4 ms·

Electric Vehicles Won’t Save the Planet or Survive Without Subsidies

8 points by prostoalex 7y ago

codeulike 7y ago
This is the usual bullshit. There is some interesting stuff to be gleaned by comparing the carbon footprint of the whole manufacturing cycle of ICE vs EVs, but they seem to often leave out the global petrochemical industry infrastructure from those sorts of things. And these people keep going on about coal, forgetting that its pretty easy for consumers to switch to renewable-only electricity suppliers should they wish to* . If you've got an EV, that makes zero-emissions travel possible. If you dont have an EV, that isn't possible. Its as simple as that. Would like to know who's paying this guy. * * * Certainly in the UK its trivial to switch to 100% renewable electricity, and I'm told its similarly possible in the states. * * Oh right he works for Cottonwood Venture Partners who sell IT stuff to the oil and gas industry. Source: https://www.city-journal.org/contributor/mark-p-mills_255 https://www.city-journal.org/contributor/mark-p-mills_255 https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio
- masta 7y ago
  > Would like to know who's paying this guy. Well, the Manhattan Institute, which owns City Journal, is a big proponent of the Oil and Gas business. They have a track record of denying man-made climate change. So this just fits their usual canon.
arethuza 7y ago
Something about the tone of this article seemed a bit off to me so I wondered who the author was - turns out he is a partner in a firm that appears to do a lot of investing in companies that have "oil and gas" in their descriptions: https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio This bit in particular seems a bit silly: "While the EV’s electric motor is simple, its battery is a half-a-ton electrochemical machine with thousands of parts and welds, along with wiring, electronics, and cooling." Edit: Just for the record, I own a ICE car, I love ICE engines (the sounds made by Ferrari V12s and BRM V16s are music as far as I am concerned) but I also recognise that they are at the end of their time and electric cars are the future (mind you - prices need to come down before I will buy one).
akmarinov 7y ago
Well to be fair, if we take out gas subsidies and ICE manufacturer subsidies, ICE vehicles won’t survive as well.
tompccs 7y ago
This is so stupid that it reads like a funded hit-piece. To take a few choice quotes: "its battery is a half-a-ton electrochemical machine with thousands of parts and welds, along with wiring, electronics, and cooling. It’s every bit as complex as—and far more expensive than—the combustion-mechanical drivetrain that it replaces." Microchips are the most complex objects on earth, and also the most reliable. Lack of moving parts is why. "Manufacturing automotive batteries is surprisingly labor intensive. Tesla’s gargantuan battery factory in Nevada produces about 1,000 propulsion batteries per year per 12 workers. Meantime, a modern engine and transmission factory produces about 1,000 mechanical-propulsion systems per year per four workers." Uh, so a 100 year old industrial process is only....3x less labour intensive than a less than 20 year old industrial process. Colour me surprised. "coal and natural gas still account for 70 percent of electricity generation." In the US, sure. But France has been generating the vast majority of its power without fossil fuels for decades. Carbon-free electricity is now price competitive with fossil fuels. "Embracing batteries at automotive scales would lead to an unprecedented global expansion in mining" I'm sorry, what is it we've been doing for the last 200 years since the industrial revolution? Can't even be bothered to go through the rest. This is a shill piece, no question.
- pmorici 7y ago
  Yeah, for those interested in an honest take on the costs involved in EV manufacturing and how they have come down and will continue to take a look at this analysis from ARK Invest https://ark-invest.com/research/wrights-law-predicts-teslas-gross-margin https://ark-invest.com/research/wrights-law-predicts-teslas-...
  - xiphias2 7y ago
    It writes about Model 3's gross margins improving over time, but it looks like Model Y will be the real winner with its improved wiring and the huge body press machine if it works. We'll see how much of Model Y's technology will be backported to Model 3.
- kichik 7y ago
  The author is a strategic partner with Cottonwood Venture Partners. All of their portfolio companies seem to have something to do with oil or gas. Hardly impartial.
cesis 7y ago
Electric vehicles(e.g.electric scooters) already are ubiquitous in cities. Unsubsidized.
jmpman 7y ago
The author discusses the Tesla Gigafactory and then drops the following sentence “There’s no prospect of creating a domestic EV supply chain anytime soon, regardless of incentives.” I’m trying to understand how the author can come to that conclusion. A domestic EV supply chain already exists - it happens to be a captive supplier to Tesla. There’s no reason GM or Ford couldn’t build a Gigafactory too. As for the title that electric vehicles won’t survive without subsidies, against I’m shaking my head. The Tesla subsidies have almost completely expired, and each time the subsidy expires, Tesla just lowers the price. Tesla turned a profit, and the vehicle is displacing BMWs and Mercedes. As for charging off dirty energy, my Tesla charges overnight from the nuclear power plant’s base load.
nrjames 7y ago
A lot of EVs simply drive better than ICE cars. The acceleration, lack of noise, and more pleasant charging atmosphere go a long way.
sprash 7y ago
The solution to the climate problem is actually "sun-to-liquid" synthetic fuel. The whole chain from air carbon capture, creation of synthesis gas of H2 + CO from H2O and CO2 via a catalyst, to finally the production of fuel via Fisher-Tropsch has been demonstrated to work on large scale pilot projects and can be easily powered in some remote dessert with sunlight. Fuel is the best way to store energy. It has a really high energy density it is not volatile like e.g. pure Hydrogen and it is a liquid which means it can be easily transported because it obviously can take any shape or form. The longer you think about the concept of electric cars the stupider it gets. The ICE is peak mobility technology.
- masta 7y ago
  The efficiency of the whole chain is pretty abysmal. Capturing free-air CO2 in large quantities is expensive, you better just store that in the ground and keep it there. I would not expect an efficiency above 20-30% for the synth-fuel generation, and then you put it into ICEs which also just have a 15-30% efficiency. You're burning 90% of the original energy, instead of using it to charge EVs with an 80-90% panel-2-wheel efficiency. Power-2-X is still important as a long-term storage technology, but it's better to synthesise Methan which can can be generated with a better efficiency and can also be burned cleaner and with 55-65% efficiency in modern gas turbine power plants. This also allows for capturing CO2 at the power plant and create a complete cycle. Synth-fuels will be a niche, used for long-haul trucking, heavy machinery and airplanes, but even there Hydrogen is going to be the better option at some point.
  - sprash 7y ago
    Energy efficiency doesn't matter, there is enough sun available in remote areas. The problem is energy storage. Storing electricity is really expensive, and cumbersome. It can not be easily transported without a vast expensive infrastructure effort especially concerning remote areas. We have loads of fluctuating energy generation from renewable sources and hugely fluctuating energy consumption. This means we need loads of storage. Nobody ever talks about the storage. Also staying 20 min at a charger just to fill up my battery is absolutely impractical. Fast charging is already at its technical limits. Compare that with the 45 seconds I need to fill my gas tank and have enough energy to drive thousands of miles.
jungturk 7y ago
> Mark P. Mills, a Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Manhattan_Institute_fo... Not that we should dismiss his claims outright, but definitely approach them carefully.
mikestew 7y ago
Fuck this guy. He writes like someone wants to take away his toys. Here’s a newsflash, dear author: as a Nissan Leaf owner for the past eight years, I say fuck subsidies, too. I mean for me personally, anyway. Because I am so done with ICEs, I’ll pay a premium to not drive one of those rattling, smelly contraptions that my parents were enamored with (and myself, too, as a younger man). You know what’s nice? After I laid floor tile in the garage (man, why didn’t I do that 20 years ago?), we can now pull the car out, lay some yoga mats, use it as a yoga studio. But that only works if your car is electric, otherwise wait 30 minutes while the exhaust clears out (watch the oil spots, too). As just one example. I’ve bought my last ICE, subsidies or no. I don’t represent the general public, but I have to represent more than a few. But what is this guy afraid of? It reads like “you, sir! You, who (except for the in-dash system) are completely tickled with your Nissan Leaf! Don’t be happy! You should be miserable with your electric car! Why aren’t you miserable?! Look, here’s reasons your car is a bad idea!” In other words, this sounds like a guy who’s trying to sell me something, not inform me.
pmorici 7y ago
Man this piece contains so many obviously wrong and dishonest arguments mixed in with a defeatist attitude. It even manages to contradict itself. It simultaneously argues that it takes 3x the number of workers to produce a battery pack as it does to produce a engine and then says that the switch to EV's will decimate jobs. It claims it takes 100 barrels of oil to build a battery pack capable of storing 1 barrel of oil worth of energy implying that's a bad thing as if you use the battery once and then dispose of it. Good quality lithium ion batteries last for 5,000 cycles and Tesla claims their current battery technology should last up to 500k miles implying something like 15,000 cycles. A barrel of oil makes roughly 20 gallons of gasoline so if the 100 barrels of oil to make a battery pack is true that sounds pretty amazing to me. On the mining thing Lithium mining is some of the cleanest mining in the world because you can extract it from water pumped in and out of the mine. The list goes on.
tetron 7y ago
Read the piece waiting for the obvious conclusion that if we can't build EVs we need to massively build out public transportation... Still waiting...

8 points by prostoalex 7y ago

This is the usual bullshit. There is some interesting stuff to be gleaned by comparing the carbon footprint of the whole manufacturing cycle of ICE vs EVs, but they seem to often leave out the global petrochemical industry infrastructure from those sorts of things. And these people keep going on about coal, forgetting that its pretty easy for consumers to switch to renewable-only electricity suppliers should they wish to* . If you've got an EV, that makes zero-emissions travel possible. If you dont have an EV, that isn't possible. Its as simple as that. Would like to know who's paying this guy. * * * Certainly in the UK its trivial to switch to 100% renewable electricity, and I'm told its similarly possible in the states. * * Oh right he works for Cottonwood Venture Partners who sell IT stuff to the oil and gas industry. Source: https://www.city-journal.org/contributor/mark-p-mills_255 https://www.city-journal.org/contributor/mark-p-mills_255 https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio

masta 7y ago
> Would like to know who's paying this guy. Well, the Manhattan Institute, which owns City Journal, is a big proponent of the Oil and Gas business. They have a track record of denying man-made climate change. So this just fits their usual canon.

arethuza 7y ago

Something about the tone of this article seemed a bit off to me so I wondered who the author was - turns out he is a partner in a firm that appears to do a lot of investing in companies that have "oil and gas" in their descriptions: https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio This bit in particular seems a bit silly: "While the EV’s electric motor is simple, its battery is a half-a-ton electrochemical machine with thousands of parts and welds, along with wiring, electronics, and cooling." Edit: Just for the record, I own a ICE car, I love ICE engines (the sounds made by Ferrari V12s and BRM V16s are music as far as I am concerned) but I also recognise that they are at the end of their time and electric cars are the future (mind you - prices need to come down before I will buy one).

akmarinov 7y ago

Well to be fair, if we take out gas subsidies and ICE manufacturer subsidies, ICE vehicles won’t survive as well.

tompccs 7y ago

This is so stupid that it reads like a funded hit-piece. To take a few choice quotes: "its battery is a half-a-ton electrochemical machine with thousands of parts and welds, along with wiring, electronics, and cooling. It’s every bit as complex as—and far more expensive than—the combustion-mechanical drivetrain that it replaces." Microchips are the most complex objects on earth, and also the most reliable. Lack of moving parts is why. "Manufacturing automotive batteries is surprisingly labor intensive. Tesla’s gargantuan battery factory in Nevada produces about 1,000 propulsion batteries per year per 12 workers. Meantime, a modern engine and transmission factory produces about 1,000 mechanical-propulsion systems per year per four workers." Uh, so a 100 year old industrial process is only....3x less labour intensive than a less than 20 year old industrial process. Colour me surprised. "coal and natural gas still account for 70 percent of electricity generation." In the US, sure. But France has been generating the vast majority of its power without fossil fuels for decades. Carbon-free electricity is now price competitive with fossil fuels. "Embracing batteries at automotive scales would lead to an unprecedented global expansion in mining" I'm sorry, what is it we've been doing for the last 200 years since the industrial revolution? Can't even be bothered to go through the rest. This is a shill piece, no question.

pmorici 7y ago
Yeah, for those interested in an honest take on the costs involved in EV manufacturing and how they have come down and will continue to take a look at this analysis from ARK Invest https://ark-invest.com/research/wrights-law-predicts-teslas-gross-margin https://ark-invest.com/research/wrights-law-predicts-teslas-...
- xiphias2 7y ago
  It writes about Model 3's gross margins improving over time, but it looks like Model Y will be the real winner with its improved wiring and the huge body press machine if it works. We'll see how much of Model Y's technology will be backported to Model 3.
kichik 7y ago
The author is a strategic partner with Cottonwood Venture Partners. All of their portfolio companies seem to have something to do with oil or gas. Hardly impartial.

cesis 7y ago

Electric vehicles(e.g.electric scooters) already are ubiquitous in cities. Unsubsidized.

jmpman 7y ago

The author discusses the Tesla Gigafactory and then drops the following sentence “There’s no prospect of creating a domestic EV supply chain anytime soon, regardless of incentives.” I’m trying to understand how the author can come to that conclusion. A domestic EV supply chain already exists - it happens to be a captive supplier to Tesla. There’s no reason GM or Ford couldn’t build a Gigafactory too. As for the title that electric vehicles won’t survive without subsidies, against I’m shaking my head. The Tesla subsidies have almost completely expired, and each time the subsidy expires, Tesla just lowers the price. Tesla turned a profit, and the vehicle is displacing BMWs and Mercedes. As for charging off dirty energy, my Tesla charges overnight from the nuclear power plant’s base load.

nrjames 7y ago

A lot of EVs simply drive better than ICE cars. The acceleration, lack of noise, and more pleasant charging atmosphere go a long way.

sprash 7y ago

The solution to the climate problem is actually "sun-to-liquid" synthetic fuel. The whole chain from air carbon capture, creation of synthesis gas of H2 + CO from H2O and CO2 via a catalyst, to finally the production of fuel via Fisher-Tropsch has been demonstrated to work on large scale pilot projects and can be easily powered in some remote dessert with sunlight. Fuel is the best way to store energy. It has a really high energy density it is not volatile like e.g. pure Hydrogen and it is a liquid which means it can be easily transported because it obviously can take any shape or form. The longer you think about the concept of electric cars the stupider it gets. The ICE is peak mobility technology.

masta 7y ago
The efficiency of the whole chain is pretty abysmal. Capturing free-air CO2 in large quantities is expensive, you better just store that in the ground and keep it there. I would not expect an efficiency above 20-30% for the synth-fuel generation, and then you put it into ICEs which also just have a 15-30% efficiency. You're burning 90% of the original energy, instead of using it to charge EVs with an 80-90% panel-2-wheel efficiency. Power-2-X is still important as a long-term storage technology, but it's better to synthesise Methan which can can be generated with a better efficiency and can also be burned cleaner and with 55-65% efficiency in modern gas turbine power plants. This also allows for capturing CO2 at the power plant and create a complete cycle. Synth-fuels will be a niche, used for long-haul trucking, heavy machinery and airplanes, but even there Hydrogen is going to be the better option at some point.
- sprash 7y ago
  Energy efficiency doesn't matter, there is enough sun available in remote areas. The problem is energy storage. Storing electricity is really expensive, and cumbersome. It can not be easily transported without a vast expensive infrastructure effort especially concerning remote areas. We have loads of fluctuating energy generation from renewable sources and hugely fluctuating energy consumption. This means we need loads of storage. Nobody ever talks about the storage. Also staying 20 min at a charger just to fill up my battery is absolutely impractical. Fast charging is already at its technical limits. Compare that with the 45 seconds I need to fill my gas tank and have enough energy to drive thousands of miles.

jungturk 7y ago

> Mark P. Mills, a Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Manhattan_Institute_fo... Not that we should dismiss his claims outright, but definitely approach them carefully.

mikestew 7y ago

Fuck this guy. He writes like someone wants to take away his toys. Here’s a newsflash, dear author: as a Nissan Leaf owner for the past eight years, I say fuck subsidies, too. I mean for me personally, anyway. Because I am so done with ICEs, I’ll pay a premium to not drive one of those rattling, smelly contraptions that my parents were enamored with (and myself, too, as a younger man). You know what’s nice? After I laid floor tile in the garage (man, why didn’t I do that 20 years ago?), we can now pull the car out, lay some yoga mats, use it as a yoga studio. But that only works if your car is electric, otherwise wait 30 minutes while the exhaust clears out (watch the oil spots, too). As just one example. I’ve bought my last ICE, subsidies or no. I don’t represent the general public, but I have to represent more than a few. But what is this guy afraid of? It reads like “you, sir! You, who (except for the in-dash system) are completely tickled with your Nissan Leaf! Don’t be happy! You should be miserable with your electric car! Why aren’t you miserable?! Look, here’s reasons your car is a bad idea!” In other words, this sounds like a guy who’s trying to sell me something, not inform me.

pmorici 7y ago

Man this piece contains so many obviously wrong and dishonest arguments mixed in with a defeatist attitude. It even manages to contradict itself. It simultaneously argues that it takes 3x the number of workers to produce a battery pack as it does to produce a engine and then says that the switch to EV's will decimate jobs. It claims it takes 100 barrels of oil to build a battery pack capable of storing 1 barrel of oil worth of energy implying that's a bad thing as if you use the battery once and then dispose of it. Good quality lithium ion batteries last for 5,000 cycles and Tesla claims their current battery technology should last up to 500k miles implying something like 15,000 cycles. A barrel of oil makes roughly 20 gallons of gasoline so if the 100 barrels of oil to make a battery pack is true that sounds pretty amazing to me. On the mining thing Lithium mining is some of the cleanest mining in the world because you can extract it from water pumped in and out of the mine. The list goes on.

tetron 7y ago

Read the piece waiting for the obvious conclusion that if we can't build EVs we need to massively build out public transportation... Still waiting...