The reports of gasoline's death have been greatly exaggerated.
Bloomberg (12/28/23) column: "After fueling the 20th century automobile culture that reshaped cities and defined modern travel, gasoline was supposed to begin its long goodbye this year. It didn’t. Sure, Tesla Inc. and its rivals sold more electric vehicles in 2023 than ever before, reducing fossil fuel demand. In the moneyed suburbs of London, New York and Beijing, EV cars are a common sight. From that narrow perspective, it looks like the world has already started 'transitioning away from fossil fuels,' as agreed at the recent COP28 climate talks. But it’s a mirage. Even as EV sales increased, the global oil industry sold more gasoline than ever this year, surpassing the previous 2019 peak that the International Energy Agency had expected would remain an unassailable all-time high. Outside wealthy neighborhoods, the internal combustion engine still reigns supreme; in middle- and working-class areas, the energy transition remains a distant prospect...Still, gasoline demand benefits from a strong force: the world is becoming richer. In 2023, there were about 1.1 billion passenger cars in use, up from about 850 million a decade earlier. Even if a growing percentage of those cars is battery-powered, the absolute number of gasoline-fueled cars has increased. It’s a trend that will take decades, rather than years, to reverse. Until then, gasoline remains king — whatever the forecasts say."
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"It would be a much better approach if the federal government, and state governments as well, let this 'transition' happen organically. When gasoline-powered vehicles were in the early stages of development, the government did not intervene and nudge people to switch from horses to automobiles."
–Christopher Talgo,
Heartland Institute
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