Electric Cars Could Trash the Oil companies Sooner Rather Than Later

A brief article in Grist by Heather Smith reports that at least one credit rating agency is warning that breakthroughs in battery costs for electric cars could send the oil industry into a death spiral.

There is going to be a tipping point where the world wakes up from its carbon drunk. The longer that people take to put the bottle down, the worse the hangover is going to be.

Electric cars are a particular threat, according to Fitch, because transportation is a huge user of oil — it accounted for about 55 percent of total oil use in 2014. But a leap forward in batteries would also hit utilities hard, since it would eliminate the need to keep coal and natural gas plants running in order to balance the intermittent electricity generated by wind and solar installations.

Link:  Oil companies should be scared of electric vehicles