people downstream.

By comparison, when the industry uses 41,000 af of water it consumes it all; thus, in reality, it is using enough water for the domestic needs of more than 800 thousand people. This consumption calculation is usually overlooked or ignored by industry apologists, both inside and outside government.

Enhanced oil recovery techniques limited in shale

The approach is expensive, costing potentially several million dollars even at a previously drilled and fractured well, since companies must remobilize water trucks, sand deliveries and the entire infrastructure to support a new round of activity at an old site.

Kleinberg said refracturing’s best potential may be in returning to wells that were drilled early in the life of a field, with mistakes made, before the geology of the play was well known.

Given the costs and limitations, “the current strategy generally is to go and drill a new well somewhere else,” Kleinberg said.

I've seen some Hondas, under absolutely optimum conditions, drive for 400,000 miles. ... Do they all do that? Of course not. Does the average Honda go that long? Nope.

Certainly, there are outliers here and there for well productivity in sweet spots, ... and, conveniently, they are trumpeted by the industry, and by the people desperate to maintain the illusion. ... It's the same with the hollow claim that tight oil production is "profitable" at under $80/bl...Yeah, for maybe 5% of the plays out there. But that's not the case for the vast majority of rigs. That doesn't stop the sales pitch, of course.

"Everybody is trying to put a very happy spin on their ability to weather $80 oil, but a lot of that is just smoke. The shale revolution doesn’t work at $80, period.”

- Daniel Dicker, president of MercBloc Wealth Management Solutions

Again... a battery is not an energy source.

The charts I've seen are proprietary, and only represent the refracs that have been done in the basin where I work. I could probably get them but I dont have them on me, and its still a small sample.

That link doesn't work on my tablet, but peak oil/environmentalist blogs are not the best place to get accurate industry stats. Talk about a sales pitch, those numbers are just made up. Id love to see one example of a refrac that costs several million just to mobilize the water and sand haulers.

In my area tight oil costs $36 to get, and not too far away in the Permian in Texas it's costing about $55. There are areas that cost $70 but it's nowhere near all or even most shale plays.

Again, if people can do twice as much with a single barrel of oil then they can pay twice the price to accomplish the same amount.

I'm not surprised you don't get this.

Irony ...

You seem to be ignoring the cost involved in exploration, extracting, refining, burning, capsulating, and delivering the energy IN that battery in the first place. Your cornucopian narrative also ignores the infrastructure involved in scaling and maintaining the charging stations required to handle (some fraction of) 900 million vehicles.

But then, boundless optimism of the free market's capacity has always allowed your camp to dismiss any cost input that's not immediately convenient.

Actually, in being written by or quoting scientists, they're FAR more reliable than industry press releases, and certainly more trustworthy than "trust me" posts on poker forums.

It is interesting that I provide the link you ask for, and you fall back on "it's private" for yours. But my link's numbers are "made up." That's rich.

If you can't (or won't) provide anything to corroborate your figures for cost in order for a company to maintain free cash flow, we can both agree to believe each other's claims are "made up." If you can, please make sure they 1) factor in at least minimal environmental cost, and 2) factor in accumulating debt and subsidy for the industry.

I've been following this for a very long time, and the vast, vast majority of literature I've seen and symposiums I've heard insist on prices well north of $80 in order for unconventional oil production to remain viable.

If your claims were true for the affordability of the tight oil industry as a whole, so many of them, individually, wouldn't be going belly up already.

Good data is hard to get even within the industry. Operators aren't keen on giving it up. And all of the stuff I've seen is private. It's also probably illegal for me to post up data I've seen from our customers. That's not an excuse, it's just a fact. I would probably still post it if i had it, but I'm sorry I don't make copies of every piece of information I've ever come across.

As I've mentioned, all I can really speak confidently about is the stuff I know first hand about tight oil in my region. But one things for sure, almost everything you've asserted about tight oil is bull****, as far as this region is concerned. You're just throwing around a bunch of ridiculous propaganda.

Anyone reading this thread will just have to decide for themselves who's more believable.

Hand waving!

When talking about improved fuel efficiency through technology little of this does matter. I'm not even sure you realize that the majority of hybrids don't require charging stations because the source of its battery power is just reclaiming energy that would otherwise be wasted.

Actually, that's what you've been doing. Pretty much every time you've entered this topic. Here being no different, when you pretend costs to transform the energy in the first place "don't matter."

LOL... so the coal and gas used to make and charge the battery is "reclaiming" energy? Surely, some form of "alternator" will just charge those batteries right back up, and won't use any fuel.

add the moderator to the long list of cornucopians with no apparent working understanding of the basic laws of thermodynamics... it's almost as if you battery cultists believe EVs can and will be renewable.

I tell ya, it is truly breathtaking to witness the disparate range of denial to the reality of global net oil depletion ... all of it rooted in "market solutions" which, while allegedly speedy when desperate, in fact move at a glacial pace when it comes to energy alternatives.

Between this year and 2040, annual sales of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are expected to double in the New England area, according to projections by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Yawn. Even if the global economy is BAU until then (and it won't be)... yawn.

People like you need a fundamental re-wiring of your understanding of energy and how it works on a finite planet. For that, there's this:

http://www.peakprosperity.com/crashcourse

Nothing better covers the question of energy density, the law of diminishing returns and EROEI. ... Now, undoubtedly, you won't watch any of it ... But at least it's there and on the table in the face of those who seriously believe all energy is the same and easily replaceable.

This is pure gold.

1. How do you think hybrids work? Do you just not believe that they improve fuel efficiency? Do you not believe the numbers that says average fuel efficiency has improved by ~20% over the last decade? Do YOU understand how inefficient cars currently are at using the energy from fuel?

2. LOL at you just believing that 2040 number. It's pretty good evidence that you have no ability to actually evaluate the things you read. It's almost certainly a typo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_..._United_States

The problem with the industry in question's wondrous claims is that they are perpetually in the business of trying to lure investment. What would be more convincing is an independent audit. Unfortunately, those are only done by geologists and physicists (or environmentalists, in your bizarro world), who all, to a man, factor in costs that your heroes conveniently ignore and who recognize the real cost of doing business and keeping cash flow at least neutral.

I doubt it, but good for you. Too bad your curiously unnamed "region" isn't the world as a whole, and your "region" doesn't atone for the trend of companies pulling out.

I see. So all those companies - undoubtedly larger than yours - downsizing is part of a big conspiracy. Got it. If you feel the long list already documented in the thread (post 36, and others) is "propaganda," please provide a narrative for why Douglas-Westwood is lying about the prices required to remain economical.

Indeed. ... Though I'm confident that providing actual verification for one's claims has me a 3-touchdown favorite at this point.

Jiggs-y, here's the 2014 version of that report which explains the number: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/0383(2014).pdf

Perhaps most relevant to this discussion is:

And, of course, this is all based off of the assumption that gas prices only marginally increase each year.

LOL... is this where you suggest the government's energy division is lying and engaged in conspiracy too? Gold indeed.

Cool story. Unfortunately, there's a bit more to global fuel consumption than a mere 20% road efficiency improvement in passenger vehicles over the course of 10 years of testing. Yawn.

Scale kinda matters. Logistics matter. You just alluded to a 15-year time frame to get to a mere 3M passenger cars as evidence that scale can continue at that pace and we can get to 6M long before 2040. Typical of a cornie. Fortunately, the EIA recognizes the bottlenecks and the production costs associated with the exponential function.

Your claim of the past does not translate to a very uncertain future. Do better. Because oops, nope, not a typo:

Feds Say Just One Car Out of 100 Will Be Electric in 2040

Electric vehicles are gaining a small foothold in the U.S., but according to the feds, it will remain just that — small. ...

The EIA predicts that only 1 percent of total vehicle sales in the U.S. will be plug-in hybrids, with another 1 percent being fully electric in 2040.

Yawn.

First, come on. This is why we don't take you seriously.

Or you can look at it as 2.5 year time frame to get 1MM cars. Which would be more reasonable. And then actually project it out at a non-linear rate (which it obviously is by taking 12 years to get 2MM, but only 2.5 years for the next million).

Anyway Jiggs-y, I don't accuse them of lying. I accuse your stupid article(s) of misrepresenting/misunderstanding what it said - which they did.

Like, I even linked you to the exact report, and you're still going elsewhere - and missing the point. Would you like to see what the 2014 report actually says. You say:

But it's actually this. On MT-15.

So your cherry picked number is A) wrong, and B) only covers completely electric vehicles and not hybrids and other fuel efficient cars.

Jevons Paradox

Maybe you should take this as an opportunity to learn the value of going directly to credible sources instead of letting your opinions be shaped by your nutjob websites?

Moron, that's exactly what the article you dispute says.

EIA: "Plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles account for 2% of total LDV sales."

Wired.com referencing EIA: "only 1 percent of total vehicle sales in the U.S. will be plug-in hybrids, with another 1 percent being fully electric in 2040."

How is that different?

You don't get to add another 1% for diesel and pretend that does anything for your dumb argument.

Maybe you should read slower, and actually absorb what's being conveyed rather than flip out and hastily act like a dick.

Hah, fair enough.

But you seemed to have skipped my point about the 33% of the market that is hybrid-electric. And of course you still seem to be in denial about the overall point - which is large improvements to fuel efficiency. And about your blatant misrepresentation of the sales figure.

But good job Jiggs-y, you got on the board!

Edit: Also, the number is almost certainly low. I think we're already at something like 0.5% of new vehicle sales by fully electric. But that's an argument I'm not going to bother getting into you with.

Still waiting for you to provide a link from anyone that claims we'll get to 6-7 million hybrid and full electric vehicles long before 2040.

Adding "micro-hybrids" to the mix and moving the goalposts to soothe your conniption fit doesn't change the claims in the original article.

"on the board?" ... dude, I've put like a 40-burger up before you managed to cross midfield.

Ah, no... That would be you.

40 burger?

Hmm, you're still avoiding talking about those two points...

Dude, it's on the very same page I referenced.