It is widely believed that electric vehicles will destroy fossil fuel demand. We find EVs will increase fossil fuel demand by 0.7Mboed from 2020-35. EVs only start lowering net fossil fuel demand from 2037 onwards. The reason is that 3.7x more energy is consumed to manufacture each EV than the net road fuel it displaces each year; while the manufacturing of EVs is seen growing exponentially. The finding is a strong positive for natural gas, as outline in our new 13-page note.
Pages 2-3 outline our oil demand forecasts out to 2050, reflecting the rise of electric vehicles and six other game-changing technologies.
Pages 4-5 lay out the energy costs manufacturing EVs, based on new, granular details from the recent technical literature.
Pages 6-9 model the exponential rise of electric vehicles, and how rapidly increasing manufacturing energy could outweigh slowly increasing fuel savings.
Pages 10-13 consider pushbacks to our thesis that EVs increase fossil fuel demand, including the use of renewable technology, battery innovations or vehicle autonomy.