Good morning! Today we’re talking about electric cars, bikes, and buses (oh my!). All this and more in today’s issue of The Morning Dump.
Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
Akio Toyoda Throws Cold Water On EV Dreams
Toyota President Akio Toyoda was in Las Vegas this week, but not to gamble or even catch Aerosmith’s residency (Toyoda is a known “Honkin’ on Bobo” fan). It’s the annual dealer meeting and our man in Aichi had some feels about this whole electrification thing going on. Per Automotive News:
Toyota is still long on hydrogen and is absolutely correct that tossing EVs into developing markets, as we’ve discussed, ain’t gonna work yet. If you love Toyotas and want an EV, no worries, they’re still going to make plenty of those.
That’s Not Gonna Stop New York From Joining California
California has decided to ban non-electrified car sales starting in 2035 which, it’s worth remembering, is about 13 years away. New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced yesterday that New York is following suit. In her statement:
“New York is a national climate leader and an economic powerhouse, and we’re using our strength to help spur innovation and implementation of zero-emission vehicles on a grand scale,” Governor Hochul said. “With sustained state and federal investments, our actions are incentivizing New Yorkers, local governments, and businesses to make the transition to electric vehicles. We’re driving New York’s transition to clean transportation forward, and today’s announcement will benefit our climate and the health of our communities for generations to come.”
If this makes Ford build the plug-in hybrid Maverick then I’m here for it, frankly.
Harley LiveWire SPAC Raises Less Money Than Expected
SPAC, which stands for “So Much Money, Probably, Actually, Crap…” was one of those weird pandemic-era ideas wherein a company could skip the normal, difficult IPO process and go public real quick. It worked for a few companies, but has also failed for many others.
Harley Davidson’s EV brand, LiveWire, was supposed to use a SPAC to bring in a ton of money for the company’s electrification ambitions. Did it work? Here’s Bloomberg on Tuesday:
The company, which went public through a combination with a blank-check firm, brought in $295 million in net proceeds through the listing, a spokesperson said Tuesday. That’s far short of the $545 million anticipated when the deal was announced in December.
After an initial surge, the shares fell 7.1% at 2:27 p.m. in New York, valuing the company at about $2 billion. LiveWire originally expected an equity value of $2.3 billion at close.
It’s Friday, let’s see how they closed yesterday… You know what. Maybe don’t look.
But It’s A Good Time For EV Buses
Citing a huge amount of demand, the EPA is going to basically double the amount of money given to local school districts to increase their electric bus fleets. From Cleveland.com:
The funding is being increased to $965 million, nearly doubling the $500 million that was made available in May. The EPA says in a news release there has been “overwhelming demand” for electric school buses, with about 2,000 applications requesting nearly $4 billion for more than 12,000 buses.
[…]
“America’s school districts delivered this message loud and clear – we must replace older, dirty diesel school buses,” EPA Director Michael Regan said in a statement. “Together, we can reduce climate pollution, improve air quality, and reduce the risk of health impacts like asthma for as many as 25 million children who ride the bus every day.”
Absolutely. School buses, which park for long periods of time and run mostly identical and compact routes every day, are the ideal use case for electrification. Also, no one expects them to be light, so tossing some batteries under the floor doesn’t seriously impact performance of a vehicle you don’t want to be fast.
The Flush
Whelp, time to drop the lid on today’s edition of The Morning Dump. It’s Friday and I’m curious how you feel about electrification. Is it coming soon? A million years away? Is your current or next car going to be electric? I sincerely want a PHEV Maverick and would put down a deposit as soon as they offered one.
I’m on the record previously stating that the 2035 ICE bans are grandstanding by politicians who know they won’t be in office by then. I think he’s absolutely right that EV adoption is going to take a lot longer than people want to admit.
That said, I’m also on the record that hydrogen is not a viable solution in the foreseeable future. Getting the electrical grid up to a point where it can handle charging a huge number of relatively efficient EVs is going to be hard enough. Getting it to the point where it can handle generating hydrogen for the same number of inefficient hydrogen vehicles is an order of magnitude harder. Never mind the infrastructure requirements to store and distribute hydrogen.
EVs are the correct path forward _for now_, but it’s going to be difficult. It will take massive infrastructure investment and some hardcore science to come up with better battery chemistries (which are almost certainly coming, likely faster than ever in history given the financial incentives to come up with new battery tech right now).
I will be in the market for an EV when charging stations arrive to Southeast Kansas. I live 128 miles from my kid’s house in Wichita. After driving that distance, I can drive perhaps 50 miles and have a chance of getting back home on a single charge. My kids don’t and won’t have a charger anytime soon, so recharging in Wichita is a hassle unless I want to spend about an hour roundtrip to the charging station and use my charging time to read a book.
Need a charging station along about the intersection of US 400 and KS 99.
And I really enjoy driving my Cadillac CT6 over the same route! Fast, comfortable and stylish.
Assuming you’re staying overnight, as little as a 4KW L2 charge would do the job. A portable charger plugged into a standard 50A 240V (think dryer, oven, etc) would get you the range needed with plenty to spare.
Or do you mean driving round-trip in a single day? If so, that’s a niche use-case indeed.
I have no idea how realistic 2035 is. My concern with newer cars mostly relates to new legislation, like I’m concerned how the proposed sobriety testing features could ever be implemented seamlessly.
But beyond that, the NY news release says : “[…] will require all new passenger cars, pickup trucks, and SUVs sold in New York State to be zero emissions by 2035”. I think there’s a bit of terror wrapped into that, when there should be extra emphasis on “new”. It doesn’t look like that would ban used ICE car sales? And certainly, ICE cars already running around would be fine. I feel like the actual disappearance of ICE vehicles from the road (ignoring commercial stuff like construction, maybe semis, etc.) would take over a decade past that point, even if they added something like “no re-registering ICE vehicles from out of state here” in 2040, or similar.
I’m still a long way from being able to afford just about *any* new car. So if the people buying new cars every few years eventually end up in EVs, well, that just sounds like more cheap ICE cars on the used market.
(Not that I’m trying to avoid EVs. Just an apartment dweller with apartment-dwelling friends and no solid solutions at the current point in time, even if you gave me an EV with no strings attached.)
“even if you gave me an EV with no strings attached.”
I’d figure out the logistics toot sweet if given an EV with no strings attached.
I mean, there’s a few EV charging stations near me, just not not close enough for walking distance from my apartment. It wouldn’t be impossible, but my driving patterns (a couple of 100-mile drives in one day some weekends, rather than any regular commuting) just means I’m a bit further from the ideal use case for them.
I’d still take an EV no doubt; but not if I had to give up my hybrid. It’s just a sticky spot for apartment dwellers.
Technology adoption often takes less time than folks expect. Currently I am accessing the internet via a fiber optic line. Before that I had a cable connection. Before that it was DSL using a phone line. Before that it was via a 56k modem using the phone line. Almost everyone in a mid size or larger city today can get quick internet access. Why? Because people are willing to pay for a company to run a cable or fiber optic line to their house. The cost to build out these networks was very expensive but mostly private companies did it because we were willing to pay them $50-$100 a month to get fast internet access. As people buy more electric cars, companies will improve the electrical grid to accommodate EVs. It will cost a lot, but less than the cost of the impacts we are beginning to see from human caused climate change.
Look man, don’t come in here with your thoughtful takes and nuanced opinions. This is the iNtErNeT, where everything is either the best thing ever, or a huge steaming pile of shit. There is no in-between. So your reasoned and completely sane logic about EV and EV adoption and subsequent nationwide charging capacity has absolutely zero place here.
I currently have a Niro PHEV. I have a Sportage PHEV on order, but who knows when/if that’s going to arrive. I am tempted to go full electric, but I don’t own my home. Until I can install my own L2 charger into my own place, I don’t really want to make the jump.
I am 76 years old and I do not expect EVs to be completely viable for almost all Americans in my lifetime. Infrastructure, charging times, range anxiety, etc., will, almost certainly, be solved, but not soon. Plug-in hybrids are a good solution for most folks with the ability to easily recharge them now and will probably be so for the next twenty years or so.
EVs as mainstream vehicles are coming, just not yet.
IMHO, Toyota is probably doing the right thing by not hurrying its development of EVs.
Has everyone forgotten that hydrogen IS electric? The hydrogen is just a storage medium, like the batteries. It uses the fuel cell to generate electricity instead of storing it in battery packs. You don’t burn the damn stuff.
Toyota is taking the long view, the only limitation to fuel cell adoption right now is the distribution network. Well guess what? They built one a hundred years ago for gasoline, there’s nothing to stop a new one for liquid hydrogen. As I understand it, the fuel cell technology works, they cracked that problem years ago. It’s just the distribution that’s the issue right now.
I would ask if you know Toyota is heavy on HICE, with a couple race teams it’s using for development, but it’s obvious you have a pre-rehearsed screed about this.
While fuel cells look viable up through middle sized engine replacement, there’s a viable case for HICE in heavy equipment applications.
“there’s a viable case for HICE in heavy equipment applications. ”
Is there? HICE are far less thermally efficient than HFC (or even a good ICE) and emit more NOx.
I’d think NG or propane are much better options over hydrogen in ICE.
“the only limitation to fuel cell adoption right now is the distribution network. ”
Incorrect. That’s _one_ of the limits on hydrogen going mainstream, albeit a significant one (moving and storing hydrogen is not remotely as easy as moving and storing gas, and we’re not even very good at that based on the number of oil spills we see). The other big one is that generating hydrogen in a way that doesn’t involve fossil fuels is incredibly inefficient and impossible to do at scale right now. You think the grid can’t handle the influx of EVs? Imagine if each one of them took multiple times as much electricity to fill up. Hydrogen takes a huge infrastructure problem and makes it nigh-insurmountable.
Love the idea of electrification.
Know what makes me sure I’m not going to buy one anytime soon?
I can’t afford to buy a house. I’m renting a house, and I’ll be double dipped in chocolate and then damned straight to hell if I put in a charger in my landlord’s property.
Also, I’ve been without power at home for 48 hours now because of that damn hurricane. How the hell am I going to charge my car when I can’t even keep my food cold?
I’m sorry to hear you’ve been without power for so long. Hopefully you’ve still got water? We’re on a well and a ways out of town, so I know how much multi-day hurricane related outages can suck even without any property damage to deal with.
Given it looks like we’re going to be living with storms like this for the foreseeable, being able to use a BEV as emergency backup will be a great silver lining. 60+ kWh will run a fridge and some lights for a good while. Of course, if your landlord doesn’t allow the modification, that wouldn’t help…
I wouldn’t want to install a charger in someone else’s property either, but we’ve owned our Leaf for three years and we get by with the 110V charger.
“I can’t afford to buy a house. I’m renting a house, and I’ll be double dipped in chocolate and then damned straight to hell if I put in a charger in my landlord’s property.”
Same here. Do you have an electric dryer? If so you already have at least level 2 charging available.
“Also, I’ve been without power at home for 48 hours now because of that damn hurricane. How the hell am I going to charge my car when I can’t even keep my food cold? ”
Sorry to hear that. Still that highlights another reason to go EV, V2G charging. Nissan has had that included on the Leaf since 2013MY and they recently announced the hardware to make it happen is now available:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/12/23349971/nissan-leaf-bidirectional-charging-approved-v2h-v2g-fermata-energy
If Nissan were to make such a bi-directional charging port both portable and able to provide emergency power on demand that would go a long way to keeping your food cold during outages without involving your landlord.
Honestly, for most people a L1 charger’s good enough to cover daily range needed. No installation needed, just plug it in and pick up another 30-50 miles of range overnight every night.
Being without grid power does make charging hard, though. About as hard as pumping gas from a station that doesn’t have grid power.
Not going to be a popular statement on social media, does this mean Akio Toyoda’s house is in danger of being swatted now? Does that happen in Japan when people online get pissed off at somebody?
The EV revolution will not be televised. Or something. Broadly speaking I think Mr. Toyoda is correct, and I am absolutely willing to wait on the sidelines for a bit while the tech gets sorted out. We’ll end up with EV for a commuter car before too long I suppose, but nothing in the current market really excites me. My next personal car is going to be a toy–preferably with plenty of power and a stick shift. Part of me wants to get something with big ole honking V8 while that’s still a thing, but in my budget that pretty much means either a Mustang or Camaro–neither of which I find particularly appealing (they’re just too big for my tastes), so I’ll probably end up in a Supra or M2.
Agree with Toyoda, electrification is not happening anytime soon. That said, things like the school buses are exactly the right move to help the climate. Garbage trucks seem like another place to make an impact.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We’re putting the horse WAY in front of the kart on EVs. They are likely the future but the issue with them is that a) our garbage infrastructure cannot handle the increased load and b) they simply cannot handle fringe case uses. Manufacturers should be leaning in on PHEVs so much harder as they are a real world solution. Full EV for 90% of an owners needs but can also drive across the state should one need.
Now I know, I know, there are people out there screaming, “just rent a car for when you need to travel” or “just take a break for 20 minutes to recharge.” My response is hell no. First, I don’t want to pay $1,000 for a weeks worth of rental car on my vacation on top of lodging/food etc. Also, most rental companies do not allow pets which becomes problematic as we take our dog on vacay. Also, I like MY car not some poverty spec Corolla. And also no. I don’t want to sit and wait for 20 minutes in the middle of a 5 hour drive. I just want to get there. Beyond the inconvenience, fast/super charging negatively impacts longterm battery life and while you wouldn’t be doing it often it’s going to start to play a role as we get into 2nd/3rd owners.
And I haven’t even touched on the power grid issues. I mean hell, CA just issued emergency notices to cut power in the afternoon to preserve the grid. And now you want to add a few million EVs into that mess?! There’s also the shit show that is TX where the rates can cost thousands for like 1kW or whatever.
I get it EVs are infact the future but governments and manufacturers are trying to get to point F without stopping at B, C, D, or E first. PHEVs should be the primary focus over the next decade NOT full EVs.
Charging is standardized. CCS1 is the standard. Tesla does not use it because it did not exist when they started. There is also a big used EV market. Go to CarMax and auto trader and there are tons of used cars. Batteries do degrade but it’s a much smaller percentage, it’s not a phone battery or like a leaf battery. New battery material blends have already made this less of a concern.
Standardized charging wasn’t ever uttered in my issues with EVs, so sure?
And sure degradation may not ultimately be a huge deal for a 1-5 year old EV but do we really even know at this point the real world long term trends? Modern EVs have been around right around a decade at this point if you factor in the early Tesla’s and the back of that decade is heavily weighted towards the bulk of EVs on the road. Of those how many have used the current fast charging platforms and how many miles are on them? I’m not saying there won’t be a used market for EVs either but we’re in a weird land of people thinking like EVs as we have traditional cars when there aren’t the same (or don’t know for certain at least). Case in point, I have a 30 year old Buick sitting in my driveway. I know for a fact that I can go outside and turn the key and it will start and get roughly the same 250 miles to a tank that it did in 1992. Will a 30 year old EV do the same? I doubt it. Will a 30 year old EV even have any value as the battery degradation will likely be substantial after 30 years of use. What then? Are you going to spend $20k on a new battery pack for a 30 year old car? I wouldn’t. These are real and valid issues facing EVs.
To be clear, I’m not saying EVs are bad/evil/pointless and fully agree that with the technology we have now are the future. However, there will be a stepping stone between ICE and EVs that no one is looking at or even acknowledging.
Hydrogen is the future. Toyota is investing in it heavily, along with HEVs. They’re not stupid, which tells you everything you need to know about hydrogen as a fuel source in the future.
Toyota is spending more on battery investment than fuel cell. Their total fuel cell investment is in hopes that don’t breakthroughs are made or hedging bets if lithium prices go through the roof.
We won’t really know until we know. If I had to split the difference, I would argue that BEV technology will primarily be used for light duty or passenger vehicles, which is what its suited to (the Ford Lightning’s real world towing range is abysmal). I suspect hydrogen may be implemented into medium and heavier duty applications where the added weight of safeguarding the fuel cell isn’t as big of a deal.
This is what I foresee as well. Electric will never be viable for untethered heavy equipment.
In both cases, electrical generation is where substantial lag is occurring. Both BEV and H2 require a huge increase in the future that we can’t cleanly handle. Maybe fusion will be a reality by 2050, since it’s been 30 years out since before I was born.
“Hydrogen is the future.”
Hydrogen IS the future!!… of last resort.
EVs are coming but still far from climaxing.
I am optimistic about electric vehicles as an option. I think that they’re already viable for some use cases, and as the technology evolves, those uses will continue to expand.
I’d probably be an idea electric car user. My commute is only about 20 miles round trip (and my current schedule only has me taking that trip twice weekly), I have never driven more than 100 miles in a day, and I have an attached garage in which to charge a car (I only have a 110V outlet, though, so at least some upgrades might be necessary).
But I’ll acknowledge that my situation is not everyone’s, and there are some use cases that may never see the migration to electric, and that’s ok. No single technology is the panacea for all the world’s problems.
I see one more new ICE in my future before I go electric. I’m thinking big, noisy, obnoxious HP, too. Then after a few years, I’ll switch to swooshing around in my superior electric car. Although, I’ll probably keep at least one ICE tucked in the back of the garage, for weekend jaunts to relive the good ‘ole days.
I think Toyoda is right and I think people that think we’ll just “figure it out” in 12 model years are optimistic to a fault. I think we’ll get much closer trying than we will without ambitious goals, but I think we are going to be WAY off and we’ll get more realistic targets as 2035 approaches. I think NY is doing it right in the mandate being “electrified” not “zero emissions”. Granted some cars will be very mildly electrified, it presents a more realistic goal.
There are plenty of places on the planet where even charging a cell phone might require ingenuity, so it’s a sure bet you couldn’t charge an EV there. Toyoda/Toyota is wise to continue development on fossil fuel vehicles.
Those places where folks are having trouble finding places to charge a cell phone are not buying new cars. The entire continent of Africa buys about 1 million new cars per year while the US market is around 15 million. There are 4X as many people living in Africa than the US. The transition to EV will very likely take longer than some folks are pushing but there are no insurmountable barriers. I have both a plug in hybrid with about 60 miles of EV range and a pure EV with about a 230 mile range. If I had to drive 12 hours straight through I could take the hybrid but I almost never do. A little bit of planning makes even an all day trip in an EV with access to good quick charging no problem. Tesla is still really the only good nationwide reliable quick charge system. All you need to do is start the day with a full charge and end at a hotel or place you can charge overnight as you sleep. Plan your charging around bathroom and food breaks. I’ve done multiple 500-3000 mile trips this summer without issue.
“The entire continent of Africa buys about 1 million new cars per year while the US market is around 15 million.”
This would be a consideration if the number for Africa was to remain static which it isn’t. The demand will continue to grow, and Toyota is wise to anticipate this.
I’m a huge proponent of EVs and renewable energy in general. The company I work for installs solar panels, batteries, and EV chargers. The parking lot at my work has half a dozen EVs lined up by the chargers every day. My mother drives an EV. I think EVs are great, and I want them to succeed.
However, my next car won’t be an EV. There are several reasons for this. For one, they just aren’t quite flexible enough for my lifestyle although they’re getting close to be sure. For another, they’re out of my price range. Lastly, the segment isn’t mature enough for me to want to jump in.
That last one is an under-discussed problem, I think. EVs are new enough and uncommon enough that there’s not a huge market for used ones, but I think the EVs of today may have a hard time finding second or third owners. Batteries degrade over time and are hellaciously expensive to replace, charging standards are not fully solidified, and newer EVs keep getting better in areas like range and charge speed, which buyers care a lot about. Worse, from the perspective of someone selling a secondhand EV, all of these areas are improving rapidly. It’s not like an ICE car where a 10-year-old model is still basically the same as a new one in all the ways that really matter—EVs in 2032 will be genuinely way better than what you can buy now. I don’t want to get involved with that. I’ll wait.
A PHEV, though? Sure, that’d be great. Something I can use in electric mode most of the time, but “recharge” at any gas station should I need to do so? Yes, please. And a conventional hybrid? Heck, I already have one of those in the fleet, and it’s great at being a boring but reliable people-and-stuff hauler that sips gas. If you ask me, hybrid drivetrains should be the default at this point. Full BEV, though? It’s getting there, but it’s not there yet for me.
100% agree. I think we missed out on a lot of emissions reduction in the last 20 years by not pushing for PHEVs and regular hybrids. It is like people want to skip a step. I am with you on early adoption of EVs. I really think the current crop is going to look like a complete joke in comparison to the next couple generations, and like you said it is not in trivial ways like infotainment or crap like that. They will be fundamentally better at being cars. I’m down with hybrids and plug-ins, but won’t be taking the EV plunge just yet.
Mark from Savagegeese has brought this up a lot and I agree with him…current EVs are going to be obsolete in the next 2-3 years with how quickly the technology is changing. If you want one right now your best move is to lease it. By the time the lease is over there’s going to be something out there with more power, more range, and probably even a lower price.
Then…what the hell are we going to do with all the obsolete EVs? It’s basically turning cars into a commodity like cell phones, but with exponentially more potential for electronic and battery waste. I genuinely have no idea why this isn’t being discussed more…I think the general public is still in the honeymoon phase with the technology and is easily dazzled by the party tricks of cars like Teslas.
…that being said, I find the chance for crazy depreciation on Taycans to be intriguing. I’ll bet they’ll be surprisingly affordable in a few years and I’ll be keeping my eye on it.
I’m by no means an engineer, but I’ve long felt that if EVs are to ever succeed at scale the batteries would have to be completely divorced from their total cost of ownership somehow. Imagine that instead of charging stations cities would have a network of warehouse type facilities with bays that you drive into where your discharged battery gets swapped with a freshly charged one. The discharged battery then gets sent off on a gurney for inspection, wear testing and recharging. The vehicles would still feature charging ports for topping off the charge at home or while on the road, but the battery pack itself would be standardized and belong to whatever entities operate these networks. They would be tasked with battery maintenance, and EV resale values would no longer be affected by spent Li-ion. I realize this is firmly in the realm of spitballing fantasy, but I sincerely believe that automakers royally screwed the pooch by not at least considering something like this twenty years ago. I think the goal was to spur adoption by making the overall experience as similar to ICE as possible (with how connecting a charger mimics fueling up at the pump to some degree), but it seems to have led us down the wrong path.
Battery swap has been mooted as a solution a number of times, and companies like Nio are doing it in China, but there are numerous barriers to the strategy. The standardized battery back is a big one. For car manufacturer’s, the tech behind their battery packs is often one of the “unique selling propositions” that differentiate them from competitors. Very few companies are going to want to give that up.
Plus every manufacturer would have to choose from about 3-4 battery pack sizes with common dimensions and connections. Who would warranty the batteries? No manufacturer would warranty those made by another manufacturer. Then you have Tesla making the battery pack a structural component of some vehicles. Plus you would need almost double the number of batteries to have extras available for swapping. It will never happen large scale.
I usually give Toyota the benefit of the doubt, but in this case they seem to be digging in because they’ve completely bungled their EV program so far. Considering how they changed the game with hybrids, it’s pretty amazing how badly they’ve misjudged things.
They haven’t misjudged, they just understand the real world issues with full EVs better than others. There are logistical mountains that still need to be climbed before EVs become real world solutions and Toyota sees that.
They’re behind basically all other OEMs and the wheels literally fell off the one they’ve brought to market.
Not saying they won’t ultimately get there, they totally will, but you have to squint awfully hard to view their approach so far as a success.
Why front the R&D up front when you can let other bear the brunt of the expense and then you ride the coat tails? I’m not a Toyota fanboi by any means but taking a slow and conservative approach here really is the smartest move IMO.
100% the correct take.
It’s an embarrassingly childish response, too bad the media won’t put it in the correct context.
School buses are actually a great application for going electric, with fixed, and mostly short, regular routes. After the kids are dropped off at school, they can charge the batteries during the school day, and they should be charged in time to bring the kids home from school.
Akio is right that it’s too soon for the EV mandates. The tech isn’t mature yet, battery life issues, charging station issues, possibly procuring the lithium could be a problem, too.
Any EV mandates should start with school buses, and they might even be able to get away with smaller batteries, too. Less weight, lower cost, less lithium.
Seems to me I read somewhere that the slow adoption of electric school buses is not the cost of the buses themselves, it’s installation of the recharging network. Hopefully, some of that gov’ment money is specifically set aside for that.
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Same is true of muni buses, especially ones that can be at least partially powered by overhead lines.
My opinion is that EV mandates won’t work, will cause resentment, will ultimately cause very little CO2 reduction relative to their societal cost, and will ultimately be rolled back to an extent. Extrapolating the pace of EV improvement from the last decade to the next decade will not be sufficient to provide vehicles that cover the use case for everyone by 2035, and other challenges like sourcing the necessary raw materials and expanding the grid will also not be fixed in time.
My free advice to politicians concerned about climate change is to implement a carbon tax instead, with half the proceeds being returned to lower income taxpayers, and the other half earmarked for clean energy research and carbon capture. That way, nothing needs to be banned, and those who enjoy driving their ICE cars and want to do so well into the future will be able to (including buying new ones).
In the meantime you’re burning the gas (oxygen) that you actually need to survive.
How will that tax find its way as a reparation to electrical Europe? Once a country starts using electric instead of ICE, a compensation of the retarded countries is in order.
I mostly agree with your policy points. Any policy announcements that are over 5 years out need to be met with a heavy dose of skepticism. That said, it’s a signaling move, showing the industry where the target is moving.
I get that EVs don’t meet your driving requirements, but they would fit well into most people’s driving patterns.
Prices on ICE vehicles are pretty stable, there isn’t a whole lot of fat to cut. EVs are going to continue to reduce in price as battery technology improves. This makes all of the other points obsolete as purchase costs and operating costs will be so much lower on EVs, relegating ICE vehicles into niche spaces.
“but they would fit well into most people’s driving patterns.”
I dispute that pretty strongly. Anyone who tows, who lives in a cold climate, who drives on long road trips, who lives in an apartment, who lives in a rural area, who enjoys a coupe or convertible body style, or who can’t afford an average $60,000 transaction price is poorly served by today’s EV offerings.
A ban implies that every need will be met by 2035, or else it’s going to cause anger and resentment. I can’t see the future, so I can’t say for certain that technology won’t make a quantum leap and EVs will perfectly satisfy every consumer just over 12 years from now, but in many ways the EVs we have today are little better than a 10 year old Model S. So I’m a bit skeptical that there will be something for everybody on that short a time frame.
From what I hear, Norwegians would take issue with your claim that they don’t work for cold climates. Also they may not be great for towing, but how many trucks with tow packages actually get used for towing?
The tech is immature and we should have started pushing it when Carter had solar on the white house, but we didn’t, so we need to start from where we are. Saying it’s not perfect so we shouldn’t bother is not helpful.
Norway is an oceanic country that doesn’t actually get very cold.
The *all time record* low in Oslo is -15 F, a temperature the Upper Midwest sees several times every single winter. The average low in Jan-Feb is about 25 F, comparable to St Louis, not Minneapolis.
I realize it’s popular around here to assume no truck drivers tow, because haha look at those Trump voting hicks wasting their money on trucks, but actual statistics show lots of them do.
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/mark-phelan/2018/10/12/pickup-trucks-ford-chevy/1611168002/
Even if only a few did tow though, a ban means everybody is stuck with garbage range and recharge times. So why exactly do they need to be punished?
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This counts as “research”?:
“A working pedigree matters. More than 80 percent of full-size pickup owners expect to tow cars or trailers, 61 percent are contractors or plan home improvement projects and 48 percent plan to tow or haul a motorcycle or ATV, Cox Automotive reports.”
Uh huh. They “expect” to use their trucks as trucks the same way they “expect” to use their New Year resolution exercise equipment as exercise equipment and not as clothes racks.
…
“Owners of smaller trucks tend to use them more for play, outdoorsy activities like camping, surfing and hauling motorcycles and such,” Autotrader executive analyst Michelle Krebs said.
“Full-size trucks are workhorses when it comes to jobs or play. They are used to tow and haul big things like trailers and for home improvement and contract projects.”
No word on how often that is done, could be once over the entire ownership.
Meanwhile other research points to the opposite direction:
“But, as it turns out, a significant portion of truck owners never use their trucks for these capabilities. According to Edwards’ data*, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.”
https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-size-pickup-truck-you-need-a-cowboy-costume
*https://www.strategicvision.com/
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We did. My father was part of a committee exploring alternative energy during the Carter administration. He had an extensive background in nuclear and aerospace engineering so he was quite familiar with the tech needed for renewables. The tech at the time was nowhere near what was needed to be useful on anything but niche applications. Solar panels were laughably expensive, the electronics needed to convert the power were inefficient. Not practical even for large scale industrial power generation. Wind turbine efficiency scales exponentially with size so you NEED a big turbine to be cost effective. Unfortunately the big turbines of the day tended to self destruct (balance issues). Driving over the Altimont pass in the east SFBA during the 80s till the late naughts was a depressing experience. Most of the wind turbines were either stopped or visibly broken.
Geothermal works…for a while but the materials of the time could not handle the hot, corrosive environments. The Soviets may have figured that one out in the 60’s for their rockets but they weren’t sharing. We didn’t even know what they had till the 90’s; our best and brightest had just written it off as impossible. Even so AFAIK there haven’t been any huge gains in geothermal since then so maybe that tech didn’t translate or maybe there are other hurdles to overcome too.
Hydro is great, generally reliable and the tech mature but of course it blocks rivers and so there is opposition and natural limitations on where one can build. You also need lots of water which is a problem in areas that suffer megadroughts.
Nuclear was the path forward until 1979 and public opinion turned on it. After TMI the government enacted a Byzantine mess of mostly useless and redundant red tape regulations that pushed the price of nuclear to impractical. We’re still suffering the consequences of that knee jerk hysteria.
Still in Dads opinion you can thank the Saudis/OPEC for our lack of renewables. They manipulated the market to destroy all interest (and funding) in renewables by dropping the price of oil when research into renewables posed any kind of threat. The money dried up, the research stopped and the price of oil inched back up. Eventually the research money started to flow again but the damage was done with lots of lost ground to make up for. Then when advances finally started to happen again the price of oil dropped enough to kill interest and research dollars. Rinse, repeat. It wasn’t until after 911 that the U.S. got any kind of serious about weaning itself off OPEC oil but of course that takes a very long time.
Despite the US research into advanced solar it was the Chinese getting serious about solar to make large scale solar a reality. The cheap panels we buy today are the more or less the same boring old silicon based tech as was had during Carter’s time but Chinese manufacturing advances has made them far cheaper and more reliable thus practical.
Large wind turbines needed modern self balancing electronics to work. Pretty sure it was the Chinese who made those practical as well.
The Chinese and Koreans have been getting big into nuclear so I’m hopeful we can ride on those coattails too.
TL:DR We did do the research in Carter’s day but OPEC cock blocked any progress.
Norwegians don’t drive as far as North Americans. Cold but short distance driving is very different. I drive 45-60 minutes to work (each way) and my drive is not nearly as long as some of my co-workers. I have some who drive >2 hours each way every day.
Towing is going to be a long while coming. That might be the domain of hybrids for quite some time, or some major improvements in battery technology. 2035 might be a serious challenge there. If that target’s not looking likely by 2033 or so I bet they’ll relax the ban a bit.
Cold climate is pretty well solved with slightly bigger batteries and heat pumps. The newer Teslas lose something like 20% of their range in winter, which at 300-400 miles isn’t really a big problem. Another generation of vehicles and it’s likely to go from minor inconvenience to total non-issue.
Coupes and convertibles are definitely missing for now, unless you count Rimac or the Evija. Looks like they’ll start in 2025 or 2026 most likely, which leaves plenty of time for the 2035 deadline.
The EVs are coming and the tech is starting to catch up. As a target, 2035 may be bit close but do able.
There is no one car for every purpose. For now I see EVs as the commuters/around town and the bus option. My office, which I do to twice a week, has two chargers available. I see these becoming the norm at work/shopping/movie theaters, etc.
As charging stations become more prevalent and hopefully faster, I can see longer trips being within the realm of possibility for an EV.
Along with this home chargers coming down in price to allow for those with the space to add one without breaking the bank.
With that said, I can see an EV as the next or 2nd car I add to the fleet. More of matter of what my needs are and the options.
Toyoda is pragmatic, and telling us truthful facts. Hochul is an headline grabbing moron that is playing to a liberal base to try to get elected to the governorship for the first time. School buses are a perfect use case for EV’s. I say all this as a PHEV owning New Yorker.
I lean pretty far left on most issues (ducks) but even I think this Neoliberal EV grandstanding is patently absurd. Our similarly center-left liberal mayor in DC just made a huge deal out of banning…gas lawn equipment. That’s right. Mowers, weed whackers, etc. She claimed it as a huge political victory, and people are eating it up.
…how much of an actual difference will it make? Essentially none at all…and shifting the responsibility for climate change onto individuals and what they drive/what lawn mower they use and the like is missing the point entirely. The vast majority of American carbon emissions come from corporations.
But neither liberals nor conservatives will ever hold those corporations accountable because that’s where their money comes from. All that this hand wringing over individuals using ICE is is a big distraction.
Small engines pollute a lot more than big ones. Big Small Engine petitioned long and hard to exempt their off-road small engines from any emissions regulations for a long time. A ten year old 5 hp mower emits more NOx, particulate, and unburned hydrocarbons than 10 cars or so. I may be understating the issue. Newer engines are slightly better.
And, electric lawn equipment for private use is just fine. My Ego string trimmer is a beast. Same with their 18″ chainsaw and hedge trimmer. Not having to mess with tiny temperamental engines is wonderful. Not smelling like gas after finishing trimming the lawn is wonderful. Now to find a good electric riding mower and it’ll be all electrified.
You essentially said what I was going to, so thank you! Though you did leave out the 2-stroke lawn equipment, which is even worse in terms of pollution.
I’ll also confirm that electric powered lawn tools are the best. My electric lawn mower is soo easy to use. Every season, wirrr powers right up. No bullshit carbs, old gas, oil changes, all that.
If you’re looking for a minuscule market to vilify that wouldn’t really have any impact, that’d be 2 stroke dirt bikes / shifter karts etc. But gas lawn equipment, especially as they are used now, is bad news.
I wonder the ratio of emissions from homeowners (who mostly can easily switch to electric equipment) and commercial lawn care providers who need 8-12 hours of continuous run time every day and can’t.
Husqvarna makes battery backpacks for commercial use. Their electric equipment is legit, although the upfront cost of a full company’s worth of batteries would admittedly be painful, at least last time I saw prices
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Might well cancel out over time if the gas/electricity $ ratio is right. Batteries can be charged slowly overnight too, extending their lifetime even further.
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Ditto! The only downside is the annoying cord (my corded power tools, mower and string trimmer are over 13 YO) but that is balanced out by lighter weight, MOAR! power and zero battery woes.
…how much of an actual difference will it make?
A lot. Electric tools not only emit no* noxious fumes but are far quieter as well. Your nose, lungs and ears will thank you. Electric tools are also much more reliable than gas powered too, especially the corded ones.
*Depends on power source of course but I imagine even an old coal plant is going to be cleaner per kWh than a small two stroke.
Just as estimates have been revised every year. It’ll get revised again next year. I think Tony Seba is right.