December 27, 2025 • 35 mins
While Ron and crew are making the trip back from the North Pole, having helped Santa with another Christmas Eve, here is a "Best Of" show.
Ron sat down with industry icon and physicist Mark Mills to talk about EV's from multiple views a few years ago. Its a great flash from the past and interesting to note as many of the predictions and directions are happening now.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following program has been pre recorded.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Ron an Inians.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
My wife forgot the charge your car overnight, meaning she
didn't plug it in, So I just plugged it in
at forty eight percent. It needs three hours and fifteen
minutes to fully charge. We won't be able to use
it for all our driving. Today's planned. There's a candid
on us response from an electric vehicle owner, the car Doctor.
(00:30):
The operator of New England's power grid said it could
be forced to shut off power if there is a
long period of very cold temperatures this winter. If New
England has a prolonged cold snap, the operator of the
grid warn they may have to shut off the power
to homes and businesses.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Welcome to the radio home of ron Ananian, the Car Doctor.
Since nineteen ninety one, this is where car owners the
world overturned to for their definitive opinion on automotive repair.
If you're a mechanics giving you a busy signal, pick
up the phone and call in The garage doors open.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
But I am here to take your call at eight
five five five six nine nine hundred.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Running.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
We've got a great hour of radio for you here.
It's I've had so much fun. Already talking to our
guest pre show, just just listening and I know where
this conversation is going to go. But you guys are
going to love this. And actually I have to thank
all of you the listenership, because you sent in more
than a few emails showing me his recent interview. Well
maybe it's not so recent, but some of his other
(01:32):
interviews Mark Mills from the Manhattan Institute with John Stossel
among other people, and talking about electricity and electric cars.
And we reached out to Mark. He got right back
to us, and we're so thrilled to have him here.
He is, his reputation precedes him. Mister Mills, are you there, sir.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I'm here. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
You're very welcome. We're so glad to have you. I
you know, I just want to I'm going to start
at the beginning, Mark, because you and I have already
had half the interview.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
And we'll just go home and have a drink.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, we're done. You know, full disclosure. So you know,
tell us about yourself. You know what, why did I
pick you? Why are you the guy that everybody seems
to be talking to when we're talking about electricity? And
energy because this is a car repair show. But you know,
this electric car thing is just the tip of the
iceberg of what they want to do and how they
(02:23):
want to change the way energy is in this country.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yeah. Well, I could first say it's not my fault.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Well that's good to know, but I'm hoping you're the
guy that fixes it.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
No, you know, it's funny. I I studied my degrees
in physics. I quick graduate school because because well I
would like to work, and I was building semiconductors. My
first job was in a manufacturing plant for semiconductors. But
from very early in my life I liked how things work.
(02:53):
They like building things. I you know, worked on engines.
I worked at motorcycles. I raced one summer in Grand
Prix in Canada, and I, you know, I'm Canadian. I
like engines, I like electric motors, I like semiconductors. I
like how stuff works. And that's why in part I
study physics. And then I ended up getting a job
(03:13):
as an engineer and semiconductors and missile guidance and stuff
like that, and I got sort of dragged in the
back door to the energy domain simply because nothing's possible
without energy. So it doesn't matter whether you're trying to
figure out how to make cars go fast or be
more efficient, depends what your proclivities are, or rockets fly,
or make semi conductors more powerful, computers faster, everything everything redowns.
(03:38):
Ultimately they're figuring out both the materials and the energy
energetics of things. So yeah, that was sort of intellectual part,
but the practical part was very real for me in
jobs I had in my hobbies. And then you know,
we got the energy debate started. As you know, we
had oil embargos and a couple of them that the
(04:00):
people have forgotten. The people of a certain age will remember.
Oil prices went up four hundred percent overnight in seventy
three seventy four, then they went up more than two
hundred percent again in seventy nine. These are shocking events.
They really changed how the Western world thought about energy,
and people thought we were running out of energy. So
I ended up getting involved in energy issues, partly because
(04:23):
of the silliness of the idea that we were running
out of energy, running out of oil. And then now
we have another silly idea that we should never use
oil and gas again.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Well, well, let me. Stop you right there, Mark, Are
we running out of oil?
Speaker 3 (04:36):
No, that's the story. I mean the nuance is can
you can you exhaust an oil field that uses technology
you have available today to deliver oil at a price
you're willing to pay. Yes, that's a that's a form
of running out of oil. The geophysical question is a
(04:57):
different one. Is there enough oil that we are aware of?
Is a resource to fuel society for centuries? Yeah? Easily?
Centuries is essentially forever. The availability of oil, or natural
gas or any frankly, any mineral, any resource in the
Earth is dictated not by this physical quantity but the
(05:20):
kind of technology we have to find it and extract
it at a price. Yeah, and that so that's it's
a technology question. That's the key question is what kind
of technologies are there, how do they change, and what
are their limits? So you know, we're not running out
of oil, but you can run out of the capacity
(05:40):
to produce it at the volumes and prices the markets
will need and will pay. And governments can cause that
to happen, not just engineers. Governments ban things that you
can't drill here. Governments can pass regulations that are punitive,
make oil or gas or any mineral too expensive. So
(06:01):
the when I start up, I say no, I mean,
I'm answering that to your physical question. But obviously governments can
do really dumb things, and they have and they will
continue to do that.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I guess that's what makes them politicians and governments do
a degree.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Well, well, the good news is, you know, not to
go political. I really have democracies that do dumb things
and dictatorships.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Well there's always that, Yes, I agree, hundred percent. Well, listen,
I got to tell you we're going to get political
comments after this conversation. I know I'm going to get
because I already get hate email that I'm trying to ban.
Do you know that I single handedly am trying to
eliminate the electric car industry if you believe some of
the listeners. And I just keep trying to point out.
You know, as I said in our pre interview interview,
(06:47):
you know one of my favorite lines from one of
my favorite movies, Hidden Figures, math doesn't lie two and
two has to be four. Where we're going to get
the electricity from?
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Well, I mean, doctor Carwin is actually a terrific example
of two domains that fascinating one is sort of a
law called misdirection of interest. In the future. I've got
a new book out, as you probably know. But when
one writes a new book, one is not only obligated
but eager eager to promote it. And I write about
(07:18):
cars and transportation in the book. It's called the Cloud Revolution.
As you can guess from the title, it's not about cars.
It's about computing and technology for the future. Cars. Cars
are interesting new kinds of fuel for cars using batteries
instead of gasoline. It's important. You know, that's a very
interesting option, and it will be lots more of it.
(07:41):
But the idea that that's revolutionary in the same sense
the invention of the car is revolutionary is profoundly misguided.
In the nineteenth century of coming up a new way
to feed horses and imagining that you had a revolution, well,
you know, to be winners and losers. If you change
what you feed the horses, it's still a car with
(08:02):
a battery is still a car. It's different food that
is meaningful. The real question you'd want to know is
can we make enough of that food? And by that
I mean you know you're referring to electricity. Electricity is
the least of it. That's not the problem. Obviously, you
have to charge an electric car with electricity equally. Obviously,
the electricity you're use is determined by when you charge
(08:24):
the car and where you charge it. I mean by
that most people probably know. If you happen to live
in a part of the world of a country where
there's lots of wind and solar and it happens to
be sunny or a lot of windy at that very moment,
if you charge your car, you're probably using a lot
of electrons made with wind and solar. And if you
happen to charge your car when it's cloudy or be calmed,
(08:46):
which happened for roughly two weeks in northern Europe this
last month, as you know, then you're charging your car
with natural gas and coal dominantly, which is what happened
in Germany and England where they fired up coal plants
that they fortunately still had around. So that's a factor.
The bigger factor that is profoundly absent from this whole
(09:10):
trope that we're going to eliminate the use of internal
combustion engines by virtue of electric cars being better. We
could talk about whether they're better or not. That's a
different subject, and whether they become cheaper another subject. But
the idea that electric cars will eliminate the need to
have oil internal combustion engines is just arithmetically silly. It's
(09:34):
not not happening. It won't happen for two reasons. One,
the scaling up that people imagine that is we're going
from a world today. It's about ten million electric cars
in the world today, which is a lot considering there
were a decade ago not even a million, so it's
a big deal. But it's in a world that has
over a billion cars on the roads. So you know, again,
(09:56):
if you do your math, you're not approaching one percent
of all vehicles. The optimists believe that there'll be hundreds
of millions of electric cars within the decade, say three
or four hundred million, five hundred million. That'd be an
astonishing increase in the physical infrastructure that would at that
point in time eliminate roughly ten percent of world's all use.
(10:20):
So let me say that again. If we get the
optimist vision happening in the next decade, and we get
four hundred million or so electric vehicles on the roads,
the reduction of world oil demand would be about ten percent.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
So I'll tell you.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Let me how is that an existential threat to anything?
If you're in the oil business, what do you care?
In fact, I would say the oppostate. If I'm a consumer,
Let's hope there's that many electric cars because the competition
will help keep the price of gas laying down for
everybody else who doesn't want to pay high price for gas.
You want competition?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah? Absolutely, Hey, Mark, let me pull over and take
a poise. But let me just say this. You just
convinced me you must be a physicist. Then you really
do have a degree.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
I used to be one. I don't practice anymore. I
just talk like one on TV and radio.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
You sound you sound pretty good to me. You got
me convinced. When I come back, maybe we'll talk about
time travel and a Dolorean. Ron and Andy and the
car doctor here with Mark Mills at the Manhattan Institute.
We'll both return right after this. Don't go away for
the best in car advice.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Give Ron a call eight five five five six zero
nine nine zero zero.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Now back to Ron. Hey, thanks for staying with us.
We're here today with Mark Mills. He is a senior
fellow with the Manhattan Institute. He's a faculty fellow at
Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. And he's just a
whole lot of fun to talk to. I think he's
like my new best buddy. We we could talk. Probably,
we need it. We need at least, you know, I
think I need like an eight hour show here, Mark.
(11:54):
So let me let me recap the first segment, all right,
just so I can for those that are just joining us.
We we've you know, you've made your case. Obviously, you're
a physicist. You've got some really great knowledge as far
as you know energy application, the theories of the future, use,
where it came from. You've convinced us of that. You've
(12:14):
written more than more than just a recent book. You've
written a few books, the most recent being The Cloud Revolution,
and that just came out this year and it's a
fascinating read. You were sort of talking about electric cars,
trying to keep us about electric cars, but then the
whole energy issue comes into play. So when you look
at I'm going to pick on a state, When you
(12:36):
look at California, by this must make your hairspin. By
twenty thirty five, there, they've banned the internal combustion engine vehicle?
Can they do it well?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Like governments can do almost almost as we've discovered recently,
almost anything they want to do. So I'll make a
I'll make a prediction in two parts about California that's
will be true for England, which has made the similar declaration.
The bands, if, if they stay in place, will result
(13:08):
in extraordinary escalation and the value of used cars. First, imagine,
because not everybody is gonna be able to buy an
expensive electric car, because the electric car will still by
then be more expensive than an internal combustion engine, which
we could talk about, but that will boost the number
(13:29):
of years used cars stay on the market, on the road,
and the value of them. What more likely happened is
the bands will be softened, or ignored, or just abandoned entirely,
because the whole world, in fact, just the countries that
are now in states that are now proposing to do that,
can't all do it and have enough batteries, never mind
(13:50):
manufacturing cars. The central problem that's being ignored here is
not whether electric cars nice and Tussels are nice. Of
course they're nice, pressive car, incredible company, and kudos to
somebody building a car company's successful by all measures, even
counting you know, some help from subsidies. That doesn't explain it.
It's a successful car company.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Sure, absolutely achievement.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
In fact, the most impressive engineering of a battery probably
on the planet. Without being hyperbolic. It deserves enormous credit.
Really something.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
The last guy to try and do it, yeah was
Tucker Yeah, exactly in forty six, forty seven, or.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
You could pick the Delareate if you like, in the Brickland.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Ok.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, total failures, hard to build a car company, even
with help, and he's done it. And look, if you
think about this, I mean, what an incredible achievement. I believe.
The last I checked that something on the order is
sixty percent of all automobiles sold in the Western world
(14:53):
at a price over ninety thousand, So eighty five ninety
thousand range are now testless. Wow, he's utterly and they
did that market, which is why Mercedes and Jaguar and
BMW are all making evs in that price range. Because
he just ate the lunch. And that's not nothing. That's
not the whole car market obviously, but it's not nothing,
(15:13):
and it's very impressive. But here's This is the nub
of the problem. And it's not that electric cars aren't
profoundly useful vehicles and have a niche is bigger than
now exists. So if I were predicting another sort of
future snapshot, there's ten million electric cars today, it will
(15:35):
be unsurprising if there were hundreds of millions, at least
one hundred million in the next decade. There'll be lots
more electric cars. The problem is that the batteries are
not these simple things that I think are many people's head.
They think the electric car is quote simple and simpler
to build than the internal combustion engine, because you have
this engine, which you know better than I do. I've
(15:56):
taken a few engines apart in my life, but not recently.
The engine, it has got a lot of parts in it,
and it's you know, all the moving parts and it
can wear out. And you have so you have a
simple fuel tank, and it's a complicated engine, maybe a
thousand parts. And the trope is we have replaced a
simple engine with the complex engine with a simple motor
with two moving parts maybe two motors, you know, two
(16:18):
parts each, but the battery. The swap is for complexity
in the fuel system. The battery has thousands of welds
in it. A Tesla battery has fourteen thousand welds in it.
It has seven thousand cells. He's hoping to get the
next generation designed down to a few thousand cells. It
has a cooling system, a heating system, a structural system,
and it has electronic control systems in it to keep
(16:40):
it from to keep it from self immolating, the burning
up to maximize its performance. Is an extraordinarily complex electro
chemical machine, and the engine that we're replacing with is
a very complex electro chemical mechanical machine. Rather, so you're
swapping complex cities, you haven't eliminated complexity. More importantly, the
(17:04):
materials the battery is made from. The minerals, the cobalt,
the lithium, the nickel, manganese, those those minerals. The quanities
of the midtals you require to make a battery are
roughly over the life cent of a car. If you
count apples to apples, you increase the quantity materials you
need to drive a vehicle over a ten your life
(17:26):
by tenfold. But think about this one thousand percent increase
in the quantity materials I have to extract from the
earth to have to make a vehicle. So the parts
of the vehicle that are the same, electric and non electric,
you know, the wheels, the tires, the frame, they're all
the same, right seats, the battery. An electric car weighs
(17:46):
about one thousand pounds. The fuel tank is again you
know you and your audience now seventy pounds maybe sure
the car So I have one thousand pound fuel system
and it takes five hundred thousand pounds in the hero
of mind from the earth to make that one battery.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Oh my god, Mark, hold that thought. Let me pull
over and take this pause. We're gonna return. We'll rejoin us.
Rominading the Car Doctor, Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute.
Don't go away. We'll be back right after this. Come
(18:35):
in by right up. Welcome back, Roninading the Car Doctor
here today with Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute. Mark,
when we pulled over and took that pause, we were
talking in terms of the impact of what it takes
to make that electric car battery. Can you just recap
(18:57):
that for the listeners real quick?
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Yeah. I think this is the part that's critical. The
respective visions of a magical future where every car has
a battery in it. They won't be the kind of
batteries that we're making today because we can't make that
many batteries because the thousand pound battery, which is what
a battery weighs in a car that get several hundred
miles of range, requires mining a variety of minerals to
(19:21):
make the battery. Is the scientific term, no duh. You
need steel, of course, but it's aluminum. But you need
nickel and manganese and cobalt and lithium, you know, the
main lauge of minerals that go into a battery. So
a thousand pounds is a finished form. But to make
the battery you have to mine five hundred thousand pounds
(19:43):
and materials. Rock can process it, turn it into finished
minerals and make a battery. Now that there's two things
about that that matter. First, it takes energy to do that.
It has environmental impacts to do that, And you want
to know how much that you're going to do. If
you want to know the total, we'll call it the
energy debt of making the batteries. Because batteries aren't a
(20:05):
form of energy obviously, they store energy, So you spend
energy to store energy, and you spend a lot. It
takes somewhere between one hundred and three hundred barrels of
oil equivalent of energy, So three hundred barrels of oil
equivalent of energy to fabricate a battery that can hold
one barrel of oil equivalent of energy.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
And then you're doing all this mining and digging and
you know, gathering of rocks to get the materials. With
these giant machines that are emitting.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Well, they burn diesel fuel. Some of them are electric,
but if they're remote, you know, because they have electric
machines and remote minds. But if they're a remote mind,
not close to a grid, the generation of electricity comes
from diesel machines using oil. In fact, the global mining
industry uses almost as much oil as the global aviation
(21:00):
industry as much oil. And now to fabricate batteries that
the scales people are talking about will require that the
largest increase in mining the world has ever seen. And
I'm saying this. It sounds hyperbolic to say that I'm
saying this based on not my research. My research is
(21:21):
fighting other people's research. So the US Geological Survey or
the International Energy Agency itself, which is one of the
big advocates for more electric cars. What the researchers will
tell you who look at the mineral requirements is that
the world today is not mining nor planning to mind
(21:41):
enough copper, never mind everything else, or not enough nickel,
never mind the exotic things like lithium or cobalt, but
just the basic metals to make the quantities of batteries
and electric cars and windmills and solar arrays that are contemplated.
And electric car uses three times more copper than an
internal combustion engine. That should be on surprising considering you're
(22:05):
replacing you know, steel engine with you know, a copper
lound electric motor and a lot of electric bus bar
But the three hundred percent increase is not nothing. I mean,
if you start making millions of vehicles with a three
hundred percent increase in copper per vehicle, you become a
significant consumer of copper. And that's not counting the batteries
(22:25):
consumption of other minerals. So what's the solution. Well, I
can tell you as a fact, and this is easy
to find in the magic Google machine, that the world
is not now planning to and no governments are expanding
mining sufficient to make enough cars to ban internal combustion
engines in the next decade or two.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
So are we being you know, California banning sale and
internal combustion engines by thirty five car companies saying they'll
be all electric by twenty thirty. Are they showing us
the extreme and over the next couple of years, as
I've been saying, are they going to backpedal and all
of a sudden by you know, three or four years
from now. Well, we can't achieve that, But here's what
we really want.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
I'd take the bet the go to back pedal. It
won't take them a decade of backpedal. The back pedal
will start sooner, and it'll start when the prices start
going up. I mean, if you put this kind of demand,
the demand on minerals that these green energy plans have
represents say four hundred to four thousand percent increase in
demand for depends on the middle of your pick. So
(23:26):
it's four hundred percent increase in the man for copper,
it's a four thousand percent increase in the man for cobalt,
it's a one thousand percent increase of demand for nickel,
this is these are global increases in demand to meet
these plans that governments are proposing. These are astonishing increases
in demand in a world where market prices for these
minerals rises. If the demand goes up by ten percent
(23:50):
or twenty percent, so what will happen is the prices
will go up. So we saw this already this year.
The average price for a battery for electric car has
been going down famously as Elon Musk and everybody who
falls for a decade, which is pretty quite remarkable. But
this year it went down. This year, I mean the
trailing twelve months, it went down by a single digit
(24:12):
percentage point. It's like eight percent or something ten percent,
which is not a big decline. Next year, almost all
forecasts see battery price is going up, not down.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Up.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
The trend will reverse itself because of the costs of
the minerals. Here's here's the key fact when you buy it.
When you buy a car, the materials that are going
to the car, the bill of materials cost something, and
the labor so those setting aside profits, there's just two things, right.
You have labor for machines and human beings that you
(24:45):
pay for, and you have materials. The same is true
when you build a battery. Batteries and electric cars today,
sixty to seventy percent of the cost of making the
batteries just the raw minerals materials. And if I double
the price those minerals, how can we possibly say the
battery's going to get cheaper. Even if even if I
(25:06):
take the remaining thirty percent, which is the manufacturing machinery
and labor and electronics and a cooling system and make
that half as expensive, How's that going to get you
a cheaper battery When the sixty to seventy percent of
the costs of the battery, which are the minerals, everything
that's happening in the world today is leading to those
(25:26):
going up in price. And none of the environmental organizations,
and I say this, I think pretty confidently not a
single environmental organization in the world that's pushing to have
more electric cars is supporting more mining to make it
possible to have more electric rrs.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
So it's sort of like they want us to clean
up the environment, but don't touch the environment to do it.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah, look, I can't blame them. They're honest about right,
like you're mining. But let's be honest about what has
to be done. So if you if you drive a
car for a decade, we can calculate easy to do
the total ton of let's just do it in tons
of oil or gasoline you'll need depending on your detail,
no matter, we know what the number. And if you
do the same ten years for electric car, you get
(26:07):
to another tone, which in a sense, you pay for
upfront when you buy the battery. Forget how you make electricity,
you just look at the car. And if you make
those two comparisons, you get a thousand percent increase in
the tonnage of materials you need to extract from the
Earth to drive a vehicle for ten years. This is
(26:28):
this is consequential in economic terms and environmental terms, and
it's not sustainable. It won't. It won't even it sounds
like I'm being hyperbolic again, it won't happen. It just
it won't happen because it can't happen. So we're not
going to get there. But we will have more electric
cars because you could get to I don't know, pick
(26:49):
a number, ten percent of the fleet being electric or fifteen,
but we're.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Not going to We're not going to get to fifty
or sixty or one hundred. Hey, Mark called that thought.
Let me let me pull over and fit take this pause.
I'm running Ending of the Car Doctor here today with
Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute. We'll both be back
right after this. Don't go away. Welcome back, Ron Any
(27:12):
of the Car Doctor here today with Mark Mills of
the Manhattan Institute. He's also an accomplished author. He's written
more than a few books, his most recent being The
Cloud Revolution, talking about the convergence of new technologies and
the next economic boom. And I think part of that
is some of the conversation we're having here today, right Mark,
with regard to electric vehicles in the electric vehicle future.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah, I think, you know, let's talk about the future
a little. The idea that I don't think electric cars
are going to take over the world has a lot
of people saying to me, Wow, you know, you're not
a technical, you're not an optimist. You don't understand what
technology changes, and the future is going to be better
and they'll be better batteries. Look, I'm really probably over
(27:53):
the optimisty what technologists can do when engineers and the
innovators can do. But I also know what the physical
limits are and things it can't be done with the
physics and the engineering we know how to use. The
cars in the future are going to be as you know,
more reliable, safer, more comfortable. All these things are coming
from credible advances in engineering and technology. The automatic safety
(28:14):
systems that are emerging. I'm not talking about self driving,
but the you know, let's call them self stopping technologies
that are emerging prevent us from doing bad and stupid things.
This is this is very exciting. It's a great stuff.
We're going to reduce the cartridge on the roads. We're
going to make driving more comfortable. How we change how
we fuel a car really is a small ball stuff.
(28:35):
I mean, it's really it's not very imaginative. The revolutions
that are going to be exciting will be in things
like robotics and manufacturing and you know, how we how
we how we do medical diagnostics, and how we train people,
how we learn how to repair a car. That's but
back to the car here. Let me let me calibrate
(28:57):
a core physics point to make it clear to people
who say, and when I talk about the difference between
electric car, it's battery and the Gassian powered car. The
battery weighs a thousand pounds, your fuel tank weighs seventy pounds,
and you have to mine five hundred thousand pounds of
stuff to make the one battery.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
That's one battery, one battery, So a.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Half ton battery two hundred and fifty tons of stuff
dug out of the earth today. In the future it
will be five hundred tons. Because you know we're chasing
lower grade oars. The answer is it'll get better. My
technology will get better. Well, of course it will get better,
but internal combustion engines can get better too, but they
can't get better than the underlying physical chemistry of the
materials that you're using to create energy. So put this way,
(29:45):
everybody who has electric car, who's heard of electric cars
knows you measure the storage of electricity and kill one
hours the same things you pay for with your house.
So what you'd want to know is, if you have
a car, what you care about is the power to
weight ratio. What you know what gearhead doesn't care about
power weight? So what I cared about when I raced motorcycles,
So the physical chemistry of the ilviated chemicals from which
(30:10):
we make a battery, not the batteries power to weight ratio,
but it's underlying chemistry. Maximum of the chemicals that we use,
aliceated Costa chemicals is five hundred wat hours per kilogram,
So that's what you can you can, that's what the
energetics of the chemistry is. The battery is realized in
a tesla is about one hundred and fifty one hours
per kilogram, by the way, so it's a lot less
(30:32):
because it built things around it, machinery, hardware, controlling coolingsistence,
but the physical limits five hundred. So what you'd want
to know if you were designing a fast car or
say a drone, is what's oil because that's what you
start with when you may you convert it and it's
twelve thousand wat hours per kilogram. That's what oil is,
(30:54):
what the oil contains, and that's what's available. Now, can
you get twelve thousand what hours of it? No? But
I can get half out right? And could I ever
get half of the energy out of the five hundred
one hours per killogram? And let's get a chemist. Sure, yeah,
but theoretical you know best best the prototype batteries can
do that already. So now I'm comparing. We can do
(31:15):
the arithmetic here, it's not complicated. A six thousand one
hour pro killogram in total combustion capability versus a two
hundred and fifty one hour pipillogram battery capability. These are
extraordinary difference. Is so, can you make electric cars or
electric drones and airplace? Sure, but if you want to
go real fast and carry heavy loads for long distances,
(31:36):
you can be burning oil right in a long time.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
And that's the bottom line. Hey, Mark, our time is
just about up. Can I shamelessly plug you? Is there
a website the listeners can go to more information? Lay
it on us.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
You can do the tech hyphenpundit dot com mil so
it's a tech pundit with a hyphen right. And the
Manhattan Institute website. If you use a magic Google machine,
just type in Marked Mills Manhattan Institute. They'll they'll get
you to the web page. And you can use the
Amazon magic machine to type in my name, Marked Mills
and you'll get my book.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And that's what we want everybody to do because they
need they need this information, they really do, and you.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Know, and you'll find a lot there about change the
materials materials revolution, the change and in virtual reality it
will help us learn how to repair vehicles, change jobs,
and about how to I think drones are coming big time,
not for people soon, but but not not not too
far in the future.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Well, you know what we're going to do. We're going
to bring you back after the first of the year.
I'm asking you and telling you after the first of
the year.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
I'd be delighted you kick off the new year with
some exciting is.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
We're going to talk about cars in a little bit
further into detail.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
I got to run Mark, but listen, it was absolute pleasure, sir.
You you kind of lit up everybody's world today. No
pun intended with electric cars. So you have yourself for
good rest of the holiday season.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
You have a great have a great Thank you, Mary,
thank you, Marry Christmas to you.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yes, sir, I'm running any of the Car Doctor. We'll
be back right after this. Fuck am back run naming
the car Doctor. You know the mistake I made, Tom
was I should have asked Mark that, you know, if
we could invent the flux capacitor, would we then have
Because he's right, you know, he started talking about the
(33:21):
comic book Magic and I saw in one of his
interviews he talks about comic book magic that everybody thinks
all this technology is going to fall out of the sky,
and it's just not going to What do you mean
if we if you go to the O'Reilly website, they're
already advertising it. They're waiting for them to come in. Well,
a flux capacity. I know that is actually that is
actually there on the rally website. But I could listen
(33:43):
to him for hours. He just makes so much sense.
That was just a great interview. You know, it's I
don't see how anybody could argue his points. I just
don't because you know, two and two has to be four.
Two and two is never seven. And you know his
commentary in one of his other interviews that I saw
him do, he also talks about how okay, so now
(34:05):
you've got this electric car future on the table, the
amount of transmission lines and towers and cables that you
have to run in order to support this this grid
that everybody is talking about building and the support to
the infrastructure, it's all got to be put somewhere. The
material has to be found somewhere, you know. They also
(34:27):
talked about solar we have so much to talk about
with him with regards to the way solar and renewables
and windmills. Listen, I'm not saying we're not going to
have electric cars, and Mark certainly proved that point tonight
today that we're going to have electric vehicles in the future.
(34:50):
It's just not at the volume they're predicting. You know,
we're not going to have transporters like Star Trek in
the next ten to fifteen years, one hundred maybe two
hundred probably, but not in the next ten to fifteen.
And we're not going to see a massive amount of
electric cars by twenty thirty twenty thirty five like they're
predicting either. So the backpedaling will begin soon. I'm running
(35:10):
eighty in the car, doctor, reminding you this time, like
every time, for a great time. Good mechanics aren't expensive,
they're priceless. See you
The following program has been pre recorded.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Ron an Inians.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
My wife forgot the charge your car overnight, meaning she
didn't plug it in, So I just plugged it in
at forty eight percent. It needs three hours and fifteen
minutes to fully charge. We won't be able to use
it for all our driving. Today's planned. There's a candid
on us response from an electric vehicle owner, the car Doctor.
(00:30):
The operator of New England's power grid said it could
be forced to shut off power if there is a
long period of very cold temperatures this winter. If New
England has a prolonged cold snap, the operator of the
grid warn they may have to shut off the power
to homes and businesses.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Welcome to the radio home of ron Ananian, the Car Doctor.
Since nineteen ninety one, this is where car owners the
world overturned to for their definitive opinion on automotive repair.
If you're a mechanics giving you a busy signal, pick
up the phone and call in The garage doors open.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
But I am here to take your call at eight
five five five six nine nine hundred.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Running.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
We've got a great hour of radio for you here.
It's I've had so much fun. Already talking to our
guest pre show, just just listening and I know where
this conversation is going to go. But you guys are
going to love this. And actually I have to thank
all of you the listenership, because you sent in more
than a few emails showing me his recent interview. Well
maybe it's not so recent, but some of his other
(01:32):
interviews Mark Mills from the Manhattan Institute with John Stossel
among other people, and talking about electricity and electric cars.
And we reached out to Mark. He got right back
to us, and we're so thrilled to have him here.
He is, his reputation precedes him. Mister Mills, are you there, sir.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I'm here. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
You're very welcome. We're so glad to have you. I
you know, I just want to I'm going to start
at the beginning, Mark, because you and I have already
had half the interview.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
And we'll just go home and have a drink.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, we're done. You know, full disclosure. So you know,
tell us about yourself. You know what, why did I
pick you? Why are you the guy that everybody seems
to be talking to when we're talking about electricity? And
energy because this is a car repair show. But you know,
this electric car thing is just the tip of the
iceberg of what they want to do and how they
(02:23):
want to change the way energy is in this country.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yeah. Well, I could first say it's not my fault.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Well that's good to know, but I'm hoping you're the
guy that fixes it.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
No, you know, it's funny. I I studied my degrees
in physics. I quick graduate school because because well I
would like to work, and I was building semiconductors. My
first job was in a manufacturing plant for semiconductors. But
from very early in my life I liked how things work.
(02:53):
They like building things. I you know, worked on engines.
I worked at motorcycles. I raced one summer in Grand
Prix in Canada, and I, you know, I'm Canadian. I
like engines, I like electric motors, I like semiconductors. I
like how stuff works. And that's why in part I
study physics. And then I ended up getting a job
(03:13):
as an engineer and semiconductors and missile guidance and stuff
like that, and I got sort of dragged in the
back door to the energy domain simply because nothing's possible
without energy. So it doesn't matter whether you're trying to
figure out how to make cars go fast or be
more efficient, depends what your proclivities are, or rockets fly,
or make semi conductors more powerful, computers faster, everything everything redowns.
(03:38):
Ultimately they're figuring out both the materials and the energy
energetics of things. So yeah, that was sort of intellectual part,
but the practical part was very real for me in
jobs I had in my hobbies. And then you know,
we got the energy debate started. As you know, we
had oil embargos and a couple of them that the
(04:00):
people have forgotten. The people of a certain age will remember.
Oil prices went up four hundred percent overnight in seventy
three seventy four, then they went up more than two
hundred percent again in seventy nine. These are shocking events.
They really changed how the Western world thought about energy,
and people thought we were running out of energy. So
I ended up getting involved in energy issues, partly because
(04:23):
of the silliness of the idea that we were running
out of energy, running out of oil. And then now
we have another silly idea that we should never use
oil and gas again.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Well, well, let me. Stop you right there, Mark, Are
we running out of oil?
Speaker 3 (04:36):
No, that's the story. I mean the nuance is can
you can you exhaust an oil field that uses technology
you have available today to deliver oil at a price
you're willing to pay. Yes, that's a that's a form
of running out of oil. The geophysical question is a
(04:57):
different one. Is there enough oil that we are aware of?
Is a resource to fuel society for centuries? Yeah? Easily?
Centuries is essentially forever. The availability of oil, or natural
gas or any frankly, any mineral, any resource in the
Earth is dictated not by this physical quantity but the
(05:20):
kind of technology we have to find it and extract
it at a price. Yeah, and that so that's it's
a technology question. That's the key question is what kind
of technologies are there, how do they change, and what
are their limits? So you know, we're not running out
of oil, but you can run out of the capacity
(05:40):
to produce it at the volumes and prices the markets
will need and will pay. And governments can cause that
to happen, not just engineers. Governments ban things that you
can't drill here. Governments can pass regulations that are punitive,
make oil or gas or any mineral too expensive. So
(06:01):
the when I start up, I say no, I mean,
I'm answering that to your physical question. But obviously governments can
do really dumb things, and they have and they will
continue to do that.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I guess that's what makes them politicians and governments do
a degree.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Well, well, the good news is, you know, not to
go political. I really have democracies that do dumb things
and dictatorships.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Well there's always that, Yes, I agree, hundred percent. Well, listen,
I got to tell you we're going to get political
comments after this conversation. I know I'm going to get
because I already get hate email that I'm trying to ban.
Do you know that I single handedly am trying to
eliminate the electric car industry if you believe some of
the listeners. And I just keep trying to point out.
You know, as I said in our pre interview interview,
(06:47):
you know one of my favorite lines from one of
my favorite movies, Hidden Figures, math doesn't lie two and
two has to be four. Where we're going to get
the electricity from?
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Well, I mean, doctor Carwin is actually a terrific example
of two domains that fascinating one is sort of a
law called misdirection of interest. In the future. I've got
a new book out, as you probably know. But when
one writes a new book, one is not only obligated
but eager eager to promote it. And I write about
(07:18):
cars and transportation in the book. It's called the Cloud Revolution.
As you can guess from the title, it's not about cars.
It's about computing and technology for the future. Cars. Cars
are interesting new kinds of fuel for cars using batteries
instead of gasoline. It's important. You know, that's a very
interesting option, and it will be lots more of it.
(07:41):
But the idea that that's revolutionary in the same sense
the invention of the car is revolutionary is profoundly misguided.
In the nineteenth century of coming up a new way
to feed horses and imagining that you had a revolution, well,
you know, to be winners and losers. If you change
what you feed the horses, it's still a car with
(08:02):
a battery is still a car. It's different food that
is meaningful. The real question you'd want to know is
can we make enough of that food? And by that
I mean you know you're referring to electricity. Electricity is
the least of it. That's not the problem. Obviously, you
have to charge an electric car with electricity equally. Obviously,
the electricity you're use is determined by when you charge
(08:24):
the car and where you charge it. I mean by
that most people probably know. If you happen to live
in a part of the world of a country where
there's lots of wind and solar and it happens to
be sunny or a lot of windy at that very moment,
if you charge your car, you're probably using a lot
of electrons made with wind and solar. And if you
happen to charge your car when it's cloudy or be calmed,
(08:46):
which happened for roughly two weeks in northern Europe this
last month, as you know, then you're charging your car
with natural gas and coal dominantly, which is what happened
in Germany and England where they fired up coal plants
that they fortunately still had around. So that's a factor.
The bigger factor that is profoundly absent from this whole
(09:10):
trope that we're going to eliminate the use of internal
combustion engines by virtue of electric cars being better. We
could talk about whether they're better or not. That's a
different subject, and whether they become cheaper another subject. But
the idea that electric cars will eliminate the need to
have oil internal combustion engines is just arithmetically silly. It's
(09:34):
not not happening. It won't happen for two reasons. One,
the scaling up that people imagine that is we're going
from a world today. It's about ten million electric cars
in the world today, which is a lot considering there
were a decade ago not even a million, so it's
a big deal. But it's in a world that has
over a billion cars on the roads. So you know, again,
(09:56):
if you do your math, you're not approaching one percent
of all vehicles. The optimists believe that there'll be hundreds
of millions of electric cars within the decade, say three
or four hundred million, five hundred million. That'd be an
astonishing increase in the physical infrastructure that would at that
point in time eliminate roughly ten percent of world's all use.
(10:20):
So let me say that again. If we get the
optimist vision happening in the next decade, and we get
four hundred million or so electric vehicles on the roads,
the reduction of world oil demand would be about ten percent.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
So I'll tell you.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Let me how is that an existential threat to anything?
If you're in the oil business, what do you care?
In fact, I would say the oppostate. If I'm a consumer,
Let's hope there's that many electric cars because the competition
will help keep the price of gas laying down for
everybody else who doesn't want to pay high price for gas.
You want competition?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah? Absolutely, Hey, Mark, let me pull over and take
a poise. But let me just say this. You just
convinced me you must be a physicist. Then you really
do have a degree.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
I used to be one. I don't practice anymore. I
just talk like one on TV and radio.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
You sound you sound pretty good to me. You got
me convinced. When I come back, maybe we'll talk about
time travel and a Dolorean. Ron and Andy and the
car doctor here with Mark Mills at the Manhattan Institute.
We'll both return right after this. Don't go away for
the best in car advice.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Give Ron a call eight five five five six zero
nine nine zero zero.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Now back to Ron. Hey, thanks for staying with us.
We're here today with Mark Mills. He is a senior
fellow with the Manhattan Institute. He's a faculty fellow at
Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. And he's just a
whole lot of fun to talk to. I think he's
like my new best buddy. We we could talk. Probably,
we need it. We need at least, you know, I
think I need like an eight hour show here, Mark.
(11:54):
So let me let me recap the first segment, all right,
just so I can for those that are just joining us.
We we've you know, you've made your case. Obviously, you're
a physicist. You've got some really great knowledge as far
as you know energy application, the theories of the future, use,
where it came from. You've convinced us of that. You've
(12:14):
written more than more than just a recent book. You've
written a few books, the most recent being The Cloud Revolution,
and that just came out this year and it's a
fascinating read. You were sort of talking about electric cars,
trying to keep us about electric cars, but then the
whole energy issue comes into play. So when you look
at I'm going to pick on a state, When you
(12:36):
look at California, by this must make your hairspin. By
twenty thirty five, there, they've banned the internal combustion engine vehicle?
Can they do it well?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Like governments can do almost almost as we've discovered recently,
almost anything they want to do. So I'll make a
I'll make a prediction in two parts about California that's
will be true for England, which has made the similar declaration.
The bands, if, if they stay in place, will result
(13:08):
in extraordinary escalation and the value of used cars. First, imagine,
because not everybody is gonna be able to buy an
expensive electric car, because the electric car will still by
then be more expensive than an internal combustion engine, which
we could talk about, but that will boost the number
(13:29):
of years used cars stay on the market, on the road,
and the value of them. What more likely happened is
the bands will be softened, or ignored, or just abandoned entirely,
because the whole world, in fact, just the countries that
are now in states that are now proposing to do that,
can't all do it and have enough batteries, never mind
(13:50):
manufacturing cars. The central problem that's being ignored here is
not whether electric cars nice and Tussels are nice. Of
course they're nice, pressive car, incredible company, and kudos to
somebody building a car company's successful by all measures, even
counting you know, some help from subsidies. That doesn't explain it.
It's a successful car company.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Sure, absolutely achievement.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
In fact, the most impressive engineering of a battery probably
on the planet. Without being hyperbolic. It deserves enormous credit.
Really something.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
The last guy to try and do it, yeah was
Tucker Yeah, exactly in forty six, forty seven, or.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
You could pick the Delareate if you like, in the Brickland.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Ok.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, total failures, hard to build a car company, even
with help, and he's done it. And look, if you
think about this, I mean, what an incredible achievement. I believe.
The last I checked that something on the order is
sixty percent of all automobiles sold in the Western world
(14:53):
at a price over ninety thousand, So eighty five ninety
thousand range are now testless. Wow, he's utterly and they
did that market, which is why Mercedes and Jaguar and
BMW are all making evs in that price range. Because
he just ate the lunch. And that's not nothing. That's
not the whole car market obviously, but it's not nothing,
(15:13):
and it's very impressive. But here's This is the nub
of the problem. And it's not that electric cars aren't
profoundly useful vehicles and have a niche is bigger than
now exists. So if I were predicting another sort of
future snapshot, there's ten million electric cars today, it will
(15:35):
be unsurprising if there were hundreds of millions, at least
one hundred million in the next decade. There'll be lots
more electric cars. The problem is that the batteries are
not these simple things that I think are many people's head.
They think the electric car is quote simple and simpler
to build than the internal combustion engine, because you have
this engine, which you know better than I do. I've
(15:56):
taken a few engines apart in my life, but not recently.
The engine, it has got a lot of parts in it,
and it's you know, all the moving parts and it
can wear out. And you have so you have a
simple fuel tank, and it's a complicated engine, maybe a
thousand parts. And the trope is we have replaced a
simple engine with the complex engine with a simple motor
with two moving parts maybe two motors, you know, two
(16:18):
parts each, but the battery. The swap is for complexity
in the fuel system. The battery has thousands of welds
in it. A Tesla battery has fourteen thousand welds in it.
It has seven thousand cells. He's hoping to get the
next generation designed down to a few thousand cells. It
has a cooling system, a heating system, a structural system,
and it has electronic control systems in it to keep
(16:40):
it from to keep it from self immolating, the burning
up to maximize its performance. Is an extraordinarily complex electro
chemical machine, and the engine that we're replacing with is
a very complex electro chemical mechanical machine. Rather, so you're
swapping complex cities, you haven't eliminated complexity. More importantly, the
(17:04):
materials the battery is made from. The minerals, the cobalt,
the lithium, the nickel, manganese, those those minerals. The quanities
of the midtals you require to make a battery are
roughly over the life cent of a car. If you
count apples to apples, you increase the quantity materials you
need to drive a vehicle over a ten your life
(17:26):
by tenfold. But think about this one thousand percent increase
in the quantity materials I have to extract from the
earth to have to make a vehicle. So the parts
of the vehicle that are the same, electric and non electric,
you know, the wheels, the tires, the frame, they're all
the same, right seats, the battery. An electric car weighs
(17:46):
about one thousand pounds. The fuel tank is again you
know you and your audience now seventy pounds maybe sure
the car So I have one thousand pound fuel system
and it takes five hundred thousand pounds in the hero
of mind from the earth to make that one battery.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Oh my god, Mark, hold that thought. Let me pull
over and take this pause. We're gonna return. We'll rejoin us.
Rominading the Car Doctor, Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute.
Don't go away. We'll be back right after this. Come
(18:35):
in by right up. Welcome back, Roninading the Car Doctor
here today with Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute. Mark,
when we pulled over and took that pause, we were
talking in terms of the impact of what it takes
to make that electric car battery. Can you just recap
(18:57):
that for the listeners real quick?
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Yeah. I think this is the part that's critical. The
respective visions of a magical future where every car has
a battery in it. They won't be the kind of
batteries that we're making today because we can't make that
many batteries because the thousand pound battery, which is what
a battery weighs in a car that get several hundred
miles of range, requires mining a variety of minerals to
(19:21):
make the battery. Is the scientific term, no duh. You
need steel, of course, but it's aluminum. But you need
nickel and manganese and cobalt and lithium, you know, the
main lauge of minerals that go into a battery. So
a thousand pounds is a finished form. But to make
the battery you have to mine five hundred thousand pounds
(19:43):
and materials. Rock can process it, turn it into finished
minerals and make a battery. Now that there's two things
about that that matter. First, it takes energy to do that.
It has environmental impacts to do that, And you want
to know how much that you're going to do. If
you want to know the total, we'll call it the
energy debt of making the batteries. Because batteries aren't a
(20:05):
form of energy obviously, they store energy, So you spend
energy to store energy, and you spend a lot. It
takes somewhere between one hundred and three hundred barrels of
oil equivalent of energy, So three hundred barrels of oil
equivalent of energy to fabricate a battery that can hold
one barrel of oil equivalent of energy.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
And then you're doing all this mining and digging and
you know, gathering of rocks to get the materials. With
these giant machines that are emitting.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Well, they burn diesel fuel. Some of them are electric,
but if they're remote, you know, because they have electric
machines and remote minds. But if they're a remote mind,
not close to a grid, the generation of electricity comes
from diesel machines using oil. In fact, the global mining
industry uses almost as much oil as the global aviation
(21:00):
industry as much oil. And now to fabricate batteries that
the scales people are talking about will require that the
largest increase in mining the world has ever seen. And
I'm saying this. It sounds hyperbolic to say that I'm
saying this based on not my research. My research is
(21:21):
fighting other people's research. So the US Geological Survey or
the International Energy Agency itself, which is one of the
big advocates for more electric cars. What the researchers will
tell you who look at the mineral requirements is that
the world today is not mining nor planning to mind
(21:41):
enough copper, never mind everything else, or not enough nickel,
never mind the exotic things like lithium or cobalt, but
just the basic metals to make the quantities of batteries
and electric cars and windmills and solar arrays that are contemplated.
And electric car uses three times more copper than an
internal combustion engine. That should be on surprising considering you're
(22:05):
replacing you know, steel engine with you know, a copper
lound electric motor and a lot of electric bus bar
But the three hundred percent increase is not nothing. I mean,
if you start making millions of vehicles with a three
hundred percent increase in copper per vehicle, you become a
significant consumer of copper. And that's not counting the batteries
(22:25):
consumption of other minerals. So what's the solution. Well, I
can tell you as a fact, and this is easy
to find in the magic Google machine, that the world
is not now planning to and no governments are expanding
mining sufficient to make enough cars to ban internal combustion
engines in the next decade or two.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
So are we being you know, California banning sale and
internal combustion engines by thirty five car companies saying they'll
be all electric by twenty thirty. Are they showing us
the extreme and over the next couple of years, as
I've been saying, are they going to backpedal and all
of a sudden by you know, three or four years
from now. Well, we can't achieve that, But here's what
we really want.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
I'd take the bet the go to back pedal. It
won't take them a decade of backpedal. The back pedal
will start sooner, and it'll start when the prices start
going up. I mean, if you put this kind of demand,
the demand on minerals that these green energy plans have
represents say four hundred to four thousand percent increase in
demand for depends on the middle of your pick. So
(23:26):
it's four hundred percent increase in the man for copper,
it's a four thousand percent increase in the man for cobalt,
it's a one thousand percent increase of demand for nickel,
this is these are global increases in demand to meet
these plans that governments are proposing. These are astonishing increases
in demand in a world where market prices for these
minerals rises. If the demand goes up by ten percent
(23:50):
or twenty percent, so what will happen is the prices
will go up. So we saw this already this year.
The average price for a battery for electric car has
been going down famously as Elon Musk and everybody who
falls for a decade, which is pretty quite remarkable. But
this year it went down. This year, I mean the
trailing twelve months, it went down by a single digit
(24:12):
percentage point. It's like eight percent or something ten percent,
which is not a big decline. Next year, almost all
forecasts see battery price is going up, not down.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Up.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
The trend will reverse itself because of the costs of
the minerals. Here's here's the key fact when you buy it.
When you buy a car, the materials that are going
to the car, the bill of materials cost something, and
the labor so those setting aside profits, there's just two things, right.
You have labor for machines and human beings that you
(24:45):
pay for, and you have materials. The same is true
when you build a battery. Batteries and electric cars today,
sixty to seventy percent of the cost of making the
batteries just the raw minerals materials. And if I double
the price those minerals, how can we possibly say the
battery's going to get cheaper. Even if even if I
(25:06):
take the remaining thirty percent, which is the manufacturing machinery
and labor and electronics and a cooling system and make
that half as expensive, How's that going to get you
a cheaper battery When the sixty to seventy percent of
the costs of the battery, which are the minerals, everything
that's happening in the world today is leading to those
(25:26):
going up in price. And none of the environmental organizations,
and I say this, I think pretty confidently not a
single environmental organization in the world that's pushing to have
more electric cars is supporting more mining to make it
possible to have more electric rrs.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
So it's sort of like they want us to clean
up the environment, but don't touch the environment to do it.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah, look, I can't blame them. They're honest about right,
like you're mining. But let's be honest about what has
to be done. So if you if you drive a
car for a decade, we can calculate easy to do
the total ton of let's just do it in tons
of oil or gasoline you'll need depending on your detail,
no matter, we know what the number. And if you
do the same ten years for electric car, you get
(26:07):
to another tone, which in a sense, you pay for
upfront when you buy the battery. Forget how you make electricity,
you just look at the car. And if you make
those two comparisons, you get a thousand percent increase in
the tonnage of materials you need to extract from the
Earth to drive a vehicle for ten years. This is
(26:28):
this is consequential in economic terms and environmental terms, and
it's not sustainable. It won't. It won't even it sounds
like I'm being hyperbolic again, it won't happen. It just
it won't happen because it can't happen. So we're not
going to get there. But we will have more electric
cars because you could get to I don't know, pick
(26:49):
a number, ten percent of the fleet being electric or fifteen,
but we're.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Not going to We're not going to get to fifty
or sixty or one hundred. Hey, Mark called that thought.
Let me let me pull over and fit take this pause.
I'm running Ending of the Car Doctor here today with
Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute. We'll both be back
right after this. Don't go away. Welcome back, Ron Any
(27:12):
of the Car Doctor here today with Mark Mills of
the Manhattan Institute. He's also an accomplished author. He's written
more than a few books, his most recent being The
Cloud Revolution, talking about the convergence of new technologies and
the next economic boom. And I think part of that
is some of the conversation we're having here today, right Mark,
with regard to electric vehicles in the electric vehicle future.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah, I think, you know, let's talk about the future
a little. The idea that I don't think electric cars
are going to take over the world has a lot
of people saying to me, Wow, you know, you're not
a technical, you're not an optimist. You don't understand what
technology changes, and the future is going to be better
and they'll be better batteries. Look, I'm really probably over
(27:53):
the optimisty what technologists can do when engineers and the
innovators can do. But I also know what the physical
limits are and things it can't be done with the
physics and the engineering we know how to use. The
cars in the future are going to be as you know,
more reliable, safer, more comfortable. All these things are coming
from credible advances in engineering and technology. The automatic safety
(28:14):
systems that are emerging. I'm not talking about self driving,
but the you know, let's call them self stopping technologies
that are emerging prevent us from doing bad and stupid things.
This is this is very exciting. It's a great stuff.
We're going to reduce the cartridge on the roads. We're
going to make driving more comfortable. How we change how
we fuel a car really is a small ball stuff.
(28:35):
I mean, it's really it's not very imaginative. The revolutions
that are going to be exciting will be in things
like robotics and manufacturing and you know, how we how
we how we do medical diagnostics, and how we train people,
how we learn how to repair a car. That's but
back to the car here. Let me let me calibrate
(28:57):
a core physics point to make it clear to people
who say, and when I talk about the difference between
electric car, it's battery and the Gassian powered car. The
battery weighs a thousand pounds, your fuel tank weighs seventy pounds,
and you have to mine five hundred thousand pounds of
stuff to make the one battery.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
That's one battery, one battery, So a.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Half ton battery two hundred and fifty tons of stuff
dug out of the earth today. In the future it
will be five hundred tons. Because you know we're chasing
lower grade oars. The answer is it'll get better. My
technology will get better. Well, of course it will get better,
but internal combustion engines can get better too, but they
can't get better than the underlying physical chemistry of the
materials that you're using to create energy. So put this way,
(29:45):
everybody who has electric car, who's heard of electric cars
knows you measure the storage of electricity and kill one
hours the same things you pay for with your house.
So what you'd want to know is, if you have
a car, what you care about is the power to
weight ratio. What you know what gearhead doesn't care about
power weight? So what I cared about when I raced motorcycles,
So the physical chemistry of the ilviated chemicals from which
(30:10):
we make a battery, not the batteries power to weight ratio,
but it's underlying chemistry. Maximum of the chemicals that we use,
aliceated Costa chemicals is five hundred wat hours per kilogram,
So that's what you can you can, that's what the
energetics of the chemistry is. The battery is realized in
a tesla is about one hundred and fifty one hours
per kilogram, by the way, so it's a lot less
(30:32):
because it built things around it, machinery, hardware, controlling coolingsistence,
but the physical limits five hundred. So what you'd want
to know if you were designing a fast car or
say a drone, is what's oil because that's what you
start with when you may you convert it and it's
twelve thousand wat hours per kilogram. That's what oil is,
(30:54):
what the oil contains, and that's what's available. Now, can
you get twelve thousand what hours of it? No? But
I can get half out right? And could I ever
get half of the energy out of the five hundred
one hours per killogram? And let's get a chemist. Sure, yeah,
but theoretical you know best best the prototype batteries can
do that already. So now I'm comparing. We can do
(31:15):
the arithmetic here, it's not complicated. A six thousand one
hour pro killogram in total combustion capability versus a two
hundred and fifty one hour pipillogram battery capability. These are
extraordinary difference. Is so, can you make electric cars or
electric drones and airplace? Sure, but if you want to
go real fast and carry heavy loads for long distances,
(31:36):
you can be burning oil right in a long time.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
And that's the bottom line. Hey, Mark, our time is
just about up. Can I shamelessly plug you? Is there
a website the listeners can go to more information? Lay
it on us.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
You can do the tech hyphenpundit dot com mil so
it's a tech pundit with a hyphen right. And the
Manhattan Institute website. If you use a magic Google machine,
just type in Marked Mills Manhattan Institute. They'll they'll get
you to the web page. And you can use the
Amazon magic machine to type in my name, Marked Mills
and you'll get my book.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And that's what we want everybody to do because they
need they need this information, they really do, and you.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Know, and you'll find a lot there about change the
materials materials revolution, the change and in virtual reality it
will help us learn how to repair vehicles, change jobs,
and about how to I think drones are coming big time,
not for people soon, but but not not not too
far in the future.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Well, you know what we're going to do. We're going
to bring you back after the first of the year.
I'm asking you and telling you after the first of
the year.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
I'd be delighted you kick off the new year with
some exciting is.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
We're going to talk about cars in a little bit
further into detail.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
I got to run Mark, but listen, it was absolute pleasure, sir.
You you kind of lit up everybody's world today. No
pun intended with electric cars. So you have yourself for
good rest of the holiday season.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
You have a great have a great Thank you, Mary,
thank you, Marry Christmas to you.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yes, sir, I'm running any of the Car Doctor. We'll
be back right after this. Fuck am back run naming
the car Doctor. You know the mistake I made, Tom
was I should have asked Mark that, you know, if
we could invent the flux capacitor, would we then have
Because he's right, you know, he started talking about the
(33:21):
comic book Magic and I saw in one of his
interviews he talks about comic book magic that everybody thinks
all this technology is going to fall out of the sky,
and it's just not going to What do you mean
if we if you go to the O'Reilly website, they're
already advertising it. They're waiting for them to come in. Well,
a flux capacity. I know that is actually that is
actually there on the rally website. But I could listen
(33:43):
to him for hours. He just makes so much sense.
That was just a great interview. You know, it's I
don't see how anybody could argue his points. I just
don't because you know, two and two has to be four.
Two and two is never seven. And you know his
commentary in one of his other interviews that I saw
him do, he also talks about how okay, so now
(34:05):
you've got this electric car future on the table, the
amount of transmission lines and towers and cables that you
have to run in order to support this this grid
that everybody is talking about building and the support to
the infrastructure, it's all got to be put somewhere. The
material has to be found somewhere, you know. They also
(34:27):
talked about solar we have so much to talk about
with him with regards to the way solar and renewables
and windmills. Listen, I'm not saying we're not going to
have electric cars, and Mark certainly proved that point tonight
today that we're going to have electric vehicles in the future.
(34:50):
It's just not at the volume they're predicting. You know,
we're not going to have transporters like Star Trek in
the next ten to fifteen years, one hundred maybe two
hundred probably, but not in the next ten to fifteen.
And we're not going to see a massive amount of
electric cars by twenty thirty twenty thirty five like they're
predicting either. So the backpedaling will begin soon. I'm running
(35:10):
eighty in the car, doctor, reminding you this time, like
every time, for a great time. Good mechanics aren't expensive,
they're priceless. See you
Host
Ron Ananian
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