> Once it’s done I doubt there’ll be enough hobbyist gasoline users around to fund a single refinery,
Not sure what you mean by "enough", but even if gasoline goes away you'll still be able to buy Avgas which should be useful in cars. Plus there is a ton of equipment out there that burns gas which will drive some demand. Generators, two stroke mowers and equipment.
There will be gas widely available for at least another 50 years. I do agree gas prices will go up quite a bit though. In particular, anywhere real estate is expensive gas stations will get driven out in favor of more profitable uses for the land.
The only thing you listed that isn’t well on its way to electrification is aviation. And even in that space I expect general aviation to electrify first, since it’ll suffer badly under the price swings I mentioned. Commercial aviation mostly uses kerosene, so my comment above still holds.
I’m actually in the market now for a lawn mower, and electric is price competitive once you factor in lifespan and maintenance costs. Plus I don’t have to deal with two stroke motors, which are awful things. I genuinely doubt that they’ll even sell gas lawn mowers by the end of this decade.
Had a longer post, but realized I was splitting hairs and arguing finer details. The big issue in question is how fast the cost of batteries will come down. If battery prices keep coming down at the current rate or accelerates, it's likely demand for gas will crash hard. When that happens is hard to guess.
> I genuinely doubt that they’ll even sell gas lawn mowers by the end of this decade.
Yeah, I have a DeWalt and love it. It does burn through batteries fast though. Fortunately I have a bunch of batteries for a lot of different tools.
FYI, I just switched from a battery electric mower to a manual reel mower because of shrinking battery capacity and expensive batteries. An extra battery costs well over 50% of a battery and mower together. I still have the mower, I just don't use it much anymore. I do use the battery powered strimmer/weed eater.
I've thought about bodging my own battery pack, but I don't want to burn down my house.
> FYI, I just switched from a battery electric mower to a manual reel mower because of shrinking battery capacity and expensive batteries. An extra battery costs well over 50% of a battery and mower together. I still have the mower, I just don't use it much anymore. I do use the battery powered strimmer/weed eater.
Yep. The only reason I find it viable is because I built up a big supply of compatible battery powered tools. Prices for batteries are coming down though, hopefully this will trickle down to tool batteries as well because I want a couple more batteries for my chainsaw and really can't put out $300 for them right now.
Not sure what you mean by "enough", but even if gasoline goes away you'll still be able to buy Avgas which should be useful in cars. Plus there is a ton of equipment out there that burns gas which will drive some demand. Generators, two stroke mowers and equipment.
There will be gas widely available for at least another 50 years. I do agree gas prices will go up quite a bit though. In particular, anywhere real estate is expensive gas stations will get driven out in favor of more profitable uses for the land.