My preferred approach to this issue (and many others) is a both-and rather than either-or. For some reason, people collectively seem to boil it down to false options. If we make EV vehicles, we cannot make HFC or ICE. We can make all of the above. We also do not need governments to build the infrastructure. Did the government build gas stations? No, the market dictated they were necessary and entrepreneurs took the chance and made gas stations...and were then bought out or forced out by Standard Oil...but I digress. The government push is coming in the US, from the president and his staff. Rather than the previous rules that pushed automakers to make or sell an average fleet MPG, the new rules are to require a % of the fleet to be EV specifically. This is a game-changing approach and seems to be picking winners. The political scientist in me is seeing money behind the scenes picking winners... But, this is not just a U.S. phenomenon. In China, they have a lottery for ICE registrations, and they are also pushing EV. As mentioned by some above, EVs are a bit of a false flag. The 'pollution' is just happening somewhere else. Most of the power generation in the U.S. (and China at present) is from fossil fuels. The battery situation is horrible and most of the component parts for the batteries are not something we have in great supply in the U.S....but they are natural resources for China. For the U.S. the power generation could come from nuclear plants but the overreaction to 3-mile island has effectively prevented the U.S. from building new ones since 1977. The improvement in engineering and technology can make nuclear energy a great alternative. Then, you could at least make clean electricity and that part of the EV equation would improve. You would still have an untenable situation in the US as the known supply of battery materials would run out faster than the fossil fuels they are supposed to replace. Since those are not available here, the US would find itself in a strategic conundrum. For me, the shift away from ICE is not about the environment per se, but about the inevitability of those fuels disappearing.
You're touching on some of the background "noise" (I'm talking about my head
) I've got going on this subject.
Energy. Always big money to be made, both over and under the table.... so there's always that.
I welcome more awareness and more importantly,
action, concerning using energy in a smarter fashion.
A lock-step, target fixation with
only EV going forward.... I have some concerns.....
Years ago, watching a late model Civic in front of me on a 2 lane rural highway, I backed way off, during a snowy drive at Xmas. The driver was constantly jerking the wheel, and over-correcting.... sure enough, at the bottom of a long (straight) hill, the car went into the ditch and rolled upside down. I and others stopped; everybody was belted in, and got out fine. Young woman driving got out crying, saying "
I knew that was going to happen". So did I, but obviously didn't say that aloud.
Recycling solutions for LI (and future chemistry) batteries need to ramp to scale, NOW. In some respects, modern cars, and esp. Teslas remind me of cell phone marketing. Things are changing in the world though..... more and more (often 3rd World) countries are now refusing to accept shipments of E-waste, and I expect that trend to continue. I actually find it somewhat schizophrenic that EVs (Save the Planet (tm)) are ramping in the market, w/o the end-stage battery recycling in place.
Other related noises (in my head), will wait for now.... off to work I go....
Rgds, D.
www.quantamagazine.org
