The Expert Podcast

So some pretty serious warnings for some people high up in the electric vehicle industry. It's an executive from Stellantis that makes Jeep and some other Chrysler products, and this person was interviewed about the electric vehicle shift and this person said that we may not like the way raw materials are sourced, but what's next? Where's the clean energy? What is the infrastructure? Where are the materials? What are the geopolitical risk of sourcing those materials? Who is looking at the full picture of transformation? And that's the key quote.
Think about it - internal combustion engine vehicles have been in the market for roughly 100 years, 1920s at least. You know, Model T's, Model A's were in the 19 aughts. There are actually some crude vehicles in the 1800s, but let's just call it 100 years. In a hundred years, all the infrastructure for gasoline distribution, repairs, sales, parts supply chains have all evolved to the point where 12 to 14 million vehicles a year are sold into the marketplace.
Electric vehicles has basically five to ten years of partial adoption in the marketplace. Yeah, there's electric vehicles that have been around for 10 years, but less than one percent of vehicles on the road are electric vehicles. So you don't have a whole network of charging stations like you have gas stations. You don't have a network of repair facilities. You don't have a full network of dealerships that sell electric vehicles. You have dealerships that sell gasoline vehicles that sell a few EVs on the side.
So this transformation is a big deal. There are many powers that be - government agencies, electric companies, and even manufacturers - that want to have everything switched over to electric within the next 10 years, 2030. Some states are making it a law that only electric vehicles operate in their states by 2030. That's like taking a hundred years of automotive history for gasoline engines and shoving it down into 10 or 15 years. It's a struggle to say the least to want to get that done.
Look, whether you believe in electric vehicles as being a solution to the environment or not, or maybe a solution to the economy or not, or maybe a way to have people save money - whatever your opinion is doesn't matter. The bottom line is that this transformation is being rushed, being put through quickly. It's unlikely it's going to happen in that period of time, and there is still some danger that it's going to run into roadblocks that will keep it from happening. Is it going to be like Betamax tapes and never really take off? Probably not. It's going to be like buggy whips and be evolved out of business? Probably not. But there are concerns about the EV revolution.
And this comes from the CEO of one of the largest companies, and it's not like this company doesn't make electric vehicles. They have electric vehicles - the Jeep Wrangler, iconic off-road vehicle - they make an electric version. So it's not like they don't make them, they're in that business, but they're worried and his outlook has a bleak spin.
Development of the vehicles is a problem. Sales of the vehicles is a problem. The big thing is the charging stations. Many parts of the country - San Francisco is a good example - twenty-five percent of the charging stations don't work. They're inoperable, they're broken. You never see that at a gasoline station. Yeah, you might have that one pump with the yellow bag over the handle, but in San Francisco, 25% - a quarter of the charging stations are dead, not working. How's that going to work?
What about capacity of electricity? Well, there's already talk about having rolling blackouts in the US and the power grid not being able to keep up without having a massive amount of charging stations, and now they're talking about adding electric vehicles. Well, how much is that going to increase the capacity? Is it a big increase in the draw? Well, from many reports, an electric vehicle charging at night in a residential home, it's going to add 20 to 30 percent to the electric use of that home. Well, if all the homes go up 20 percent, that's going to put a big drain on the power grid.
Here's another troubling story that came up. We watched a video on YouTube here a couple days ago about a woman - happened to be in the UK - electric vehicle, and because there's not a lot of charging stations, she was driving home from work late at night, her range was going down. And look, charging stations are not manned facilities like a gas station. You go into a gas station that's lit up, there's people there, they work there, there's usually a little convenience store or at least a booth where you go to pay or you can talk to somebody. They have to have usually people on site because gasoline is a safety item - has to be a person there on site monitoring it. Worst case scenario, they can push the button to shut down the pumps. So it's a manned, lighted thing.
Many charging stations are unmanned, remote, in the back of a parking lot somewhere, right? They're not manned, there's not a staff of people there watching these. So this is a factor that's overlooked about people's safety. And this happens to be a young woman who was afraid for her safety, parked in the back of a parking lot at 11 o'clock at night, and she was immobilized. When your car is plugged into that charger, it's immobilized. You can't start the car, you have to get out to unplug it. That's a safety item. If some creeper comes up on your car, what are you gonna do? They know you're plugged in, they know you're not going anywhere. You are a captive audience, literally.
That's an issue that has not been brought up, and I don't see them going to staffed charging stations in lighted public areas anytime soon. The whole idea is to keep the cost low so you don't have to have staff.
Look, these are just a few of the possible considerations, problems that are starting to come to light. There's probably going to be more. Again, we're in the early stages of adoption of this new transportation type. It may turn out to be a great thing, it may turn out to be a really good human development for future progress. It may not. But regardless, these are things to consider.
I'm sure there were problems with gasoline vehicles when they came out - you know, scaring the horses off the road and getting stuck in the mud because there were no paved roads, whatever. But these considerations - we're smarter than that now, 100 years later. We shouldn't be reacting to the problems, we should be anticipating those in advance. It may be that the powers that be just want to get the cars out there and fix the problems later because they don't want the problems to upend the development of this new technology.
Let us know what your thoughts are. What do you think are the problems that are going to come up from electric vehicles that no one's thinking of yet that maybe could be problems that need big solutions from the stakeholders in these industries?