mah!
* I’m pro-electricity, but I am adamantly opposed to the notion that we should “electrify everything” including transportation.
* EVs are cool. They are not new. The history of EVs is a century of failure tailgating failure. In 1911, the New York Times said that the electric car “has long been recognized as the ideal solution.” In 1990, the California Air Resources Board mandated 10% of car sales be zero-emission vehicles by 2003. Today, 31 years later, only about 6% of the cars in California have an electric plug.
* The average household income for EV buyers is about $140,000. That’s roughly two times the U.S. average. And yet, federal EV tax credits force low- and middle-income taxpayers to subsidize the Benz and Beemer crowd.
* Lower-income Americans are facing huge electric rate increases for grid upgrades to accommodate EVs even though they will probably never own one.
* This month, the California Energy Commission estimated the state will need 1.3 million new public EV chargers by 2030. The likely cost to ratepayers: about $13 billion.
* Meanwhile, blackouts are almost certain this summer and electricity prices are “absolutely exploding.” California’s electricity prices went up by 7.5% last year and they will likely rise another 40% by 2030. This, in a state with the highest poverty rate and largest Latino population in America. How is racial justice or social equity being served by such regressive policies?
* I also talked about resilience, saying “Electrifying everything is the opposite of anti-fragile. Electrifying transportation will put more of our energy eggs in one basket. It will make the grid an even-bigger target for terrorists, cyberthieves, or bad actors. It will reduce resilience and reliability in case of a prolonged grid failure due to natural disaster, equipment failure, or human error.”
I also highlighted the myriad supply-chain problems with EVs. Citing work done by the Natural History Museum in London, I said that electrifying half of the U.S. motor vehicle fleet would require in rough terms:
* 9 times the world’s current cobalt production
* 4 times global neodymium output
* 3 times global lithium production
* 2 times world copper production
I concluded by saying:
Oil’s dominance in transportation is largely due to its high energy density. That density and improvements in internal combustion engines and hybrids assure that oil will be fueling transport for decades to come. Powerful lobby groups want Congress to spend billions on electrification schemes that will impose regressive taxes on low-income Americans, reduce our resilience, and increase reliance on China. That’s a dubious trifecta.
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