Are BP heads in the (tar) sands?

I found it interesting to note the two ways in which The Guardian and The Telegraph headlined their respective summaries of BP’s latest take on the electric vehicle revolution:

Guardian: Electric cars will not stem demand for oil, says BP

Telegraph: BP braces for electric car revolution as oil demand growth slows

Seems a little odd, doesn’t it? I can understand the two positions though - it is clearly not the journalists that are confused, but BP themselves. They seem simultaneously to be acknowledging a rapidly accelerating demand for electric vehicles and denying any impact on oil demand. Which can only be explained by an extreme case of denial, I think.

To me the catchiest quote from either article is this: ‘BP has almost doubled the number of electric vehicles it expects on the world’s roads in 2035 from 57m in last year’s report to 100m’. In one year, even BP have considerably upgraded their expectations for electric vehicle take up. It will be interesting to see what they think next year...

By way of slim justification for their position, BP is pointing to an increase in demand for traditional oil burning vehicles from developing nations. But are they dangerously underestimating the potential for a leapfrog effect where such nations will aggressively pursue electric vehicle development? There is considerable evidence that both India and China are on to it, and combined they account for around 2.5 billion of the world's population. This Bloomberg article illustrates how seriously Indian Company Mahindra Electric are taking the increase in demand in China, for example. Add to this the fact that both countries are showing considerably better leadership in tackling air quality and climate change issues than much of the west (evidenced by their vast renewable commitments), and I feel confident that electric vehicles have a bright future in developing nations.

BP are clearly slowly waking up, but the question is will they adapt quickly enough to avert their own demise? They, like Shell and several other oil majors, are increasingly flipping their portfolios to gas but that could well prove to be too little too late, as gas is losing ground rapidly to renewables in terms of the cost of energy generation, aided by the development and rapidly falling costs of batteries too. And it doesn't really matter what Trump and his cronies try to do to derail the march of renewables - the market is already starting to take care of things on its own, and Elon Musk's brave and delicate dance with the devil may even help to get a carbon tax on the table.

I think BP need to check this Bloomberg video out, which was published almost exactly a year ago. To my mind, even this is a little out of date and I expect the oil crash phenomenon mentioned here to come several years sooner than it predicts: