Not that it matters much, considering fuel cost per mile of electric traction versus oil based transport. Even expensive electricity still beats oil down to very unrealistic (low) price levels. OPEC is lowering production, they quite like high oil prices and so quite dislike the recent price drops. To some level, this seems justified; many investments in expensive oil have been made, and higher oil prices push conservation, efficiency, and alternatives better than most subsidies can. It’d be a pity if relatively low oil prices slow the adoption of electric traction tech, and cause people to drive more rather than less, and buy more vehicles that are to big by any rational standard for their purpose.

http://www.startribune.com/ business/ 31184844.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1OiP:DiiUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

The title is ‘Turning the Corner on Auto Efficiency,’ and it discusses the missed opportunities that American auto makers had.

1) At the beginning, any vendor (like Digital Equipment Corporation) build a product line that sometimes shared peripherals, but used complex CPUs built of multiple boards of logic, with different ones in low-end, mid-range, and high-end products. There were dozens of minicomputer companies.

Microprocessors were denigrated as useless for real computers.

2) Later on, micros got good enough to totally displace custom-designed minis, almost all minicomputer compnaies went out of business or radically changed. High volumes lowered prices. Custom designs gave way to use of 1, 2, 4, 8 … standard micros, standard DRAMs, standard chipsets in different chassis … and high volumes drove costs down.

3) As all-electric drive-trains (eventually) replace mechanicals, it is easy to think of auto families that:

a) Have 2-wheel or 4-wheel drive (2 choices)
b) Allow several different sized battery packs. (3? sizes)
c) Are easily either BEV or PHEV (2 choices)

That allows 2×2x3 = 12 possible choices, with more commonality of components, i.e., higher volume, lower cost.

Hence, this is hardly wishful thinking, but a good analogy with a well-understood inflection point in computing technology.

Horse has left the building….

Increasing fuel efficiency standards would have driven car manufacturers to produce more efficient vehicles. Would have done wonders for GM, Ford and Chrysler. Had they been forced to do so, they would now have good, efficient cars and trucks coming off the lines and helping their bottom lines.

But we might not need increased fuel efficiency standards in the future. The market seems to have taken over. Oil is not going to return to “cheap” and electricity is quite likely to become less expensive.

As electrics become more “usable”, as their ranges increase and recharge times decrease, people are going to impose efficiency standards with their purchasing decisions.

We passed the SOx standard with no idea of how — or whether — car manufacturers could meet it. The irony here, of course is that GM — a company that fought the standards the hardest, came up with the catalytic converter and licensing it became a major source of revenue for them.

There’s no reason we shouldn’t have a 60 mpg standard by 2020; a 75 by 2025; and a 100 mpg by 2030. None.

If you can tough out short-term negative investment returns, now would be a good time to start dollar-cost (or euro-cost or whatever) averaging into these companies.