Shell CEO: electric cars are old news, biofuels are the future
Shell has stated its preference for hydrogen and biofuels in the past. What they haven't gone out of their way to do, though, was to aggravate electric vehicle fans by dismissing their powertrain of choice. Royal Dutch Shell CEO, Jereoen van der Veer, has filled in that little oversight yesterday in Germany. Speaking to the Associated Press, van der Veer said that, "My milkman used to drive around in electric cars a long time ago ... What's new?" He then said that EVs require too much infrastructure to make sense. Really? That's the best he can do?
It's true that electric cars have been around for a long while. There's also a lot of agreement that liquid fuels will be with us for a while yet. But vehicles with plugs are the future, not the past. Instead of EVs, van der Veer said that he wants his company to focus on biofuels. I guess he just wants to milk liquid fuels for all they're worth while he still can.
[Source: IBT via All Cars Electric]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
paulwesterberg 4:55PM (5/08/2009)
EVs require too much infrastructure(not controlled by big oil).
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GoodCheer 5:00PM (5/08/2009)
EVs require too much infrastructure, yet were apparently a good choice for milkmen 20 years ago.
It's a shame our infrastructure (and EV drive technology) has deteriorated so far since then.
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Mitchell 6:38AM (5/09/2009)
I understand his view, this is politics after all. Why on earth would he want to give up his cash cow? However, to say the "infrastructure" is too much is beyond me. Honestly, electricity is more widely available than any other fuel. You can go into rural areas and get electricity (depending on your country of course), the only transmission is through a copper wire. Bio-fuels? Not even getting into the growing part of it, there are shipping issues, pipelines. If you're going to make an argument, you might as well make a good one.
Steve-O 5:02PM (5/08/2009)
I am a staunch supporter and advocate of ethanol and biofuels. I am not a fan of driving around in an electric vehicle either. However, I will acknowledge that they will (and should) be part of the mix in the future. I believe energy diversity is the future of personal transportation, not ONE SINGLE thing. I am tired of electric vehicle supporters' fixation with that being the only way we should go, and bashing everything else.
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paulwesterberg 6:34PM (5/08/2009)
Show me an ethanol car that gets 100mpg, then we can talk.
Ethanol might be better than gasoline(in terms of CO2), but the energy yield when it is made from corn is pretty underwhelming.
tim 10:52PM (5/08/2009)
Steve-O you must be an underachiever, just like the efficiency percentage of an internal combustion engine running you biofuels. good luck, the "cat is out of the bag" electric is coming on strong and you're still stuck in the mud. Good luck buddy.
Jon 5:46AM (5/09/2009)
I agree with Steve-O. The problem we have right now is that we've built our infrastructure around oil and now that oil's downsides have been revealed, we are finding it difficult to adapt to new technologies.
So if we concentrate on just one thing, we could find ourselves in the same situation in 30 years time. What if lithium production proves unsustainable at those rates of demand? What if we have some kind of electricity shortage in the future?
Choice is good.
Steve-O 11:07AM (5/09/2009)
Hey if you think I'm an underachiever, whatever. I think you are probably a well intentioned a visionary. The only problem is that you think everyone should do things they way you want them to.
Electricity is a great thing, but not for automibles. Not YET.
I will say it again I don't think we should dis electric vehicles. They have their puprose. If people only drive around their home town, they'd be a great solution. I truly would like to see electric vehicles in the future. I'm like in my 40s so I am pretty sure I will never be able to drive from Boston to San Diego in a battery powered car when humans haven't even figured out how power a laptop PC for 3 hours on what we have today.
Of course you may be someone who believes we shouldn't be driving great distances within our country and should be forever banished to socialism based government controlled public transportation. In that case, we'll just have to disagree.
So therefore the energy content of bio is not something for you to dis, because for personal transportation, it blows the living s*** out of the energy content of a battery. At least for now.
So then the biofuel bashers, if you can't compare it to electricity, then they fall back on comparing it to petroleum. Well, BTU's are a measurement of heat energy folks. Heat energy does not move an engine, does not move a piston. You design an engine to run optimally on ethanol (regardless of feedstock), instead of today's FFVs which ethanol is just the "afterthought", and not to run on "all of the above" you've got a vehicke every bit as, if not more, efficient as a regular old car of today burning regular old dirty gasoline. This engine will create far less pollution to boot. (sorry that sentence could have been less of a run-on if I had the time )
OK, so then the gripe becomes food for fuel. Well everyone knows corn will eventually go away. But today, we've got corn. It's field corn, never intended for consumption by humans. And to this day, corn ethanol has not starved the animals for which field corn is intended either. In fact there is planty of feed corn for all animals. Also I can buy all the friggin' corn flakes and tostitos I want. So can the citizens of most of the world.
For the tragic starvation in parts of the third world, which I truly believe we don't care enough about..the solution for these people is not for the United States to stop making corn ethanol. That has nothing to do with their tragic circumstances. It is already quite evident that the future use of biofuels (At least here in the USA) will be quite logical and non impacting on our food supply.
It is truly time to move beyond the over reactionary hatred of ethanol, because althought it isn't THE soultion, it is and will continue to be a scientifically sound, PIECE of the solution for this century.
Carney 11:50AM (5/15/2009)
paulwesterberg said, "Show me an ethanol car that gets 100mpg, then we can talk."
MPGs are irrelevant compared to the importance of de-funding terror and OPEC, draining the Mideast of strategic significance clearing away smog and ozone smog, and preventing acid rain and Exxon Valdez style disasters.
Isn't that worth rolling 71% as far down the road on a given volume of fuel, or having to fill up once a week rather than once every 10 days?
jake 5:02PM (5/08/2009)
An oilman stating preference for liquid fuels? You don't say.
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Andy 5:21PM (5/08/2009)
What he means is "Biofuels are the future .... of Shell Oil." They aren't necessarily the *our* future (or at least not *all* of it.)
It's also sort of amusing hearing a complaint about extensive infrastructure coming from the gasoline industry, while it carries billions of gallons across oceans, countries, towns and to all the mom and pop filling stations around the planet.
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jharlan 5:50PM (5/08/2009)
Whether we drive EVs or biofuel ICE cars depends largely on the advancement of E storage technology. Biofuels are competitive now, mainly because of the range problem of EVs, but the future is not that clear. I like the idea of electric cars primarily because I produce all my own power (and there isn't a meter on the place), so electricity to drive my car is a free byproduct of the electricity we produce to run the ranch. I see all rural areas getting off the grid as wind, solar, and small hydro (like ours) become more cost effective. Being energy independent is pure freedom.
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paulwesterberg 6:27PM (5/08/2009)
Why would you get off the grid? That would require batteries to store your generated power for when you want to use it or you would have to ramp up/down your hydro based on need.
Just sell your extra power to the grid and draw it back when you need it. Your electric bill would be near zero or the would even pay you if you generated enough energy.
harlanx6 8:21PM (5/08/2009)
We have no storage, Paul. We run a 35KW generator that uses
electrical heating elements submerged in a water box with water
flowing through it at all times. The elements are staged to come on
line when needed to use up the excess power. A year round creek
supplies the water which runs 3/4 mile in a ditch to a penstock and
then comes downhill in a 14" pipe to the power house, producing 125
lbs per sq" water pressure at the wheel. It goes through 2 nozzles
about 1.85" in ID. to hit the wheel, which is only about 15" in
diameter. It's the slickest system I have ever seen, and there are
lots of them in this area. If you ever get to northern California I
would be glad to show you the whole thing. The water rights were
perfected in 1913, and I guess it's pretty hard to get a permit for
these things anymore.
The reason for being off the grid is to keep the government and the
utility company out of your business. Out west here we are still kind
of independent. There is no grid here, (hard to believe that in
California there are still places right along a state hiway with no
commercial power available in the 21st century). Much of the west is very sparsely populated.
I guess it would be useful to be able to sell our excess power to
Pacific Gas and Electric instead of just using it up, but
there is no grid here. We also have lots of sunshine here that could
be used for solar.
In the future, as power becomes more expensive, I see rural residents
providing more and more of their own, but if there is commercial power available, it would be useful to be able to sell it (if there were any FITs.)
Randy C. 6:35PM (5/08/2009)
Of course Shell is against BEV's. BEV's blow their 100 year old business model to pieces. They have no idea how they can make money without selling "fuel" for vehicles.
At least Exxon/Mobile has the right idea. If you can't make money selling "fuel" for electric cars, make something that electric cars need. I'm referring to Exxon's new separator material that is supposed to make lithium batteries work better. Have yet to see anything other than a press release on it.
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required 7:08PM (5/08/2009)
Biofuelcells on board EVs make a lot more sense then the plugin only alternative does. Also, I don't really see much of a problem with biofuel hybrids such as biodiesel. In the future, once our power plants are clean (aka not using coal and what not) then maybe we can applaud standardizing on plug ins. It just seems like quite a waste to not use our waste to make fuels. Also we currently have an infrastructure for liquid fuels and vehicles that can use them.
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fnc 7:51PM (5/08/2009)
"He then said that EVs require too much infrastructure to make sense. "
...to HIM.
I'll concede to him the point that we would need a LOT more generation and transmission capacity if EV's were widely adopted, but current battery tech isn't going to get enough cars off the road quickly enough to tax the grid anytime soon.
A century ago lots of people probably looked down from their horses bemusedly at the first car they had ever seen and pontificated that something that required a volatile fuel you had to pull from deep underground and refine, ship, and store before use didn't make sense either.
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jharlan 8:24PM (5/08/2009)
EVs make a lot of sense when used within their range, and charged overnight at home. For extended range you still need an ICE kicker.
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Mike!!ekiM 9:23PM (5/08/2009)
More proof CEO's are just Suits.
Time for the Board to hire someone competent.
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Stew 1:17AM (5/09/2009)
I have such distaste for oil companies, I will be the first customer in line the day BEV's are for sale. I am not buying another car until then.
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