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Wed 23 03 2022
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Would our world have looked different if we had not used oil and gas

by bernt & torsten

Did you know that electric cars have been around since at least 1834, long before gasoline cars were invented? Would our world have looked different from how it is today if the electric car had continued its development

It was the Ford company that basically killed the electric car with the introduction of the gasoline-powered Model T in 1908, the model T was a cheaper car width a longer driving range than the electrical cars at the time.

CNN has this great infographic that shows you the evolution of the electric car.

Did you know that Dr. Ferdinand Porsche’s first car, the Egger-Lohner Model C.2 Phaeton, was powered by electricity?

Since the beginning of electrical cars, the same hurdles that we have today existed: limited driving range and a lack of charging infrastructure. You have to wonder how would our world look like today if the electrical car had been allowed the same amount of time to develop as what we have put into gasoline-powered cars.

Would we have had wars over resources such as oil and gas?

Since the 20th century, we’ve seen crude oil prices adjust rapidly in response to supply and demand and certain political and economic situations.

As we see very high prices at the pump in recent weeks due to the political situations that exist currently in the world you must ask yourself would we have had to live through this turmoil if we had gone all-in on electrical from the start.

Would we have had the same dependency on oil and gas that we have today?

Greed was the main driver behind the evolution of gasoline-driven cars, selling a product at a lower price to a larger marketplace, generating more profit for the manufacturer, establishing gas stations and dealerships for the running and distribution of cards. The oil and gas that was driving more attention for richness, especially the pricing of gas which basically has three main factors:

  • The price at the pump includes taxes, the tax taken at the pump varies from country by country. Taxes are not influenced by oil price fluctuations.
  • The prices of crude oil and refined products, especially gasoline and diesel, are set in different international markets that are each governed by their own laws of supply and demand. This explains why the price of fuel can increase during the summer vacation, when demand is greater, while the price of crude stays the same.
  • In Europe the crude oil and petroleum product markets use different currencies: the price of crude is denominated in U.S. dollars whereas the price of fuel is denominated in euros. The value of these currencies affects the price at which fuels are sold, regardless of the crude oil price.

To increase the overall prices, adding biofuel to gasoline or diesel tends to increase the overall price because biofuels are often more costly than crude.

What about electricity?

We probably would have had dealers ships for distribution of the electric cars, we would not have had gas stations. The charging stations would have been at places we use the cars to go to like shopping centres, restaurants, hotels etc.

We would probably have some great restaurants along highways between cities, our electrical cars would be charged in 5 minutes. Our electrical cars’ batteries would have been used to store electricity and power our homes.

Our batteries would have been very advanced with large storage capacity, long-range driving over 1,000 km per charge. All the electrical cars would be able while being driven to charge the battery, the cars would be covered in small solar panels it may even have a built-in air generator that captures the air we drive through to charge the battery.

Our homes would have been powered by electricity that we ourselves would generate from our home solar/wind powerplant and our cars.

Our society would have been much healthier with proportionally distributed wealth across the planet, we would have had much fewer political and economic conflicts that were probably easier to contain.

So what went wrong

We have to suffer through the current turmoil and high inflation due to decisions made at the beginning of the 20th century, yes time was different and climate change was not known yet, they could have given us a better feature which we now have to transition towards.

The need to create wealth for a few to get power to influence was driving the evolution of gasoline-driven cars, Ford and Rockefeller comes in mind, this era of the early 20th century was also the beginning of the megarich or the 1% of the population that causes more carbon emissions than double the emissions of the poorest half of humanity

Infographic: The One Percent's Huge Carbon Footprint | Statista You will find more infographics at Statista

Humanity and people in power in the past from decision-making have created the situation we are in today. We now know about climate change, we know what has accelerated climate change we know we have to transition from an oil and gas economy to a renewable economy, and in this transition period we will see political and economic conflicts, at the end of the tunnel we will get to a world that we were in at the beginning of 20th century.

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