In denial?: ExxonMobil's outlook did not mention autonomous vehicles.
LONDON: Many carmakers are predicting a significant shift to electric vehicles in the next decade. Advances in battery technology and the growth of autonomous driving and ride sharing – suited to electric vehicles – will power this expansion, they reason.
But some oil executives take a different view, predicting electricity will play only a bit part in transport out to 2040 at least. If they are on the wrong side of the argument, it could come at a cost to an industry where new projects often cost billions of dollars to build and need decades of at least moderate crude prices to pay off.
Over half of all crude oil pumped is used for transport. An overly pessimistic outlook for electric cars may lead oil companies to adopt an overly optimistic outlook for oil consumption and price growth, analysts say.
ENI SpA chief executive Claudio Descalzi is among those who believe the threat posed to the oil industry by electric vehicles is not significant."Electric cars, they can grow, but I don’t think that is a problem (for us)," Descalzi told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in London last month.
ExxonMobil Corp , the largest western oil producer by market value, and British rival BP Plc publish oil market outlooks to 2035 and 2040 respectively that guide their investment decisions.
Both predict that in 2035, less than 10% of new cars will be electric vehicles (EVs) or plug-in cars with a backup combustion engine for when the battery runs flat.
"Our central view in the outlook is the penetration of electric vehicles and electricity more generally is likely to be pretty limited over the next 20 years," Spencer Dale,
BP’s chief economist, said in February.The carmakers don’t produce comparable long-term outlooks for vehicle production but their nearer term predictions for vehicle roll-outs envisage a much faster take up of EVs.
Dieter Zetsche, CEO of Mercedes Benz manufacturer Daimler AG, said in September his goal was to have EVs make up between 15% and 25% of group global sales by 2025.
BMW AG has said it could do the same. Ford CEO Mark Fields said in April that by 2020, 40% of models would be electrified.
"For over 100 years the internal combustion engine has been a basic design assumption for our business, for our industry," Hau Thai-Tang, Ford vice president for Purchasing told analysts at an investor day in September."
This shift to electrification is game changing," he added. For the oil companies, a lot is riding on the accuracy of their demand forecasts, said Alex Griffiths, group credit officer for corporates at credit rating agency Fitch, who produced a report about electric vehicles.
"Without that (oil) demand increase, you potentially find that the market gets out of kilter… which is not a good place for the oil industry to be in," he said.To be sure, some in the oil industry are predicting a rapid expansion of EVs and some carmakers are conservative on EV prospects, but they are in a minority.Norway's Statoil, for instance, says electric motors could roll out widely in the next two decades.
And Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV CEO Sergio Marchionne has expressed caution about the uptake of electric cars.
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