August 23, 2025 • 34 mins
EV Mandates, Appliance Bans & the Hidden Costs of Going Green | The Car Doctor Podcast
Ron Ananian, The Car Doctor, sits down with energy expert Mark Mills for a wide-ranging discussion on EVs, government mandates, and the future of car ownership. Together, they break down:
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Why Washington’s appliance bans mirror EV mandates.
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What Germany’s sudden end to EV subsidies really means.
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The hidden costs of EV ownership—insurance, repairs, and batteries.
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Why trillions in infrastructure may never materialize.
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How mining, energy policy, and subsidies shape the real future of electric cars.
From cow methane to insurance companies pulling out of Florida, this episode looks beyond the showroom and into the economics, politics, and realities shaping your next vehicle.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to Ron and Nanian The Car Doctor, nationally
recognized auto expert trusted by Mechanics, Weekend wrenchers and vehicle
owners Alife. Ron brings over forty years of hands on
experience and deep industry insight to help you understand your vehicle.
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(00:25):
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and be sure to subscribe to the Car Doctor YouTube
channel for exclusive videos, real repair footage and more. Now,
start your engines. The Car Doctor is in the garage
(00:47):
and ready to take your call. Welcome listeners, good to
be here with you today. We're going to dive right
into it once again. We welcome back Mark Mills, and
we're gonna be talking electric vehicles. So sit down, stay tuned,
and get ready for a shock no pun intended. Mark,
welcome back, sir, h hopefully well, yes, sir, thank you
very much it's good to have you. Yep, let's dive
(01:07):
right into it. You know, in the news recently, Well,
two things I want to talk about in the news.
Keep in mind, I want to talk a little bit
before the end of this hour with you. Germany just
did something very interesting with EV's right, they dropped the subsidies.
I think it was, but I want to I also
want to talk a little bit about you know, I
keep reading how coming out of Washington, the government is
(01:29):
trying these mandates on appliances. And I know that's not
necessarily a car show story or an EV story, but
that appliance mentality about trying to make all the appliances green.
There's an EV guideline to that also, is there not?
I mean, don't they tie them together?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, they're tied together first philosophically in this sense that
we have Washington bureaucrats mandating what kind of products you
can use or have not, but not regulating if you
like their physical safety, you know, like underwriter's lapse, but
mandating what you're allowed to buy, banning your ability to
(02:09):
purchase certain kinds of products. So it's exactly the same
the idea. Many states have tried this a number half
certain California that Big Main is going to do it
next is make it illegal for you to purchase a
gas water heater or a gas furnace or gas appliance
for stove for your home. So a product that is
in widespread use for well we'll call it centuries certainly
(02:34):
and globally in widespread use, it will now be banned.
And it's like banning cigarettes, I mean the people, and
we didn't, by the way, not to use a handhand analogy,
cigarettes are not banned, even though there probably isn't a
single listener listening who doesn't think, even if they're smokers,
the cigarettes don't hurt you. I mean, come on, you
(02:57):
could do lots of things that hurt you that you enjoy.
I get that for human But the government is long
held that cigarettes are dangerous, and we didn't ban cigarettes,
which affirmatively hurt people and cause insurance costs go up
in the health industry, healthcare industry. So here we come
along and for the putative assumption that some small incremental
(03:21):
benefit to the far future from not burning natural gas
in your home in emitting carbon dioxide, we should ban
a product I mean, I never mind the motivation, the
idea behind it is really offensive. So I save for cars,
I'm going to ban the sale of internal combustion engines.
(03:41):
So far in twelve states, DC is just getting ready
to do it next in at least a dozen countries
have stood up to do that, and the EPA's new
rule would expectively ban internal combustion sales for sort of
seventy eighty percent of all vehicles by twenty thirty two.
I think it is so this is a phenomenal overreach.
(04:01):
The only time we've had bands of the scale it
was one time in American history, which is, of course
the ban on alcohol consumption.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
You know, I think I think about that, not till
i'm a I'm not a huge drinker, but I remember that.
You know, you start making the comparison that, yeah, we
had prohibition and that that didn't that didn't end too well,
because here we are it's available.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Again, right, not available again? What it did? LA then
at law on intended consequences about laws, Well, you try
to ban something it's widely consumed and used, you create
all sorts of u intended consequences, not least the criminality
that surrounded everybody's still consuming alcohol and traded underground industry.
The other band, by the way, which is relevant to
(04:47):
the EB domain or cars in general, was the ban
of driving quickly in nineteen seventy three, when we banned
banned ability to drive at normal speeds over fifty five
an hour. And what that did is that it it
was the It was even more even a more widely
flouted law than the ban and consuming alcohol because people
(05:11):
simply ignored it, and you know, lot more speeding tickets.
A lot of cops just ignored it. Some didn't. But
it really is a very dangerous thing to ban things
that are silly, to ban that people will ignore and
create under you know, all kinds of unattended consequences. But anyway,
the ban, the ban on the appliances is no different
than the ban on cars. It's motivated by the same thing,
(05:33):
the same bad instincts to to have status control over
consumer choices that are you know, convenient, insensible.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I think, I think the sad thing about the appliance
ban and what they're trying to take away from is
they might be able to achieve it, because yeah, I
can get this, but I can't get that. The problem
is going to be you know if you don't have
you know, the electric cost right where back there, because
they want to convert every appliance to electric something or
(06:03):
electric water heater, or minimized the amount of natural gas
flowing through the natural gas device. And it's like the
ev situation. And this is where I think the analogy
in my mind where I was trying to put the
two together, is we don't have the resources. It's not
you know, it's like we keep saying we want to
go back in time. I want to be eighteen again.
It just it just can't happen. It's not it's not
(06:24):
physically possible.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Well, if you shift, if you shift that much energy
demand from gas to electric, which is what the goal is,
then you're right. You have to build electric infrastructure to
handle it, and we're not just flat and to do
it takes time and also cost money. And of course
you've now you've increased risks to society. One of the
(06:46):
benefits of having two fuels to your house when there's
power ours is you still have hot water, you still
have sove that works, fireplace they could use. That doesn't
happen in the electric world, which is which is high
risk by definition.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
You know, when are they gonna when are they going
to prevent this from lighting fires in the fireplace?
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Well that you know, well, Colorado a long time ago
banned new house construction with with with with fireplaces.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah really I didn't know. Yeah, I didn't know that.
That just bring a board. Another thing to mind. I
was watching this show on Netflix the other day. They
were talking about food and beef and and cows and
how cows emit. I don't know if this is true
or not. I get it must be true. I saw
it on TV. You know, cows emit. The current population
(07:36):
of cows in the United States emit more greenhouse gases
than the entire transportation industry. It was some astounding claim
that cows are more deadly to the environment than the automobile.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And they want to they want to ban milk and beef.
So what they're referring to is the fact that the
ruminant bacteria in the cows gut uh digestion of grasses
by cows and all that class of creatures emits methane.
Methane is a more powerful in the greenhouse lexicon, more
(08:11):
powerful greenhouse casts and co two by depending how you
measure by a fact. For twenty, So you know, a
pound of methane emitd is like twenty pounds of carbon dioxide.
It's shorter lived in the atmosphere, but that's what it does.
So that's some of the rules that are being promulgated
are directed not just the carbon dioxide emissions from combustion,
(08:31):
and it's not from cow farts. It is commonly that
smell of sulfur dioxide for the college kids that remember
what the misbehaviors and enjoyment they had at the flatulence,
But it's methane burps. It's the burping cows, the biodigestion
by bacteria of grasses, and of course termites forget meat
(08:53):
and beef, theite termites emit methane as well, and the
one of the largest sources of methane emissionslobally are from termites.
We don't count them because we don't eat termites, we
don't grow termites, so they're irrelevant. But yet we want
to regulate cows because you know, we grow cows. I mean,
it's the path is uh yeah, I would use the
(09:15):
word in saying because it's probably the right word to use,
this path towards trying to find every possible source of
human emissions of greenhouse gases and regulator to ban. And
it's really it's not going to end well because you
can't do it. I mean, it's just no matter what
people are saying, it just can't be done.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
So does you know, going back to where we started
our conversation, does the appliance controls we see currently being
applied by Washington is that a reflection of the mentality
of what they expect from the electric vehicle And that's
why they're dragging us. I mean you in that direction.
I mean you just said I know that you know
Washington d C is going to add the band or
Washington is going to add the ban. I don't know
(09:53):
if you meant DC or the state, but you know
we're we're again. And yet some states are saying say, hey,
we can't do this, it's not going to work right.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Well, I number of states they're not all on board,
but Washington d C. Is the fact though, banning internal
combustion engines through the EPA's proposed rule, and that's being challenged.
But that'll, you know, we'll see how it goes. I
never no governments can do a lot. The district of Columbia,
it South has joined California, New York and made other
(10:25):
states in banning the ability as a resident of that
state to purchase an internal combustion engine by the year
twenty thirty two. I think it is so, you know,
long before we get to that point in time, if
those laws and bans stay on the books, long before
we get to that period, this is only only eight
years out, long before then, automakers, if those bands stay
(10:48):
in place, we'll have to think about whether they shut
down a lot of factories because they'll be overproducing internal
combustion engines, and those decisions will have to be made
a few years from now, not seven eight years from now.
In a few years from now. You have to get
ahead of that curve. So they really think those bands
will stay in place. Then you'll begin to see auto
industry production ramping down because you won't be able to
(11:10):
sell the products, and you've got to start thinking strategically
about what you can close and quickly can close it.
And of course the effect of that will be to
raise the costs of vehicles. Will be fewer vehicles available preemptively,
and we'll raise the cost of used cars. As we've
talked about before, and raise the cost of repairing use
cars because people are going to keep the cars longer,
(11:30):
and it's going to be a very vicious downward spiral
of high costs and inconveniences that will begin again, not
in twenty thirty two when the bands are proposed, but
before it by.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Years Soles unless we come back to the same side
of the coin. So makes this election. You're very, very interesting.
You're listening to Ronnanni and the Car Doctor. I'm talking
to Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute and we're chatting
away about EV's and a bunch of other topics this hour.
So stay put, Mark, stay on the side there. I'm
running any of the Card Doctor. We'll both be back
right after this. Don't go away. Welcome back, listeners, running
(12:08):
Any and the Car Doctor are here with the UH
often imitated, never duplicated, underappreciated. Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute,
hanging in there.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Mark.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
I had to give you that one, right, you know, it's.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
As good I'll take. I'll take it all I.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Do have to go ahead. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I want to correct one thing I should have told
you at the outset UH. First of the year I
left the Manhattan Institute, my beloved Manhattan suit, where I'm
supposed contributing editor to its great city journal. But now
I am a distinguished and you'll have to treat me
with more respect. Now, Ron, I am a distinguished, distinguished
Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. I've changed
(12:51):
courses because they made me an offer, uh, to come
and play with them, but especially to help build the
new National Energy Initiative think tank of some kind based
in Washington. It's not a Texas based activity, but a
Texas sponsored activity, because well, Texas is the energy giant
(13:12):
of America and in fact of the world.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And they and they realize what's at stake. They do
right one last thing from our last conversation. And by
the way, congratulations for that. I don't want to just
ignore that. That's kind of neat.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
About two weeks ago in the news, Germany decided to
do away with the incentive for purchasing or supporting evs.
What was that all about?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Money? Apply, money matters? What a shock? Yeah, I mean,
you can't subsidize everything forever. And what it was all
about is the it made a lie of the trope
that if you subsidize EV's, the volumes will go up
and they'll get cheaper. And EV's are inherently more expensive
than conventional cars, except for in the luxury market, which
(14:02):
is functionally irrelevant to most of the world. So for
the everyday car, evs are inherently more expensive, and they
are now being produced at scale. We're no longer talking
about a nascent industry. There are millions of them being manufactured.
Kessel did over a million a year themselves last year.
It's a mature, a large industry, and it still requires
(14:26):
massive subsidies to get people to buy them, which means
governments are facing the prospect if they push evs, is
the only vehicle you're allowed to buy, is subsidizing every
car everybody buys. So it's unsustainable. You can't you can't
do these kinds of things. And the lie that they
get cheap is not true.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
So wait, you're telling me that Germany woke up and said, wait,
we can't afford to continue in this path. Let's just
let's eliminate it and stop it here.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yeah, they they did other things. Remember, they are pursuing
this aggressive wind and solar path and their grids and
that are there's a sense you no. I believe last
year there was no net new orders in Europe for
for turbanes win turbans, and they are reactivating coal plants
in Germany, digging up more coal, and the costs of
the natural gas is soaring because of their because of
(15:16):
the understandable policy to deal link from Russian gas. But
that means instead of the geopolitical discounts that Putin was
giving Germany, they're gone. So energy got more expensive and
their economy is shrinking and they're de industrializing and so on.
The at all of it's on the backs of bad
(15:37):
energy policy. That's where all came from. It all, it
all comes back to bad energy policy being mandated by
the government unaffordable. So the next domino is the one
that just fail, which is knocking out EV subsidies.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
So when does that fall here now?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And that's a good question, I mean, I well, you know,
if it takes as long to happen here as it
did there, we're in for a few more years. I
think a fiscal sanity will rather than somebody deciding that oopes,
we were wrong, we don't like EV's that's not going
to happen I like evs. As you know, we've talked
about the performance opportunities and different kind of flexibility for
(16:20):
nice They're great fun, but that's not the same thing
as mandating everybody have one and subsidizing it. So I
think fiscal reality will will come back into play here
faster than it did in Germany for a whole lot
of reasons. And so if I were picking it, if
we want to take an over under Bet, I'd take
(16:41):
two years. I'd say I'd say two years. The substitutes
go away, even if there's an even if even if
Democrats have the White House, I think it's going to
be financially unsustainable. That's what I think will happen.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
All right, Well, i'll take that prediction. We'll we'll we'll
talk again in two years. Personally I think it's going
to Personally I think it's going to be eleven months.
But we'll kind of take that. We'll kind of taken
it comes you're.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Setting aside who wins the election eleven months, even if
the red team instead of the Blue team wins, Uh, there's
a lag because the you know, we've got then not
till a year from this January before the next inauguration
and then you have spool up time, which takes six months.
But you know, President could be could end by executive
(17:30):
order the subsidies.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Sure, yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
They could try, But they could try. I don't know
if they could get could get away with it, because
it's you know, it's a legislation, depends who has a
House and Senate. It's messy. I guess my point is.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
It becomes political.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Mark.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Let's pull over, take a pause. I'm running any and
the card Doctor here with Mark Mills. We'll both be
back right after this. Don't go away. Welcome back running
the Card Doctor here. We're talking Mark. With Mark Mills,
we're talking EV's and all the peripheral conversations that go
along with that statement. As we roll along, Mark, we
(18:03):
you know, I knew, and I could probably talk a
lot longer than the time we always have. I want
to get into insurance costs. We've never really done a
deep dive, but you know there's a lot of things
that go along with that term insurance costs and evs.
Electric vehicles enlighten us.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, well, the big wildcard here, as you know, is
ensuring the most expensive part of that vehicle which is
the battery, and unlike an internal combustion engine car, there's
no single component that has such a high proportion of
the cost of the vehicle. So roughly speaking, the batteries
fifteen thousand dollars could be a smaller car ten thousand.
(18:42):
That's the manufacturer's cost, so fifteen thousand. Then the big
ones could be twenty thousand. It's a lot of money.
And the battery structure is extremely important for safety reasons,
so if there's any mechanical damage to the battery pack,
it's a huge thing in the floor the pan of
the car. Since it's a write off, the batteries can't
(19:04):
be repaired the way an internal combustion engine can. You know,
it's a very complex machine. People think it's simple. It's
not a box of goo, it's not an empty tank.
There's thousands of components, thousands of wells, power electronics, cooling systems,
structural systems, safety systems. It's more complex than an internal
combustion engine. It made from lots of exotic stuff, unlike
an engine, which is cast iron steel. Very easy to
(19:26):
fix them, frankly comparatively, and you can fix them, so
that cost is not really showing up yet in the data.
Except this is my theory. Generally speaking, overall car insurance
costs have been rising across the country. It's not just
that it's getting more expensive to repair cars. I think
what's going on is the percentage of cars that are
(19:49):
being totaled for minor accidents. It's far higher with EBS
when we know this for a fact, and that cost
is being passed on to all of their insurance payers
because insurance gime's going to put the money somewhere, so
they haven't yet made ev makers I don't think pay
the actual underwritten cost of ensuring a vehicle that gets
(20:13):
into an accident that can be written off much more quickly.
And there's another feature, by the way, for Tesla's particularly
and if other automakers follow this, is that Elon Musk
is nothing brilliant made the cheaper to make his car
because his frame is a single aluminum casting. No one
else has been to achieve that. It's a really incredible
engineering achievement, and good on him and his team. I mean,
(20:35):
it really is. It's amazing. But the problem with that
is that the aluminum is, you know, it's fragile relatively speaking.
I mean, if you get into an accident and do
damage to the frame of a steel car, you can
bend it back, you can replace a part. We can't
do that to a tesla. You're right off the frame,
right And that's so you get two things you're facing
(20:56):
that are changed. Insurance underwriting bill. You know that will
show up. It has to hope eventually, as you get
more and more evs on the road, and I think
what solution is uncomplicated. The electric car owner will pay
for the insurance higher insurance costs. Ultimately, that's what will happen,
and then insurance companies will be blamed for impeding the
(21:17):
eed revolution.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
For gouging and all gouging, gouging, and all of a
sudden it will become their fall.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I heard a story recently in the news that someone
with a Rivian vehicle Rivian truck. Now I think I
think the analogy was the damage if it was a
gas vehicle would have been half the price. It was
a twenty six thousand dollars repair, and the debate was
do you fix it? And and it's it's it just
goes on every day. I've heard stories where insurance carriers
(21:47):
are pulling out of the state of Florida because of
the cost. Some of it's obviously due to, you know,
the losses they encountered over the last couple of years
with weather and hurricanes and so forth, but you know,
it's it's also because when an EV you know, when
a hurricane hits Florida, and how many evs get wiped out,
as they did in the last couple of storms, right
all of a sudden, the losses multiply at such a
(22:09):
rate that the insurance company can't make a rate of
return on their investment. You know, they you know, let's
talk how does an insurance company make money. My understanding
is obviously they're taking the money from you and I
and everybody else, and then they're investing it. They're putting
it into the stock market, they're putting it in places.
And when the market goes down. So now the market
goes down, the EV cost to repair goes up. It's
(22:30):
like the perfect storm for you. We don't want to
do this anymore.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, it's a problem. And some of it is higher
repair costs inherent in the fact that the parts are
more expensive or less available, the mechanics aren't available, but
that to be fair, some of that works out over
time in the sense that the training and availability of
mechanics and parts improves over time, but it takes a
(22:54):
long time. It's not going to happen overnight. And so
those those are pretty typical features of any new product.
But the fact is, the inherent cost of so many
of the components in an EV are higher than the
inherent cost of the conventional car. So by definition, it's
going to be more expensive to repair. And then when
(23:15):
you add to that this other feature I mentioned, which is,
you know, there's no single component that is as expensive
in a conventional car as there isn't an EV when
as is the battery, and that's that's a very big risk.
You got one thing that if it's damaged in a
way that's going to make it unsafe, you have to
write the vehicle off. And of course that's I had
(23:36):
a friend who's whose wife drives a Tesla three. It's
a nice car. I've driven them a small minor vender
bender and they wrote it off. Minor says nobody was hurt.
It was, but it caused enough potential damage to the
integrity of the battery that is a vendor bender it's
obviously a little more than that, but they wrote it off,
(23:57):
and it wouldn't never have been a write off it
had been a been a convent che vehicle.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
If you're standing in in front of two dealerships EV
or GUESS and you're trying to think about the cost
of ownership the GUESS version, the internal combustion engine. You're
familiar with that, if you've been driving a while, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
What the costs are.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
You know what are the hidden costs with that EV
that you know people need to think about and make
a decision based on that. You know the things, the
things they're not telling us. You know, insurance is one
of them, right cost to repair as the other.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Well here sure, but here's the thing. In the current environment,
given what we're doing and how we're subsidizing evs, how
we're subsidizing the recharge recharging, and if you haven't have
a garage, there's a very compelling argument being made for
your second or third guard to be an EV frankly
right now, because everybody else's is carrying the costs for you.
(24:52):
Then if you, if you, if you're one of the
owners that your at lease, you're a lease at lease,
are not a buyer, and you want to have a
car for a few years. You know, all all of
the residual value risk is taken by the less or
not you in the lease. You get the full credit
on the lease in the first few years of a vehicle.
Every vehicle's ownership is you know, as long as quality
controls readson well you don't how many you don't have
(25:13):
high repair costs not till later, so you you don't
have to worry about that. So it's the it's the
lease holder's problem when they take the vehicle back. So
and they're refueling costs are subsidized. Right now you're not
paying road taxes, which you will have to eventually, but
right now you're not. And if you could charge it home,
your your electric utility is subsidizing the electricity for you.
(25:36):
So's you know, not to be facetious, but it's true.
I've told family members that this is if you want
to second or third car to drive around town for convenience.
But I have like one of the better quality of
you have Bookswagen or the Testa three or the Hyundai's
are nice on to there, They're nice, they're well make cars,
especially in the first few years of lights, they're they're
(25:57):
not as quite as reliable. You're not driving them as much,
so you don't to worry about as much, you know,
driving a long bustans because you're just using it for
local driving. But that what that masks is that what
we're really talking about is not whether an individual should
buy an EV for their particular lifestyle choice. It's when
the government is saying to us that you could only
buy an EV and everybody's going to drive one, and
that's when the hidden costs show up. If the entire
(26:20):
fuel system for vehicles to switch from gasoline to electric,
we are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of
infrastructure costs which is not being factored in for the
charging networks, hundreds of billions, not billions, half a trillion
dollars to upgrade the electric grid to charge all these vehicles,
and another half a trillion dollars of high speed chargers
(26:45):
which will be needed on the road. So the current
plan is to spend seven billion dollars on EV chargers
out of the Inflation Reduction Act. That's a drop in
the bucket. We're gonna we're gonna need to spend hundreds
of billions of dollars to get enough of them on
the road. Those those are where the hidden costs coming
in that are being completely ignored, and that that's non trivial.
We're talking trillion dollars of infrastructure that needs to be
(27:09):
put in place to have a significant share. In fact,
the majority of vehicles become electric fuel instead of gasoline fueled.
It's these are electrical engineering challenges. They're not amenable to,
you know, magic waving a wand saying, oh, it'll get
better soon. We know how to do this stuff now,
we know what it costs now, and then you have not.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
A min about Then you have to think about the
cost of what it's going to take you to the land,
to the environment to build these things. Trees, forests that
have to be knocked down a lot. There, Mark, let's
pull over, take a pause for our last break. I'm
running ending in the Car Doctor. We're here with Mark Mills.
We'll return right after this. Welcome back, listeners, Running in
(27:50):
the Car Doctor here with Mark Mills. Mark, let's let's
go where our original conversation was at the start of
this hour. We wanted to talk about ev batteries and
a bit of a deep dwell. I'll tell you it's
you know, if they gave us ten hours, we could
talk ten hours. You know, let's talk a little about
the true cost. I want to build an EV battery.
What's it going to take?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Well, that's the true cost that evs cost. Its entirely
about the battery's. It takes a lot of stuff, a
lot of metals and minerals, a lot of chemicals. And
this is what people if they do a little research
with the magic Google machine, they can figure this out.
But the typical battery weighs a half a ton, just
the battery car. Which is why the EV's way more
(28:32):
and why EV's use more aluminum in the frame to
cut down on the weight penalty from the battery. So
to replace about sixty gallons of gasolane, you know, sixties
or sixty pounds of gasoline, you got, you got one
thousand pounds battery. In terms of what they're you know,
transporting around and that requires digging up somewhere on earth
are about two hundred and fifty tons of the earth.
(28:56):
Said this before, to get the metals and materials to
make why battery. That's where the money relies is they're
digging up all the earth to get the copper, to
get the aluminum, to get the manganese, to get the graphite,
to get the illuminum for the frame and for the
cathodes and anodes. All that costs money. All of it
(29:18):
costs more than the iron and steel that dominated regular car.
A regular car, three quarters of its weight, it's iron
and steel. That's not true for an EV. For an EV,
three quarter of its weight are exotic metals and minerals
at all cost more. You know, copper, the manganese lift him,
cobalt often, So where will the cost go in the future.
(29:38):
But it's complex heavy, you know, fuel tanks, the battery.
They're not going down significantly. They crept up and then
they crept down. Right now they finished their cost curve
decline from invention, And now the costs are going to
start creeping up because the marginal cost of the next
ton of copper, the next ton of manganese is rising,
(30:00):
is the world's demand starts to rise. And that's because
we're not opening minds fast enough. This whole thing, everything
about the future price of an EV, the future costume EV,
can be distilled to a single thing. You want to
try to predict how fast will the world's miners open
new minds to mine the mega tons of metals we
need to make eb batteries. We know the answer to that.
(30:23):
They're not opening them quickly right now. They're not investing
in them. So my guess is they know something that
the automakers don't know. So they they know the mandates
are going to end, and they're not about to get
out of their skis with hundreds of billions of dollars
of investment to build mines over the next decade when
the demand for those metals is not going to appear
(30:43):
because no one is going to want to pay the
prices that are going to be demanded, you know, for
the batteries. So that's that's just sort of the reality
that we're living with. And this is a mining question,
This is not a tech this is not a computer
technology question. To understand the future price of batteries, you
need to study the mining industry and the refining industry.
It's an industry dominated by slow cycles, long times to
(31:07):
build things, billion billions and hundreds of billions of dollars
of investments, mostly foreign. The minds that are all being
expanded are in Africa, South America, and Asia, mostly Chinese.
China dominates, utterly, utterly dominates the refining of the key
battery minerals. That dominates, I mean they have double the
(31:27):
market share globally in battery minerals that Opec has an
oil utterly dominate the battery minerals market, it will for
a decade.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
It sort of sounds like it's all about making money. Mark,
That's about all the time we've got right now, we're going.
We can continue this again if the listeners want, where
can they follow you and your escapades and what you're
trying to accomplish, and we appreciate that. Is there a
website they can go to and find out more about
you and what's going on?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, I keep archive all my writings and speeches at
tech hyphenpundit dot com. Okay, tech hyphenpundit dot com. It's
everything's there, all free, easy to find, except for the
paywald stuff. But you know, I apologize I can't control that. Well,
I mean, like Wall Street Journal, mopbands, those are paywald.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yep, gotcha? All right, kettle, Hey listen, you be well
and we'll talk again real soon. Take good care, Thank you,
You're very welcome. I'm ronnin Any and the Card Doctor.
I'm back right after this. Welcome back to listeners. You know,
Ron and Hanting the Card Doctor. It's it's always informative,
to say the least, talking to Mark Mills, and it's
(32:30):
going to be interesting to see if his two year
prediction comes true about when the financial hard wall or
financial brick wall that we're supposed to hit with EVS
in terms of unfeasibility actually comes. And I bet you
it does, all right, Mark's pretty accurate about these things.
He's got a good sense of where this is going.
One of the things he said to me off air was,
(32:50):
and I we're going to bring him back to talk
about this in the future at a higher level, is
that there's no definitive proof. This is kind of staggering.
There's no definitive proof that EVS will help reduce CO
two emissions, and I would like to see it if
it's out there, because what he's saying is there's an offset.
(33:14):
We create a vehicle that doesn't burn fuel, doesn't you
know it's it's an electric vehicle, but the cost to
produce that in terms of the bulldozer that digs up
the dirt, the coal plant that produces the electricity, the
way the materials are manufactured, the way you know, we
cut down certain parts of vegetation and forests and things
(33:36):
like that. You know, it's there's the offset, so you know,
it's it's it's it's a wash. And all we're doing
is spending trillions of dollars and it just it just
makes me wonder. I know, from a mechanical perspective, at
a you know, as a garage mechanic level, as I
consider myself to be, you know, street level mechanic, I
(33:56):
question who's going to fix all these cars and the
technology that's there. But that that's a story for another day.
I've had an absolute pleasure of being with you this weekend,
and I thank you for being here. Till the next time.
I'm ronning Andy in the car doctor, reminding you good
mechanics aren't expensive, they're priceless. See you
You're listening to Ron and Nanian The Car Doctor, nationally
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(00:25):
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start your engines. The Car Doctor is in the garage
(00:47):
and ready to take your call. Welcome listeners, good to
be here with you today. We're going to dive right
into it once again. We welcome back Mark Mills, and
we're gonna be talking electric vehicles. So sit down, stay tuned,
and get ready for a shock no pun intended. Mark,
welcome back, sir, h hopefully well, yes, sir, thank you
very much it's good to have you. Yep, let's dive
(01:07):
right into it. You know, in the news recently, Well,
two things I want to talk about in the news.
Keep in mind, I want to talk a little bit
before the end of this hour with you. Germany just
did something very interesting with EV's right, they dropped the subsidies.
I think it was, but I want to I also
want to talk a little bit about you know, I
keep reading how coming out of Washington, the government is
(01:29):
trying these mandates on appliances. And I know that's not
necessarily a car show story or an EV story, but
that appliance mentality about trying to make all the appliances green.
There's an EV guideline to that also, is there not?
I mean, don't they tie them together?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, they're tied together first philosophically in this sense that
we have Washington bureaucrats mandating what kind of products you
can use or have not, but not regulating if you
like their physical safety, you know, like underwriter's lapse, but
mandating what you're allowed to buy, banning your ability to
(02:09):
purchase certain kinds of products. So it's exactly the same
the idea. Many states have tried this a number half
certain California that Big Main is going to do it
next is make it illegal for you to purchase a
gas water heater or a gas furnace or gas appliance
for stove for your home. So a product that is
in widespread use for well we'll call it centuries certainly
(02:34):
and globally in widespread use, it will now be banned.
And it's like banning cigarettes, I mean the people, and
we didn't, by the way, not to use a handhand analogy,
cigarettes are not banned, even though there probably isn't a
single listener listening who doesn't think, even if they're smokers,
the cigarettes don't hurt you. I mean, come on, you
(02:57):
could do lots of things that hurt you that you enjoy.
I get that for human But the government is long
held that cigarettes are dangerous, and we didn't ban cigarettes,
which affirmatively hurt people and cause insurance costs go up
in the health industry, healthcare industry. So here we come
along and for the putative assumption that some small incremental
(03:21):
benefit to the far future from not burning natural gas
in your home in emitting carbon dioxide, we should ban
a product I mean, I never mind the motivation, the
idea behind it is really offensive. So I save for cars,
I'm going to ban the sale of internal combustion engines.
(03:41):
So far in twelve states, DC is just getting ready
to do it next in at least a dozen countries
have stood up to do that, and the EPA's new
rule would expectively ban internal combustion sales for sort of
seventy eighty percent of all vehicles by twenty thirty two.
I think it is so this is a phenomenal overreach.
(04:01):
The only time we've had bands of the scale it
was one time in American history, which is, of course
the ban on alcohol consumption.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
You know, I think I think about that, not till
i'm a I'm not a huge drinker, but I remember that.
You know, you start making the comparison that, yeah, we
had prohibition and that that didn't that didn't end too well,
because here we are it's available.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Again, right, not available again? What it did? LA then
at law on intended consequences about laws, Well, you try
to ban something it's widely consumed and used, you create
all sorts of u intended consequences, not least the criminality
that surrounded everybody's still consuming alcohol and traded underground industry.
The other band, by the way, which is relevant to
(04:47):
the EB domain or cars in general, was the ban
of driving quickly in nineteen seventy three, when we banned
banned ability to drive at normal speeds over fifty five
an hour. And what that did is that it it
was the It was even more even a more widely
flouted law than the ban and consuming alcohol because people
(05:11):
simply ignored it, and you know, lot more speeding tickets.
A lot of cops just ignored it. Some didn't. But
it really is a very dangerous thing to ban things
that are silly, to ban that people will ignore and
create under you know, all kinds of unattended consequences. But anyway,
the ban, the ban on the appliances is no different
than the ban on cars. It's motivated by the same thing,
(05:33):
the same bad instincts to to have status control over
consumer choices that are you know, convenient, insensible.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I think, I think the sad thing about the appliance
ban and what they're trying to take away from is
they might be able to achieve it, because yeah, I
can get this, but I can't get that. The problem
is going to be you know if you don't have
you know, the electric cost right where back there, because
they want to convert every appliance to electric something or
(06:03):
electric water heater, or minimized the amount of natural gas
flowing through the natural gas device. And it's like the
ev situation. And this is where I think the analogy
in my mind where I was trying to put the
two together, is we don't have the resources. It's not
you know, it's like we keep saying we want to
go back in time. I want to be eighteen again.
It just it just can't happen. It's not it's not
(06:24):
physically possible.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Well, if you shift, if you shift that much energy
demand from gas to electric, which is what the goal is,
then you're right. You have to build electric infrastructure to
handle it, and we're not just flat and to do
it takes time and also cost money. And of course
you've now you've increased risks to society. One of the
(06:46):
benefits of having two fuels to your house when there's
power ours is you still have hot water, you still
have sove that works, fireplace they could use. That doesn't
happen in the electric world, which is which is high
risk by definition.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
You know, when are they gonna when are they going
to prevent this from lighting fires in the fireplace?
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Well that you know, well, Colorado a long time ago
banned new house construction with with with with fireplaces.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah really I didn't know. Yeah, I didn't know that.
That just bring a board. Another thing to mind. I
was watching this show on Netflix the other day. They
were talking about food and beef and and cows and
how cows emit. I don't know if this is true
or not. I get it must be true. I saw
it on TV. You know, cows emit. The current population
(07:36):
of cows in the United States emit more greenhouse gases
than the entire transportation industry. It was some astounding claim
that cows are more deadly to the environment than the automobile.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And they want to they want to ban milk and beef.
So what they're referring to is the fact that the
ruminant bacteria in the cows gut uh digestion of grasses
by cows and all that class of creatures emits methane.
Methane is a more powerful in the greenhouse lexicon, more
(08:11):
powerful greenhouse casts and co two by depending how you
measure by a fact. For twenty, So you know, a
pound of methane emitd is like twenty pounds of carbon dioxide.
It's shorter lived in the atmosphere, but that's what it does.
So that's some of the rules that are being promulgated
are directed not just the carbon dioxide emissions from combustion,
(08:31):
and it's not from cow farts. It is commonly that
smell of sulfur dioxide for the college kids that remember
what the misbehaviors and enjoyment they had at the flatulence,
But it's methane burps. It's the burping cows, the biodigestion
by bacteria of grasses, and of course termites forget meat
(08:53):
and beef, theite termites emit methane as well, and the
one of the largest sources of methane emissionslobally are from termites.
We don't count them because we don't eat termites, we
don't grow termites, so they're irrelevant. But yet we want
to regulate cows because you know, we grow cows. I mean,
it's the path is uh yeah, I would use the
(09:15):
word in saying because it's probably the right word to use,
this path towards trying to find every possible source of
human emissions of greenhouse gases and regulator to ban. And
it's really it's not going to end well because you
can't do it. I mean, it's just no matter what
people are saying, it just can't be done.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
So does you know, going back to where we started
our conversation, does the appliance controls we see currently being
applied by Washington is that a reflection of the mentality
of what they expect from the electric vehicle And that's
why they're dragging us. I mean you in that direction.
I mean you just said I know that you know
Washington d C is going to add the band or
Washington is going to add the ban. I don't know
(09:53):
if you meant DC or the state, but you know
we're we're again. And yet some states are saying say, hey,
we can't do this, it's not going to work right.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Well, I number of states they're not all on board,
but Washington d C. Is the fact though, banning internal
combustion engines through the EPA's proposed rule, and that's being challenged.
But that'll, you know, we'll see how it goes. I
never no governments can do a lot. The district of Columbia,
it South has joined California, New York and made other
(10:25):
states in banning the ability as a resident of that
state to purchase an internal combustion engine by the year
twenty thirty two. I think it is so, you know,
long before we get to that point in time, if
those laws and bans stay on the books, long before
we get to that period, this is only only eight
years out, long before then, automakers, if those bands stay
(10:48):
in place, we'll have to think about whether they shut
down a lot of factories because they'll be overproducing internal
combustion engines, and those decisions will have to be made
a few years from now, not seven eight years from now.
In a few years from now. You have to get
ahead of that curve. So they really think those bands
will stay in place. Then you'll begin to see auto
industry production ramping down because you won't be able to
(11:10):
sell the products, and you've got to start thinking strategically
about what you can close and quickly can close it.
And of course the effect of that will be to
raise the costs of vehicles. Will be fewer vehicles available preemptively,
and we'll raise the cost of used cars. As we've
talked about before, and raise the cost of repairing use
cars because people are going to keep the cars longer,
(11:30):
and it's going to be a very vicious downward spiral
of high costs and inconveniences that will begin again, not
in twenty thirty two when the bands are proposed, but
before it by.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Years Soles unless we come back to the same side
of the coin. So makes this election. You're very, very interesting.
You're listening to Ronnanni and the Car Doctor. I'm talking
to Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute and we're chatting
away about EV's and a bunch of other topics this hour.
So stay put, Mark, stay on the side there. I'm
running any of the Card Doctor. We'll both be back
right after this. Don't go away. Welcome back, listeners, running
(12:08):
Any and the Car Doctor are here with the UH
often imitated, never duplicated, underappreciated. Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute,
hanging in there.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Mark.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
I had to give you that one, right, you know, it's.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
As good I'll take. I'll take it all I.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Do have to go ahead. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I want to correct one thing I should have told
you at the outset UH. First of the year I
left the Manhattan Institute, my beloved Manhattan suit, where I'm
supposed contributing editor to its great city journal. But now
I am a distinguished and you'll have to treat me
with more respect. Now, Ron, I am a distinguished, distinguished
Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. I've changed
(12:51):
courses because they made me an offer, uh, to come
and play with them, but especially to help build the
new National Energy Initiative think tank of some kind based
in Washington. It's not a Texas based activity, but a
Texas sponsored activity, because well, Texas is the energy giant
(13:12):
of America and in fact of the world.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And they and they realize what's at stake. They do
right one last thing from our last conversation. And by
the way, congratulations for that. I don't want to just
ignore that. That's kind of neat.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
About two weeks ago in the news, Germany decided to
do away with the incentive for purchasing or supporting evs.
What was that all about?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Money? Apply, money matters? What a shock? Yeah, I mean,
you can't subsidize everything forever. And what it was all
about is the it made a lie of the trope
that if you subsidize EV's, the volumes will go up
and they'll get cheaper. And EV's are inherently more expensive
than conventional cars, except for in the luxury market, which
(14:02):
is functionally irrelevant to most of the world. So for
the everyday car, evs are inherently more expensive, and they
are now being produced at scale. We're no longer talking
about a nascent industry. There are millions of them being manufactured.
Kessel did over a million a year themselves last year.
It's a mature, a large industry, and it still requires
(14:26):
massive subsidies to get people to buy them, which means
governments are facing the prospect if they push evs, is
the only vehicle you're allowed to buy, is subsidizing every
car everybody buys. So it's unsustainable. You can't you can't
do these kinds of things. And the lie that they
get cheap is not true.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
So wait, you're telling me that Germany woke up and said, wait,
we can't afford to continue in this path. Let's just
let's eliminate it and stop it here.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yeah, they they did other things. Remember, they are pursuing
this aggressive wind and solar path and their grids and
that are there's a sense you no. I believe last
year there was no net new orders in Europe for
for turbanes win turbans, and they are reactivating coal plants
in Germany, digging up more coal, and the costs of
the natural gas is soaring because of their because of
(15:16):
the understandable policy to deal link from Russian gas. But
that means instead of the geopolitical discounts that Putin was
giving Germany, they're gone. So energy got more expensive and
their economy is shrinking and they're de industrializing and so on.
The at all of it's on the backs of bad
(15:37):
energy policy. That's where all came from. It all, it
all comes back to bad energy policy being mandated by
the government unaffordable. So the next domino is the one
that just fail, which is knocking out EV subsidies.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
So when does that fall here now?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And that's a good question, I mean, I well, you know,
if it takes as long to happen here as it
did there, we're in for a few more years. I
think a fiscal sanity will rather than somebody deciding that oopes,
we were wrong, we don't like EV's that's not going
to happen I like evs. As you know, we've talked
about the performance opportunities and different kind of flexibility for
(16:20):
nice They're great fun, but that's not the same thing
as mandating everybody have one and subsidizing it. So I
think fiscal reality will will come back into play here
faster than it did in Germany for a whole lot
of reasons. And so if I were picking it, if
we want to take an over under Bet, I'd take
(16:41):
two years. I'd say I'd say two years. The substitutes
go away, even if there's an even if even if
Democrats have the White House, I think it's going to
be financially unsustainable. That's what I think will happen.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
All right, Well, i'll take that prediction. We'll we'll we'll
talk again in two years. Personally I think it's going
to Personally I think it's going to be eleven months.
But we'll kind of take that. We'll kind of taken
it comes you're.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Setting aside who wins the election eleven months, even if
the red team instead of the Blue team wins, Uh, there's
a lag because the you know, we've got then not
till a year from this January before the next inauguration
and then you have spool up time, which takes six months.
But you know, President could be could end by executive
(17:30):
order the subsidies.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Sure, yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
They could try, But they could try. I don't know
if they could get could get away with it, because
it's you know, it's a legislation, depends who has a
House and Senate. It's messy. I guess my point is.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
It becomes political.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Mark.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Let's pull over, take a pause. I'm running any and
the card Doctor here with Mark Mills. We'll both be
back right after this. Don't go away. Welcome back running
the Card Doctor here. We're talking Mark. With Mark Mills,
we're talking EV's and all the peripheral conversations that go
along with that statement. As we roll along, Mark, we
(18:03):
you know, I knew, and I could probably talk a
lot longer than the time we always have. I want
to get into insurance costs. We've never really done a
deep dive, but you know there's a lot of things
that go along with that term insurance costs and evs.
Electric vehicles enlighten us.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, well, the big wildcard here, as you know, is
ensuring the most expensive part of that vehicle which is
the battery, and unlike an internal combustion engine car, there's
no single component that has such a high proportion of
the cost of the vehicle. So roughly speaking, the batteries
fifteen thousand dollars could be a smaller car ten thousand.
(18:42):
That's the manufacturer's cost, so fifteen thousand. Then the big
ones could be twenty thousand. It's a lot of money.
And the battery structure is extremely important for safety reasons,
so if there's any mechanical damage to the battery pack,
it's a huge thing in the floor the pan of
the car. Since it's a write off, the batteries can't
(19:04):
be repaired the way an internal combustion engine can. You know,
it's a very complex machine. People think it's simple. It's
not a box of goo, it's not an empty tank.
There's thousands of components, thousands of wells, power electronics, cooling systems,
structural systems, safety systems. It's more complex than an internal
combustion engine. It made from lots of exotic stuff, unlike
an engine, which is cast iron steel. Very easy to
(19:26):
fix them, frankly comparatively, and you can fix them, so
that cost is not really showing up yet in the data.
Except this is my theory. Generally speaking, overall car insurance
costs have been rising across the country. It's not just
that it's getting more expensive to repair cars. I think
what's going on is the percentage of cars that are
(19:49):
being totaled for minor accidents. It's far higher with EBS
when we know this for a fact, and that cost
is being passed on to all of their insurance payers
because insurance gime's going to put the money somewhere, so
they haven't yet made ev makers I don't think pay
the actual underwritten cost of ensuring a vehicle that gets
(20:13):
into an accident that can be written off much more quickly.
And there's another feature, by the way, for Tesla's particularly
and if other automakers follow this, is that Elon Musk
is nothing brilliant made the cheaper to make his car
because his frame is a single aluminum casting. No one
else has been to achieve that. It's a really incredible
engineering achievement, and good on him and his team. I mean,
(20:35):
it really is. It's amazing. But the problem with that
is that the aluminum is, you know, it's fragile relatively speaking.
I mean, if you get into an accident and do
damage to the frame of a steel car, you can
bend it back, you can replace a part. We can't
do that to a tesla. You're right off the frame,
right And that's so you get two things you're facing
(20:56):
that are changed. Insurance underwriting bill. You know that will
show up. It has to hope eventually, as you get
more and more evs on the road, and I think
what solution is uncomplicated. The electric car owner will pay
for the insurance higher insurance costs. Ultimately, that's what will happen,
and then insurance companies will be blamed for impeding the
(21:17):
eed revolution.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
For gouging and all gouging, gouging, and all of a
sudden it will become their fall.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I heard a story recently in the news that someone
with a Rivian vehicle Rivian truck. Now I think I
think the analogy was the damage if it was a
gas vehicle would have been half the price. It was
a twenty six thousand dollars repair, and the debate was
do you fix it? And and it's it's it just
goes on every day. I've heard stories where insurance carriers
(21:47):
are pulling out of the state of Florida because of
the cost. Some of it's obviously due to, you know,
the losses they encountered over the last couple of years
with weather and hurricanes and so forth, but you know,
it's it's also because when an EV you know, when
a hurricane hits Florida, and how many evs get wiped out,
as they did in the last couple of storms, right
all of a sudden, the losses multiply at such a
(22:09):
rate that the insurance company can't make a rate of
return on their investment. You know, they you know, let's
talk how does an insurance company make money. My understanding
is obviously they're taking the money from you and I
and everybody else, and then they're investing it. They're putting
it into the stock market, they're putting it in places.
And when the market goes down. So now the market
goes down, the EV cost to repair goes up. It's
(22:30):
like the perfect storm for you. We don't want to
do this anymore.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, it's a problem. And some of it is higher
repair costs inherent in the fact that the parts are
more expensive or less available, the mechanics aren't available, but
that to be fair, some of that works out over
time in the sense that the training and availability of
mechanics and parts improves over time, but it takes a
(22:54):
long time. It's not going to happen overnight. And so
those those are pretty typical features of any new product.
But the fact is, the inherent cost of so many
of the components in an EV are higher than the
inherent cost of the conventional car. So by definition, it's
going to be more expensive to repair. And then when
(23:15):
you add to that this other feature I mentioned, which is,
you know, there's no single component that is as expensive
in a conventional car as there isn't an EV when
as is the battery, and that's that's a very big risk.
You got one thing that if it's damaged in a
way that's going to make it unsafe, you have to
write the vehicle off. And of course that's I had
(23:36):
a friend who's whose wife drives a Tesla three. It's
a nice car. I've driven them a small minor vender
bender and they wrote it off. Minor says nobody was hurt.
It was, but it caused enough potential damage to the
integrity of the battery that is a vendor bender it's
obviously a little more than that, but they wrote it off,
(23:57):
and it wouldn't never have been a write off it
had been a been a convent che vehicle.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
If you're standing in in front of two dealerships EV
or GUESS and you're trying to think about the cost
of ownership the GUESS version, the internal combustion engine. You're
familiar with that, if you've been driving a while, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
What the costs are.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
You know what are the hidden costs with that EV
that you know people need to think about and make
a decision based on that. You know the things, the
things they're not telling us. You know, insurance is one
of them, right cost to repair as the other.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Well here sure, but here's the thing. In the current environment,
given what we're doing and how we're subsidizing evs, how
we're subsidizing the recharge recharging, and if you haven't have
a garage, there's a very compelling argument being made for
your second or third guard to be an EV frankly
right now, because everybody else's is carrying the costs for you.
(24:52):
Then if you, if you, if you're one of the
owners that your at lease, you're a lease at lease,
are not a buyer, and you want to have a
car for a few years. You know, all all of
the residual value risk is taken by the less or
not you in the lease. You get the full credit
on the lease in the first few years of a vehicle.
Every vehicle's ownership is you know, as long as quality
controls readson well you don't how many you don't have
(25:13):
high repair costs not till later, so you you don't
have to worry about that. So it's the it's the
lease holder's problem when they take the vehicle back. So
and they're refueling costs are subsidized. Right now you're not
paying road taxes, which you will have to eventually, but
right now you're not. And if you could charge it home,
your your electric utility is subsidizing the electricity for you.
(25:36):
So's you know, not to be facetious, but it's true.
I've told family members that this is if you want
to second or third car to drive around town for convenience.
But I have like one of the better quality of
you have Bookswagen or the Testa three or the Hyundai's
are nice on to there, They're nice, they're well make cars,
especially in the first few years of lights, they're they're
(25:57):
not as quite as reliable. You're not driving them as much,
so you don't to worry about as much, you know,
driving a long bustans because you're just using it for
local driving. But that what that masks is that what
we're really talking about is not whether an individual should
buy an EV for their particular lifestyle choice. It's when
the government is saying to us that you could only
buy an EV and everybody's going to drive one, and
that's when the hidden costs show up. If the entire
(26:20):
fuel system for vehicles to switch from gasoline to electric,
we are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of
infrastructure costs which is not being factored in for the
charging networks, hundreds of billions, not billions, half a trillion
dollars to upgrade the electric grid to charge all these vehicles,
and another half a trillion dollars of high speed chargers
(26:45):
which will be needed on the road. So the current
plan is to spend seven billion dollars on EV chargers
out of the Inflation Reduction Act. That's a drop in
the bucket. We're gonna we're gonna need to spend hundreds
of billions of dollars to get enough of them on
the road. Those those are where the hidden costs coming
in that are being completely ignored, and that that's non trivial.
We're talking trillion dollars of infrastructure that needs to be
(27:09):
put in place to have a significant share. In fact,
the majority of vehicles become electric fuel instead of gasoline fueled.
It's these are electrical engineering challenges. They're not amenable to,
you know, magic waving a wand saying, oh, it'll get
better soon. We know how to do this stuff now,
we know what it costs now, and then you have not.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
A min about Then you have to think about the
cost of what it's going to take you to the land,
to the environment to build these things. Trees, forests that
have to be knocked down a lot. There, Mark, let's
pull over, take a pause for our last break. I'm
running ending in the Car Doctor. We're here with Mark Mills.
We'll return right after this. Welcome back, listeners, Running in
(27:50):
the Car Doctor here with Mark Mills. Mark, let's let's
go where our original conversation was at the start of
this hour. We wanted to talk about ev batteries and
a bit of a deep dwell. I'll tell you it's
you know, if they gave us ten hours, we could
talk ten hours. You know, let's talk a little about
the true cost. I want to build an EV battery.
What's it going to take?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Well, that's the true cost that evs cost. Its entirely
about the battery's. It takes a lot of stuff, a
lot of metals and minerals, a lot of chemicals. And
this is what people if they do a little research
with the magic Google machine, they can figure this out.
But the typical battery weighs a half a ton, just
the battery car. Which is why the EV's way more
(28:32):
and why EV's use more aluminum in the frame to
cut down on the weight penalty from the battery. So
to replace about sixty gallons of gasolane, you know, sixties
or sixty pounds of gasoline, you got, you got one
thousand pounds battery. In terms of what they're you know,
transporting around and that requires digging up somewhere on earth
are about two hundred and fifty tons of the earth.
(28:56):
Said this before, to get the metals and materials to
make why battery. That's where the money relies is they're
digging up all the earth to get the copper, to
get the aluminum, to get the manganese, to get the graphite,
to get the illuminum for the frame and for the
cathodes and anodes. All that costs money. All of it
(29:18):
costs more than the iron and steel that dominated regular car.
A regular car, three quarters of its weight, it's iron
and steel. That's not true for an EV. For an EV,
three quarter of its weight are exotic metals and minerals
at all cost more. You know, copper, the manganese lift him,
cobalt often, So where will the cost go in the future.
(29:38):
But it's complex heavy, you know, fuel tanks, the battery.
They're not going down significantly. They crept up and then
they crept down. Right now they finished their cost curve
decline from invention, And now the costs are going to
start creeping up because the marginal cost of the next
ton of copper, the next ton of manganese is rising,
(30:00):
is the world's demand starts to rise. And that's because
we're not opening minds fast enough. This whole thing, everything
about the future price of an EV, the future costume EV,
can be distilled to a single thing. You want to
try to predict how fast will the world's miners open
new minds to mine the mega tons of metals we
need to make eb batteries. We know the answer to that.
(30:23):
They're not opening them quickly right now. They're not investing
in them. So my guess is they know something that
the automakers don't know. So they they know the mandates
are going to end, and they're not about to get
out of their skis with hundreds of billions of dollars
of investment to build mines over the next decade when
the demand for those metals is not going to appear
(30:43):
because no one is going to want to pay the
prices that are going to be demanded, you know, for
the batteries. So that's that's just sort of the reality
that we're living with. And this is a mining question,
This is not a tech this is not a computer
technology question. To understand the future price of batteries, you
need to study the mining industry and the refining industry.
It's an industry dominated by slow cycles, long times to
(31:07):
build things, billion billions and hundreds of billions of dollars
of investments, mostly foreign. The minds that are all being
expanded are in Africa, South America, and Asia, mostly Chinese.
China dominates, utterly, utterly dominates the refining of the key
battery minerals. That dominates, I mean they have double the
(31:27):
market share globally in battery minerals that Opec has an
oil utterly dominate the battery minerals market, it will for
a decade.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
It sort of sounds like it's all about making money. Mark,
That's about all the time we've got right now, we're going.
We can continue this again if the listeners want, where
can they follow you and your escapades and what you're
trying to accomplish, and we appreciate that. Is there a
website they can go to and find out more about
you and what's going on?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, I keep archive all my writings and speeches at
tech hyphenpundit dot com. Okay, tech hyphenpundit dot com. It's
everything's there, all free, easy to find, except for the
paywald stuff. But you know, I apologize I can't control that. Well,
I mean, like Wall Street Journal, mopbands, those are paywald.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yep, gotcha? All right, kettle, Hey listen, you be well
and we'll talk again real soon. Take good care, Thank you,
You're very welcome. I'm ronnin Any and the Card Doctor.
I'm back right after this. Welcome back to listeners. You know,
Ron and Hanting the Card Doctor. It's it's always informative,
to say the least, talking to Mark Mills, and it's
(32:30):
going to be interesting to see if his two year
prediction comes true about when the financial hard wall or
financial brick wall that we're supposed to hit with EVS
in terms of unfeasibility actually comes. And I bet you
it does, all right, Mark's pretty accurate about these things.
He's got a good sense of where this is going.
One of the things he said to me off air was,
(32:50):
and I we're going to bring him back to talk
about this in the future at a higher level, is
that there's no definitive proof. This is kind of staggering.
There's no definitive proof that EVS will help reduce CO
two emissions, and I would like to see it if
it's out there, because what he's saying is there's an offset.
(33:14):
We create a vehicle that doesn't burn fuel, doesn't you
know it's it's an electric vehicle, but the cost to
produce that in terms of the bulldozer that digs up
the dirt, the coal plant that produces the electricity, the
way the materials are manufactured, the way you know, we
cut down certain parts of vegetation and forests and things
(33:36):
like that. You know, it's there's the offset, so you know,
it's it's it's it's a wash. And all we're doing
is spending trillions of dollars and it just it just
makes me wonder. I know, from a mechanical perspective, at
a you know, as a garage mechanic level, as I
consider myself to be, you know, street level mechanic, I
(33:56):
question who's going to fix all these cars and the
technology that's there. But that that's a story for another day.
I've had an absolute pleasure of being with you this weekend,
and I thank you for being here. Till the next time.
I'm ronning Andy in the car doctor, reminding you good
mechanics aren't expensive, they're priceless. See you
Host
Ron Ananian
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