The Major Problems Blocking America’s Electric Car Future: The Electric Future Is Coming. But How Quickly Is Less Certain.

August 31, 2021

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by Daniel Yergin (Politico) ... Targets may be motivating. But no matter how much money is spent, shifting such a vast industrial and consumer ecosystem that is so basic to the economy faces big challenges, with the result that the share of new car sales that are EVS by 2030 will more likely be about 25 percent. The challenges still have to be met.

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It was an idea originally championed by Thomas Edison more than a century ago, but which had failed in the face of the Model T.

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The European Union is proposing tough regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from cars made or sold in Europe that would effectively ban the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines after 2035. California and Massachusetts similarly have announced ambitions to ban new cars with internal combustion engines by 2035.

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Just this month, the Biden administration proposed tougher fuel efficiency standards in the U.S. This will drive up the cost of conventional cars with the aim of pushing more new car buyers to switch to electric instead.

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It will take time for EV adoption to have a major impact on emissions as cars stay on the road for a long time — the average in the U.S. is 12 years.

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But as the shift to EVs speeds up, three big challenges stand out. One is the mining and supply chains to support that shift. Batteries require a lot of minerals, and that means a lot of mining and transporting of materials. According to mining and energy specialist Mark Mills, a thousand-pound electric car battery requires the moving of 500,000 pounds of earth in the course of mining.

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Very large and complex new supply chains will be required to replace those that deliver gasoline to motorists. Today, many of these supply chains are dominated by China, with which tensions are obviously rising. China, for instance, currently controls 80 percent of the lithium battery supply chains.

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But the scale of what is required should not be underestimated. It will be a massive job to build up a supply system that supports the current 600,000 new EVs annually into one capable of supporting Biden’s goal of about 9 million annual new car sales by 2030. Just to get to Biden’s 2030 goal of 50 percent would require a 15-fold increase in annual production of electric cars over a short eight-year period.

The second challenge is ensuring the infrastructure to support EVs in the post-gasoline era. That means the building of a ubiquitous EV charging infrastructure and the modernization and expansion of the electric grid. The grid also needs to be 100 percent reliable — a requirement that the recent major power disruptions in California and Texas underline.

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But the system that currently “charges” cars — gasoline stations — was developed by the private sector without government support. A long-term viable EV charging system needs a business model that is also based on the private sector and is not dependent on the federal government and shifting policies.

The third challenge involves the public — the people who buy automobiles. For most people, their biggest capital expenditure, after their homes, are their cars. READ MORE

New Research Raises Concern About Electric Vehicles’ Prospects (Forbes; includes AUDIO)

Electric Vehicles Powerless During Hurricanes (Forbes)

GM advising some Bolt EV owners to park 50 feet away from other cars in case of fire (CNBC)

Biden's fork in the Alaskan road -- WHERE DOES THIS ROAD GO: (Politico's Morning Energy)

Editorial: We must adapt to electric vehicles on the horizon (Quad City Times)

The push for electric vehicles may be killing sedans for good: Experts (ABC News)

Battery Fires Haunt the Electric Car and Clean Power Revolution (Bloomberg)

Why it's so hard to recycle electric-car batteries (Business Insider; includes VIDEO)

Electric vehicles have a weight problem -- Batteries are heavy, and they’re getting heavier. It makes EVs pollute more than they need to, and be more deadly during crashes. But there are solutions. (Fast Company)

EVs Have Lithium Booming — And This Time, There Is No Bust in Sight: Demand is expected to outstrip metal production for at least the next five years with few new mining projects on the horizon. (Bloomberg)

Biden's green agenda requires batteries, but building them is dirty business (Politico)

Consumers’ Mixed Emotions Foretell Roadblocks for an All-EV Future (Morning Consult)

Carmakers dream of clean, green, mean electric machines (Reuters)

Hurricane Ian flood damage to EVs creating ticking time bombs in Florida -- Officials and mechanics said they have been dealing with several car fires. (ABC News; includes VIDEO)

EV supply chains have a human rights problem. Can tech fix it? (Washington Post)

Florida firefighters face difficult battle while responding to electric car fires (WFTV; includes VIDEO)

Excerpt from Forbes: A recent NBER paper estimated the miles driven by EV owners using utility bills in California; by looking at the increased power consumption and using mileage per kilowatt hour estimates they concluded that most EVs were used for commuting, not for longer trips. Roughly 6000 miles per year was what the average EV travelled, which is less than half for the average vehicle overall (15,000 miles). The implication is that EV owners treat them as second cars, not their primary vehicles. It also means that the cost per mile is much higher for EVs than most estimates, because most of the costs are for the vehicles, not the fuel, and applying it over 40% as many the miles as a conventional vehicle more than doubles the cost per mile.

Scott Hardman and Gil Tal published research in Nature Energy that showed about 20% of Californians who owned electric vehicles switched back to ICE vehicles. Interestingly, the limited range of EVs didn’t seem to be the biggest driver of the switch, but rather lack of access to charging (something the government can address). Also, quite a number of those who switched to ICEs seemed ready to return to EVs, apparently when charging infrastructure improved and perhaps with newer, more advanced EV models.

This was followed by a KAPSARC study written by Rubal Dua and Prateek Bansal which used survey research covering the U.S. more broadly, finding that about half of EV buyers switched back to ICEs. The higher percentage, they theorize, is due to Californians’ greater environmental concerns. The figure below shows the reasons given for switching from EVs back to oil-fueled cars, and they are similar to what Hardman and Tal found, although range was more important than charging availability. Again, this makes sense as many urban drivers in California have lengthy commutes, but much spent in heavy traffic where EVs don’t draw on power. People in much of the country have longer commutes and thus might find the limited range more important.

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On the other hand, given the relatively immature market for EVs (very few are more than three or four years old), the high cost of battery replacement has not yet affected many drivers, and the resale value of the most recent models is an unknown.

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Burlig, Fiona, James B. Bushnell, David S. Rapson, and Catherine Wolfram, “Low Energy: Estimating Electric Vehicle Electricity Use,” Working Paper 28451, February 2021.

“ Discontinuance Among California’s Electric Vehicle Buyers: Why are Some Consumers Abandoning Electric Vehicles?” UC Davis Research Reports April 2021.

Dua, Rubal, and Prateek Bansal, “Once Consumers Adopt an Electric Vehicle, Do They Go Back?” KAPSARC Instant Insight, June 16, 2021. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: Biden's fork in the Alaskan road -- WHERE DOES THIS ROAD GO: The Biden administration has publicly vowed to center Indigenous needs in its management of U.S. lands. “I want the era when tribes were on the back burner to be over,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told a group of Indigenous journalists in March on her first day in office. But when that priority is at odds with the growing demand for critical minerals, the administration has been less emphatic, reports Adam Federman for POLITICO Magazine in partnership with Type Investigations.

The administration appears to be going through with the approval process for the Ambler Road project, which got a green light in the twilight days of the Trump administration and would pass through much of Alaska to the Ambler mining district. The area is rich in mineral deposits, especially copper and zinc — a growing priority for the administration as it pushes for clean technology that needs rare earths, from solar power to electric vehicle batteries. Global demand for rare earths is expected to skyrocket, and there are mounting calls for domestic production as ethical and political qualms grow over importing minerals from places like China.

But Indigenous groups are sounding the alarm over the road, saying it could be a major — and potentially existential — disruption to their millennia-old way of life. Five Native villages along the proposed road corridor and the Tanana Chiefs Conference sued the Interior Department over its handling of the Ambler Road environmental impact statement, arguing the department didn’t meet its obligations to meaningfully consult with tribes, Adam reports. Environmental groups are also bringing another lawsuit against the department saying it didn’t have the necessary information to adequately conduct an environmental analysis. READ MORE

Excerpt from Business Insider: • Dead electric-vehicle batteries could become a huge waste stream as the cars gain popularity.

Recycling the batteries would prevent them from being landfilled and reduce the need for mining more rare metals.
One company uses a shredding system submerged in liquid to safely recycle the batteries.

An electric-car battery can weigh thousands of pounds. As more electric cars hit the road, the race is on to find a sustainable way to deal with these batteries once they die. One startup uses a high-tech shredding system to recycle battery waste. But it can't recover all the valuable metals from it just yet. READ MORE WATCH VIDEO