The Expert Podcast

Who would know better about the future of electric vehicles than an oil company? You would think that's counterintuitive—but think about it. An oil company has to plan for its future based on what it thinks is going to be the transition to electric vehicles. Well, here's what they think: the CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest oil production company and gasoline engine fuel production company, predicts that every new passenger car sold in the world will be electric by 2040.

Why is that important? It's more than just a headline—there's a lot more going on here. And if you look at the name of this article in CNBC, it's called ExxonMobil at the Crossroads. That's a pretty significant statement. An oil company that produces fossil fuel products like gasoline and diesel for vehicles has to plan its business model for the coming decades, and it has to have a very good understanding of what's going on with electric vehicles. Are there going to still be gas stations and a need for fuel, or is it just over with? If you don't plan that correctly, you can go bankrupt.

So here's what they think. According to the interview, even ExxonMobil thinks electric vehicles are the future. The oil giant is predicting that by 2040, every new passenger car sold in the world will be electric. Okay, so there's the headline. How is that useful for you as a consumer to plan your transportation needs for the coming decade? Well, in some ways, it might give you an opportunity to start transitioning to that yourself. If all of your lifestyle and transportation decisions are based on having gasoline vehicles, you might have to think about how that's going to be different 10–15 years from now.

2040 is just a little bit more than 15 years down the road. Think about what you were doing 15 years ago. Right now it's 2022—so that was like 2007 or 2008. What were you doing in 2007 or 2008? It doesn't seem like that long ago. And if there was a significant change in your transportation availability that you could know about in 2007 or 2008, you probably would have started making some plans.

Because if you go on long-distance trips and have a gasoline vehicle that has a five- or six-hundred-mile range that you can fill up in two minutes and be back on the road—what if that's not available in 15 years? If you have a vehicle in which you can carry spare gasoline, like a truck with a couple of fuel cans in the back to go off-road, and you don't have that capability—how's that going to change things?

What about if you haul something? You know, electric vehicles have a pretty good range and they're getting better. But as soon as you start hauling boats or trailers or campers, that range drops dramatically. So if a 350-mile range pulling a trailer might be a 150-mile range—do you have a lifestyle that allows for you to recharge?

Do you live in an apartment where you park on the street? Where are you going to charge up an electric vehicle? If you have a house, do you have charging capacity in your garage? Look, it may be a good move to put that in now, even if you don't have an electric vehicle. Someday you're going to have one.

And right now, you might be able to install a charging system in your garage with incentives and rebates from your electric company, with cheaper labor and cheaper materials today—where five, six, or even ten years from now, it might cost three times as much. And if you put that investment in your house now, it could pay off in major ways—could be the best return on your investment from anything, even more than if you put money into stocks.

What about capacity? What if you need a large van to carry a lot of people? Are there going to be electric vehicles of that size? More importantly, what if you're in an industry that either services or relies on gasoline vehicles—a repair shop, body shop, car dealership, shipping company? You want to make sure that you're keeping an eye on what's happening.

Because this isn't a small thing like people switching from iPhones to Android, or switching from flip phones to iPhones. This is a major shift in how people get around—in transportation, personal transportation, commercial shipping. This is a major shift. And even ExxonMobil, huge as they are, they're planning for this shift.

How they're doing it doesn't really matter—that's how they're doing it. You have to figure out how you're going to do it and what that's going to mean for you. You don't want to get caught short in what the plans are. And if your lifestyle, your family plans, your vacation plans—maybe where you live, maybe where your second home is—would be impacted by only having electric vehicles 10 or 15 years from now, or your retirement is affected...

You know, what if you want to retire to the other side of the country and your grandkids live 3,000 miles away? How are you going to get there? Air travel is not getting any easier. You may not be able to drive there with a gasoline car.

Tell us what your thoughts are. Tell us if you think this is real, how you would plan for this. What if it happened tomorrow? What if somebody waved a magic wand and only electric vehicles are available next year—how would you handle that? And then with that urgency, you have some leeway to plan for 15 years down the road.