Lithium Demand surge, page-233

In January 2016 Brent crude oil price was under $US30/bbl, by April of 2017 it was ~$US44/bbl, yesterday the price touched $US75/bbl. The simple fact is that oil prices are going to go up a lot in the next few years due to lack of discovery plus lack of development and production spending since oil prices crashed in 2014.

When you add depletion of existing wells (world wide) to the above scenario, there is every chance of a severe oil supply/oil price crunch in the next few years.

When you consider Australia imports about 75% of our oil on a net basis (use minus production), Australia is very ill equipped to endure a world wide oil shortage. It would only take one relatively short period of some type of petrol/diesel rationing for most motorists to panic into buying an EV for their next vehicle, especially businesses.

Currently Australia runs a current account deficit on oil imports of $US75/bbl X 750,000bbls/d X 365 days/yr = $US20,500,000,000/yr. When oil prices double, we will feel it a lot more than the last oil price spike as currently the $A is around $US.75c, while we were above $US.90c for most of 2007-2013, and above parity for a fair bit of that time as well.

When people have to pay $3/ltr or more, or simply can't get hold of it, the value of EV's powered from your own solar panels will make a lot of sense to most people (and eventually the govt).

IMO even if we had to power EVs from our own coal resources, it makes a lot more sense economically to do that than have a $US20b+ current account deficit just from oil imports!!

Basically we have both environmental as well as economic reasons to turn to EVs in a relatively short period of time.
The same scenario is relevant for most countries (oil importers), so as EVs become more widely available, the uptake is likely to surprise (most analysts) to the high side.