The Expert Podcast

Look, don't read too much into this or make this a conspiracy theory yet, but here's an article from the World Economic Forum (WEF) which talks very directly about electric vehicles (EVs). Is this transition already in trouble before it even gets off the ground?

The WEF is a very powerful, influential group that puts pressure on government agencies and companies to do certain things. Whether you agree with it or not, or think it's a big conspiracy or not, it doesn't really matter. What they've identified is that shifting from fossil fuels to renewables requires huge amounts of critical metals.

We've talked about this before: on electric vehicles, you need nickel, cobalt, lithium, and all kinds of very rare earth metals. Recycling alone won't be enough to sustain the amount of materials needed. It tells you right there that there's not enough of these materials to build the electric vehicles that are needed for everybody to have one. It's very, very clear, and this is coming from the side that wants people to transition from gasoline and fossil fuel vehicles.

This organization is pushing the switch from fossil fuel vehicles, and they're saying that there's not enough metals to build the batteries for these cars. What's their solution? Increase sharing of the vehicles.

What does that mean? What are they trying to accomplish? Number one: go from owning to using. What they're saying is that nobody should own a car; instead, they should have community vehicles that everybody shares and just use them when needed. Rental-style sharing can reduce ownership of equipment and usage. Car-sharing platforms have already seized that opportunity to enable a broader transition.

They also want to change the way we design things—things like unlocking keyless systems—but also designing cities to make people live closer together so you don't need to drive as far. The mindset needed is to redesign cities to reduce private vehicles. That's their solution: nobody owns a car, and you put everybody in cities so you don't have to drive out into the country or drive far to use a vehicle.

Why would they want to do this? Well, it says right here: an obvious route is to mine more virgin material, but this comes with its own cost and potentially unintended consequences. It's very likely that mining these metals for electric vehicles might cause more environmental harm than just continuing to use petroleum products like gasoline and diesel.

They talk about recycling, but they've also noticed that there's not enough metals currently in circulation to build all the cars that are needed. Even with recycling, mineral production is still forecast to increase by 500 percent, and that may still not be enough.

So what the heck is going on here? Are electric vehicles going to happen or not? If there's not enough metals to mine to make all the vehicles, what does that mean? Electric vehicles right now represent about two or three percent of all the vehicles on the road worldwide. If you need to replace 100 percent of the vehicles, plus account for the increase in the number of vehicles (vehicle ownership increases by about five to six percent per year), in ten years, vehicle ownership could increase by 40 to 50 percent.

If you want to have 100 percent electric vehicles in ten years, you’d need to almost increase the number of vehicles by a factor of 50 or 60—not percent, but 50 to 60 times the electric vehicles being produced right now. Is there enough production for that? Is there enough electrical power for that?

Forget about the mining of materials—if all these vehicles on the road are electric, is there enough grid capacity? The article doesn't even get into that. So what the heck is going on here? Are we missing something? Is there something about this switch to electric vehicles that's more than meets the eye?

It just doesn't make sense. What are your thoughts? In the meantime, what do you want to buy? Do you want an electric vehicle? Do you want a plug-in vehicle? What are you looking for? Does this knowledge raise any red flags or questions for you?