HAS BOB LUTZ CHANGED POSITIONS ON EVs?!?

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:00):
After doing a lot of checking, I just bought a

(00:04):
Cadillac lyric sport. And hetalked about interiors. The
interior is spectacular. Andit's got a 325 mile range, which
still does not make it suitablefor long road trips. And I'm not
about to stand in line for fouror five hours waiting my turn at

(00:25):
a charging station, which is Ithink the thing that makes Evie
still kind of a localproposition when we get when we
get 600 mile batteries or 700mile batteries, you know, that
issue is going to go away, butat present, it's still there.
But the Lyric is an absolutelyoutstanding vehicle. And in the

(00:48):
first quarter, it outsold all ofthe German luxury EVs lets BMW,
Audi, Mercedes Benz andVolkswagen combined. So the
public is the public isaccepting it in a big way.
That's an outstanding vehicle.Second, there's

Jeff Sterns (01:11):
no no doubt Bob, from a product standpoint, the
Lyric is outstanding. Noquestion. But I'm a little
surprised to see you with anelectric with some of your
comments in the past Well,

Unknown (01:23):
electric are at the beginning of the revolution in
always got 120 years of internalcombustion, it's near perfect.
The fuel is if gasoline hadn'tbeen invented, we should invent
it now. Because it's it has suchhigh energy density. But there's
a lot of advantages to EVs,which are not yet fully

(01:47):
realized. Because we have towait for battery technology,
which it will, which it will Imean, battery breakthroughs are
on the horizon. And in two orthree years, we'll have at fact,
lucid, has a 600 mile batterytoday, nobody knows about it. In

Jeff Sterns (02:06):
general, are you gas hybrid, or electric? I'm

Unknown (02:10):
for whatever is a great vehicle. And I think as I said
to me electric vehicles havebecome politicized, you know,
the, the climate change fanaticsin the Save the earthers and the
left wing of the DemocraticParty, etc, etc. are all in on

(02:32):
electrics. And conservativeshave taken a hardcore position.
Like it's almost become like theSecond Amendment, you know,
nobody's gonna take my gaspowered car drove it away from
me. And that's ridiculous. It'snot a political issue. The
mistake the government,governments around the world

(02:53):
made is trying to force thetechnology faster than the
consumer was willing to adopt itat faster than the technology
made the stuff really good. Andso we're not going to have like,
an overnight switch intoelectrics, which every the media

(03:15):
three years ago thought wasgoing to happen, you know,
everybody's next vehicle wasgoing to be electric. Well, even

Jeff Sterns (03:21):
Mercedes said after a date, I think 24 Or five that
we were going to have no moregas. But well, yeah,

Unknown (03:26):
you know, GM has said the same thing. But as kind of
backpedaled on it a little bit,which is which is smart. Because
you've finally you cannotviolate the market, the market
is the market and electricvehicle will gradually increase
their percentages. And inanother 10 years time, we may

(03:50):
see 25% of the market electricin 30 years time, it may be 50%.
But it's gonna be a gradualtransition now. Will it happen?
I believe absolutely, because inso many ways, other than the
range issue. But in so manyways. Electric vehicles are

(04:14):
simply vastly superior togasoline. They're slick, they're
silent. They have a lot fewermoving parts. Things like brakes
don't deteriorate, because thebraking is mostly regenerative
forth. And white right now froma co2 standpoint, this is this

(04:40):
is the ridiculous thing. They donot. I keep trying to explain
this to the climate fanatics.They don't save any co2 Because
85% of America's electric poweris generated by fossil fuel So,

(05:00):
whether the co2 is created atthe energy production plant, or
in the in the, in the, in thegasoline engine at the tailpipe
it, the planet doesn't care, co2is the is co2. Now at some

(05:21):
point, we'll have clean nuclearenergy. And then with if we
don't have to burn fossil fuelto charge our electric vehicles,
then I will buy the argumentthat they produce less co2. And

Jeff Sterns (05:38):
what about the diesel equipment mining the
materials needed for thebatteries? The diesel equipment
used for mining the metals.

Unknown (05:49):
I mean, it depends how far up the train you go. But
even if you go no further thanpower generation, it's then you
got transmission losses, becausethe power has to be set out. So
there's a certain amount ofloss, then there's a certain
amount of losses when it goesfrom your home power outlet into

(06:12):
the electric vehicle. So at theend of the day, you know, I've
never seen a wheeled well towheels comparison, but i The
like fuel cells, fuel cells aretouted to be absolutely zero
emissions, all it comes out ofthe tailpipe is water vapor,

(06:35):
etc, etc. But they keepforgetting that hydrogen does
not exist. In a raw state, it'sgot to be created out of
something. So separating thehydrogen from whatever it's
attached to, requires Guesswhat? Energy and taking one

(06:56):
form, and creating anotherchemical form requires energy
and that basically requirescreation of co2. Secondly, fuel
cell vehicles need the hydrogencompressed to 10,000 psi. What
where does the power come from,to compress all that hydrogen.

(07:18):
So General Motors, we actuallydid a well to wheels analysis of
all of the fossil fuels andenergy that are required to go
into a fuel cell. And then didthe miles per gallon equivalent.
And it comes for fuel cells.Best case, it comes out to about

(07:41):
65 miles per gallon. Well, youknow, that's that's a long way
from zero. And an even so Ithink the 65 miles per gallon
was calculated by the rabid fuelcell of fanatics within General
Motors, who, by the way, led usdown a garden path of millions

(08:04):
of fuel cell GM vehicles on theroad by 2010. Which you know,
manifestly never happened forgood reasons. And then fuel cell
to require all kinds of rareminerals like palladium and
platinum, and so forth. I mean,fuel cells, fuel cells that
really down on battery electricvehicles I'm high on. But we've

(08:29):
got to get the battery energydensity up to where we have
reliable, affordable, at least600 mile batteries. And charging
stations have to be moreplentiful, more reliable, and
word and charging times. With aninternal combustion engine, you

(08:53):
can put 350 miles into the tankin five minutes. Even with Eevee
fast charging, you can do maybe80 miles in 20 minutes. That's
with today's fast chargers. Andtalking to people who own
reviens and Tesla's when theyget up to a charging station,

(09:18):
they're usually fourth or fifthin line. And they have to wait
for everybody else to get thereat miles. And I'm not going to
sit there at some chargingstation for hours and hours,
waiting until it's my turn. Andthen in my 20 minutes I get my
ad miles. That That just makesno sense for most people, and

(09:38):
they're quite right.

Jeff Sterns (09:39):
I think some people though, will get rich filming
the arguments. Who's next inline when there's five and

Unknown (09:47):
well, it's been done. It's been done and my friends
who have waited in charge inline say that the atmosphere
gets pretty surly. And watchingeverybody's watching The other
guy's car and saying, you gotyour 80 Miles get out of here.

Jeff Sterns (10:05):
Here we have reminds me of watching a boat
ramp with the husbands and wivesyelling at each other right you
know this has been Jeff Sternsconnected through cars