I was watching CNBC's "Squawk Box" one morning a few weeks ago when they splashed the news that Warren Buffett's Berkshire-Hathaway was buying several million shares of oil stocks. Interestingly, in acknowledging that he was buying, Mr. Buffett made the curious statement that he could be wrong on this investment. I wonder if Mr. Buffett might have been considering the following

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-ev-oil-crisis/

when he noted that he could be wrong?

Short term, (i.e. the next 1-5 years), oil prices will probably be higher, but electric vehicles will (eventually) start bringing down the demand for gasoline and oil. It's just a question of how soon (not if) EVs are going to start denting the demand for oil.

Here's another article comparing the fuel savings (in $/10,000 miles driven) of an EV versus gasoline powered vehicles.

http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/elect...e-fuel-savings

Thinking-About-Buying-A-New-Car-In-A-Few-Years Alan

We'll see how battery technology evolves. Lots of $ being invested in developing that technology. Lower power consumption semi conductor technology investment is high too. Solid state physics ftw.

This whole electric thing is also focussed around our own 1st world view mostly. If the rise of electric vehicles comes with the rise of global wealth (which it most definitely will) it will also mean that there will be new/expanding markets for regular 'oil driven' cars. Most of the world is far from ready for electric driving.

Pretty much this. Even if electric cars became more efficient than gas powered over night, that doesn't mean everyone with buy one. Even if everyone does buy one, that doesn't mean all the gas powered cars will go straight to the scrap yard. You also have to consider shipping vessels, fishing boats, trucks, farm equipment, heavy construction vehicles, etc. that won't be easily replaced.

Only about 45% of crude oil goes to make gasoline in the US as well. That number doesn't include diesel and aviation fuel but those aren't going away anytime soon as making an electric jet plane or tractor is not very practical right now.

Plus, if the first world uses less it will also means the price will drop and make it attractive to use in fuel oil electric plants to power all those electric cars.

In the end all those will go electric possibly even airplanes. Too reliable. Some of the really heavy mining vehicles are electric and even have autonomous driving. Most people may switch to electric cars not only for fuel at $.25 a gallon equilivent, CO2 emission, but safety.

The Tesla and BMW i3 already have systems in place to avoid accidents. I don't believe there will ever be self driving cars as people will blame all their accidents on the autodrive subjecting manufacturers to lawsuits. But if you get a 50% break in insurance owning an electric it will put more pressure.

Some oil stocks might be SDRL, MEMP, NRP, VLO, MPC ... And I have FSLR, BRK-B, and CAFD for solar. I careless about wind. Calpine as an independent electricity producer.

Not with airplanes and some heavy machinery. A 747 burns a gallon of jet fuel per second. You're not making an electric plane with that kind of power output that can fly for 14 hours anytime soon.

A lot of heavy machinery is electric and a lot that isn't can be. Airplanes and long distance trucking and shipping - anything where there's weight, distance from power lines, and continuity of operation are too much of an issue, will not easily go electric.

That still leaves a huge market that's perfectly viable now until maybe other alternatives are more viable, or if not, then at least a big part of the market can switch over.

And, no one thinks even the low hanging fruit of first worlders and their commuter cars are going to all switch overnight. Even that change takes some effort.

It gets over 40mpg per passenger fwiw.

The realistic renewable is a hydrogen plane. Its energy density still isn't great but jet engines using the fuel actually exist. Afaik there is no thrust equivalent engine that runs on electricity.

The problem is there is no reason at all for the aviation industry to invest in these future technologies, it needs to come from governments in some way. They are instead cranking that mpg figure up using stuff like light weight composites to replace the aluminium they (mostly) still make planes from.

There are already commercial flights that have flown with 100% biofuel and even fleets like Horizon Air have converted to be able to use biofuel blends.

The environmental impact of course depends on the source of the biofuel.

They use to say that about the electric car, that it will always look funny, be slow, and never be able to go over 30 miles on a charge. Basically this propaganda stalled the development of the electric car for 30 years until Musk said no.

http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/e...a-success.html

There are some aircraft that can carry tanks. Then there is hydrogen, either burned or as a fuel cell. Maybe a x prize for longest distant without solar panels an electric aircraft can fly with minimum speed of 200 mph.

http://robbreport.com/aviation/nasa-...re-wave-future

Not now yes. You know you can predict how technology will keep developing? Cold fusion is starting to be realistic possibility. Who's to say in future size of those WON'T decrease enough you could have airplane that generates it's own electricity?

Assuming airplanes are even needed in future. When there's technology that gets you from Finland to Helsinki in about 6 hours airplanes aren't even fastest way to get around. Albeit that isn't tomorrow's thing either but again tests are being done...

Since oil will eventually run out we better generate good alternatives before that happens

Finland to Helsinki?

Yes, you can make heavy machinery electric but that's not the bigger problem. Often heavy machinery is used in locations where there is no electricity. I used to work on a grading crew out of college and it was often the case that we had no electric access. Too remote. You could have generators there to produce electricity but you still need diesel for that and it would be very inefficient plus you're still just using diesel even though you can claim "We have electric dozers!"

The airplane one is still the hardest to overcome. You need a fuel that has a high energy to volume ratio and you can't get that with electric.

Plus explain to me how an electric jumbo jet would work? We're going back to props? The thrust from a jet is from compressed air being combined with fuel and then ignited and the expanding gases produce a ton of thrust out the back. How are you producing that kind of thrust with electricity for huge aircraft that are in flight for hours and hours? There's also supersonic aircraft which is a entirely different problem

It's not that someone might figure out a way to combine some of these things but we don't go from electric cars that you pick up the groceries in to a electric jumbo jet with just some "people will figure it out" hand waving.

Can you make a smaller prop powered electric aircraft that can fly for shorter distances? Sure, I think you can already do that. Commercial jets an entirely different problem though.

The other thing that nobody seems to address is where is all this electricity coming from? Nuclear seems to the bogey man so how are you producing this much electricity? And yes, I know some of you are going to say solar but converting everything to solar is not very practical. There is only some much energy the sun produces per sq. foot. You can't increase that.

A hydrogen plane is much more likely. But, you'd need to overcome the cost of extracting the hydrogen and we'd still have those pesky laws of physics to deal with there. Plus the current hydrogen extraction process is just as bad as burning fossil fuels. There's a reason Elon Musk thinks that hydrogen fuel cell cars are BS and it's not because he makes electric cars it's the reason why he makes electric cars instead of wasting his time with hydrogen.

esad:

Addressing your question as to where all the [needed] electricity will come from?

I read an article in (I believe) Fortune magazine detailing the growing number of wealthy [private] individuals who are sinking substantial sums of their personal fortunes into startup companies attempting to develop fusion power. (No, I'm not talking about cold fusion - I'm talking about the same kind of fusion that goes on in the interior of the sun.)

Two of the investors identified in the article were Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft and (I believe) Jeff Bezos. (There are several venture capital firms and [other] wealthy individuals investing serious money in fusion research.) There are also several nations, (i.e. Russia, China, France, Germany, the United States), with major fusion research efforts underway.

There have been significant [recent] advances in fusion which are encouraging. These recent advances may explain why people like Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos are investing. (One of the efforts, reported in the Fortune article, was a recent experiment in which the amount of energy produced exceeded the energy input for a [very brief] period of time - with successful containment. This has been a long sought goal of fusion research.

The key is going to be whether or not these initial (promising) results can be scaled up. It appears that people like Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos are betting that fusion will [eventually] be a viable new source of virtually unlimited "clean" energy.

Fusion has been 5-10 years away for the last 30 years...

At least a little longer. I wrote a paper on fusion in HS and I graduated 31 years ago. Iirc "shiva nova" or "tokamac" reactors in Berkeley or Russia were getting close.

This is not the article I read, but here's a Fortune article from last year about super rich investors taking a shot at fusion energy.

http://fortune.com/2015/09/28/jeff-b.../?iid=sr-link1