My rebuttal as to why I do NOT believe that EVs will be as ubiquitous as many would speculate:
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." - Dr. Albert Bartlett
Growth compounds. We're educated about this as pertains to savings in a bank account, to see it as a good thing. There's the other side of "growth" that we don't much learn about.
Given that perpetual growth on a finite planet isn't possible, there will always be a peak in the physical production of anything.
Just as coal production has plateaued, so too will happen with EVs. NEVER a question of IF, but of WHEN.
In the early part of the 20th century the British economist John Jevons wrote a fairly benign book called "The Coal Problem." In it he predicted a looming energy crisis as Britain's coal reserves were depleting: as an economist he saw the numbers. Obviously, Jevons didn't see oil coming to save the day (which its done for some 100 years); BUT, he made the observation, perhaps the only thing that allowed him to be remembered for anything other than a mediocre economist, that "efficiency" meant a faster depletion of resources. Thus was born "Jevons Paradox," an increase in efficiency means an increase in the rate of exhaustion. One only need look at global oil extraction, processing, distribution and consumption to see really how efficient we've become over the course of some 100+ years; as efficiency increased oil field depletion rates increased, exponentially.
We are clearly starting to see what Jevons would likely today call "The Oil Problem." The next "Problems" will be: Uranium and Lithium (you can locate these on the map where a lot of violence/military action is occurring [other than the middle east, South America and Africa]).
Will EVs be hampered by uranium production (for generation of electricity) or by lithium (current battery technologies)? Eventually, yes: a mathematical certainty.
On July 24, 2020, Tesla’s Elon Musk
wrote on Twitter that a second U.S. “government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people.” Someone
responded to Musk soon after, “You know what wasn’t in the best interest of people? The U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk then
wrote: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”
Uranium in Africa...
(there's a
second part to the story which breaks down the countries and the resources and who is in pursuit; my point here is to note what is going on behind the scenes of all the fancy brochures we see that are promoting EVs and such)
Externalized costs: via subsidies and war.
How likely is it that there will be sufficient disposable consumer income available to push the button on "Economies of Scale" for EVs? NOTE: also consider deficit spending, ever-increasing, much of which is in the form of "defense" (which has more to do with securing natural resources than in defending human lives); consider that this eats into the available disposable-income pie. More direct economic measurements, however, are available... [these articles are US-centric; seeing that the US is the world's number 1 consumer I would think US metrics provide a reasonable picture of the global situation on the whole]
From April 2020 to April 2021, real average hourly earnings decreased 3.4 percent, seasonally adjusted.
The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a 2.7-percent increase in the average
workweek resulted in a 0.8-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period.
None of this rings the bell for amping up expenditures on EVs: not without some sort of major spending correction at a national level, which would then provide for targeted subsidies, such as would be required to truly push the EV-as-our-future meme. Much of US infrastructure was built post-WWII, when the US effectively ruled global manufacturing, thus having a huge positive trade balance (also aided by oil exports, which, after 1971, dried up [US became net importer & US went off the gold standard - a coincidence? HA!]; the great shale oil money laundering racket reversed this [but, as we will find, its "success" will be short-lived]). "We" [US] are in no way on a similar, sound economic footing as back in the 1950s; AND, the notion of engaging in big national infrastructure projects is a thing that effectively got removed from the dictionary circa 1980: interesting political turn by the GOP, going from Eisenhower to Reagan. I don't readily see there being any political appetite to do a remake of the 1950s. NOTE: I advocate for nothing here, just stating what's on the playing table.
There's also personal debt. High numbers of late car payments. Mortgage loans are on a stay of execution: this was coming even before COVID-19, COVID-19 merely bumped the time frame up a bit; COVID-19 also brought legislation to temporarily stave off foreclosures (and evictions). These chickens are out there and dusk is looming...
Could things turn around? Well, yes (most anything is possible; it's probabilities that I concentrate on), though I don't see it happening in any way that many fancy it, but it will, eventually, be subject to the problem of growth. Things could also not turn around. Anything can be said to be successful, given a short enough time frame: I believe I am the owner/creator/originator of this saying/statement (no copyright pending).
My ramblings here are to present a counter position, one that pulls the curtain away from all the marketing hype (and other human hubris) and exposes reality: I did this back in the day when biofuels were starting to get wildly pushed (I did a mic drop on a panel of "pro-biofuels" folks; my "counters" have held up all these many years, while those pushing brochures cannot claim the same). I've followed energy stuff for nearly 40 years: my favorite energy prospect was hot fusion, as a means of recycling (reclaiming at the atomic level, pure). When I eventually realized that energy is only PART of the equation is when I started questioning the notion of "boundless" energy as savior of mankind's future. The equation/notation is: Natural Resources + Recipe ("technology") + Energy -> "Tangible Product." A Tangible Product cannot be made without all three things in the mix. All wars are about resources: either acquisition or control of.
DISCLAIMER: I hold no direct* economic investments in any of this, either FOR or AGAINST. Feel free to "invest" as you see fit: do know, however, that there is a lot of non-glossy stuff going on behind the glossy adverts (and, of course: Perpetual growth on a finite planet isn't possible; when talking about growth there must be a stated time component, otherwise, "Anything can be said to be successful, given a short enough time frame.").
* Everyone, as a member of society, can be said to be, at the very least, affected indirectly.
BTW - I very much like a lot of ideas, most as ideas but not necessarily as something that escapes the "drawing paper."
“The chief cause of problems is solutions.” - Eric Sevareid
