The Electric Vehicle Future
Well, I’m not bragging babe so don’t put me down.
But I’ve got the fastest set of wheels in town.
When someone comes up to me, he don’t even try.
Cause if I had a set of wings, man I know she could fly.
She’s my little deuce coupe,
You don’t know what I got.
Little Deuce Coupe - The Beach Boys
…..
I am not against EVs. I own two of them (a Mustang Mach E and a Jaguar iPace) and I bought a plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt as my car to drive in DC back in 2012, which car my younger son still drives today. I love them all. But the future of EVs in the market and the mandates for and incentives thereon are not so simple as love/hate.
Electric Vehicles have some distinct advantages over Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles. Electric motors are small, light, quiet, virtually vibrationless and have gobs of torque which makes them fast. Because of that torque most of them on the market today do not need an expensive and complicated transmission. Servicing needs for an EV are minimal for the first few years and that is a cost and time saver. These advantages are inherent in the characteristics of an electric motor over a gasoline or diesel-powered engine.
The disadvantages of EVs come from storing the electricity onboard to power that motor. Nearly all EVs on the market today derive energy from an onboard battery. There are fuel-cell EVs made by Toyota and Honda and each of those companies believes that fuel cells will be a better long-term solution to providing energy than batteries, but that is a discussion outside the scope of this missive.
The batteries are a problem. They are heavy, expensive, and very costly to replace when they wear out. They also require lots and lots of minerals which must be extracted in gigantic volumes from mines in the ground somewhere. The reality is that humans have not yet been able to find a more compact and efficient package of energy density better than a gallon of gasoline, with the exception of nuclear energy. Therefore, EVs have a limited range and take a long time to recharge. Batteries also work best in an operating temperature that is mild. EV range drops precipitously in temperatures below 20F or above 100F. There is a reason (not just incentives) that nearly 50% of all the EVs in America are in California and not Minnesota.
So EVs run great, but they are expensive to buy, heavy, have limited range, don’t work well in extreme temperatures and cost more to maintain over a long cycle of 10 years or so.
That’s not the only problem, however.
The minerals needed to make the batteries are currently largely only mined in places like China and the Congo. The mines are in countries that are enemies of the U.S., often use child and slave labor in the mines, and have a very negative impact on the local environment. There are lithium and other deposits in the U.S., but the same environmental extremists mandating EVs also block the opening of new mines here for other environmental reasons. The enviro extremists say we must have EVs to save the planet, but we can’t extract the minerals to build those EVs…in order to save the planet. They need to pick one.
Even if you didn’t care about these human rights issues or giving the Chinese money to build more weapons to defeat us, to meet the EV mandates in place around the world you would need to nearly triple the number of mines currently in existence to get enough minerals for that many cars. By the way, mineral deposits cannot be mined and opened overnight.
So, what does it all mean?
I think there is a place for EVs. I was in the car business for 25 years, so I have a bit of expertise in this area. If we let the different propulsion systems compete in the market, I think EVs would naturally settle at around 25% of the total. They are about 8% of the market so far in 2023. Letting them compete in the market without subsidy or penalty is clearly what we should do. EVs work well in urban settings with a mild climate. In many other settings, they are simply inferior to ICE vehicles.
Ford Motor Company just announced their 1st quarter earnings. They now separate their reports into Ford Blue (ICE engine passenger vehicles), Ford Pro (commercial vehicles) and Ford Model E (electric vehicles). They project that Ford Blue will earn $7 Billion for the full year and Ford Pro will earn $6 Billion. Meanwhile, Ford Model E will lose $3 Billion. How long can they keep this up? EVs are already way more expensive than ICE vehicles. Will they have to raise the prices even more?
General Motors has been one of the more woke companies out there, always agreeing with anything Joe Biden says, including looking forward to an “all EV future”. But quietly, they are doing something different. They just announced that they are developing and entirely new small block V8 gas engine. They need to build that engine for at least 10-12 years to justify the investment. The new Corvette SUV, which was going to be an EV, is now rumored to have only gas V8 engines. They wouldn’t be doing this if they really felt, as they claim publicly, that they will be building only EVs in 10 years.
The Biden administration’s recently announced EV goal of 50% in less than 7 years, is just that. It is a goal and not a mandate. Why would Biden not push harder and firmer on the only EV future? Stellantis (the new parent of Chrysler) recently announced that they are laying off several thousand workers at a plant being converted to EV production. EVs don’t need workers to build engines, drivetrains and transmissions. The EV electric motors and batteries are all made overseas. More EVs means less U.S. union jobs in the auto industry. The UAW knows this. Biden knows this as well and he is in a box between his enviro and union constituencies. He is trying to thread the needle here.
California, on the other hand, is perfectly happy to create mandates. There are no union auto plants in California. 17 other states follow California’s emissions rules. Why one state would cede authority to set their own regulations to an unelected body of bureaucrats in another state is beyond me, but that is a story for another day. The point is that California and a bunch of other states have their own bans coming on ICE vehicles independent of the federal government. It is interesting to note that not a single one of these 17 states has a unionized auto plant.
Back at the turn of the 19th century, three propulsion systems were vying for leadership in the burgeoning car industry. They were steam, electric power and gasoline. With the benefit of hindsight, we know who won. But at the time it was not at all certain. Gasoline was in third place for a while. In the end, that gallon of gasoline showed that it has major cost and energy density advantages over the others.
It still does. And your car engine only translates about 40% of that energy into propulsion today. The rest is wasted in heat and friction. What if the resources being spent on EVs were used to try to increase that efficiency to, say, 60%?
In short, absent a major EV technological breakthrough, I think that Little Deuce Coupe will be roaring for a while yet.
I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free