July 15, 2023 • 35 mins
Ron spends this episode chatting with Mark Mills of The Manhattan Institute regarding electric cars and our electric infrastructure.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ron An Aian.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
It can't be about how cheap. It has to be
about how right, because ultimately, if you're looking to do
it cheap, you're not going to be successful at some
point where it's going to come up and bite you. No,
the Car Doctor.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
So it's happening between twenty five and thirty five, and
he says, but there are no codes. There's nothing we
can do for you at this time.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Boy, there's so much well I'm driving, there's so much
wrong with this conversation. How could they not drive twenty
five to thirty five miles an hour? Let's just talk
about that. What's the speed limit around the dealership?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Fifty Welcome to the radio home of ron Anian, the
Car Doctor. Since nineteen ninety one, this is where car
owners the world overturned to for their definitive opinion on
automotive repair. If your mechanics giving you a busy signal,
pick up the phone and call in. The garage doors
are open.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
But I am here to take your calls at eight
five five five six ninety nine.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Hundred and now.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Running.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
We have a wild hour for you this week. A
little bit of a change from our normal format. We're
not taking calls. This hour, we have with us the
often imitated, never duplicated, one and only, no boloone, not
a phony. How is that for a great intro? Mark Mills.
Mark is back with us this hour, and uh, we're
we're going to talk EVS and the energy future and
might even talk about his book. We're definitely going to
(01:29):
talk about his book, The Cloud Revolution, which I'm still
working my way through. I've got a couple of questions
and comments about that, But without any further ado, mister Mills,
welcome backs are always.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
A pleasure, great to be back, Thanks for having me,
always always a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
No bolone, no boloney, it's you know, it's it's often imitated,
never duplicated, and not a phony, no baloney, the one
and only.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Let's see you get a better billing from that from
anybody else.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Right, Stoscile doesn't get better.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Stossel doesn't introduce you like that, right, not see? So
what's uh? You know, there's a lot of things I
want to talk to you about this hour, but I've
got a couple of real simple questions. You know, a
year ago we started talking you and I and looking
forward to the ev future and what it might become
(02:17):
and what it is. You know, if you look back
twelve months prior to this, does your expectations of what
the EV future does it match that? Are you still
in that same mode so to speak? Do you see
the EV future better, worse, coming faster, coming later? What
are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Well, there is some there are some things that are worse.
What's worse as the enthusiasm of governments both federal and
state are here and overseas to ban internal combustion engines
in the misguided belief that electric vehicles are inherently better
cheaper than conventional vehicles. I mean, it's got worse. It's
(03:00):
gotten worse. There's been real progress, incremental but real progress
in battery technology. They're all there will be. It will
be a lot more yet. It's exciting. But I anticipated
that and brought about it earlier. But that's good. I mean,
that's it's not game changing by definition of what matters
and game changing. I guess what's better also is is
(03:22):
you know, since you and I talked first talked about
this a year ago, A number of the surprising outlets
Washington Post, New York Times, not to be mean, but
surprising because they've undertaken serious investigative reporting on sourcing of
minerals to make batteries in Indonesia, Congo, other places in Africa,
(03:44):
South America, Chile, looking at the real environmental impacts. Don't
but I don't. I don't mean carbon dioxide. I'm talking
about in pluting water, hurting people, you know, destroying ecosystems.
They're looking at those things now, and that's that's a breakthrough.
They were pretty much ignoring those shoes for a long time.
And that's progress because you know, in the real world
(04:05):
we live in. It's it's unimagined to to say, but
it requires saying. There's no free lunch. You have to
look right, balance the things, and they're doing it. Let's
let's progress. So the overall report card of the last
year mixed bag. But with the EPA's new tailpipe emission
rule they're planning implement, this is real bad for American
(04:27):
consumers and car owners and drivers if that actually goes
into place.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And what is the tailpipe rule.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
They're going to They're going to ratchet down the tail
because they have in principle the authority to do this.
They ratchet down the emissions of carbon dioxide specifically, which
they're legally allowed to do by a virtue of how
these issues have played out to such an extent that
functionally automakers by twenty thirty two will be able to
(04:58):
manufacture evs almost closely. They'll be able to make maybe
a quarter or a third of the cars that they
manufacture with internal combustion engines, but the majority, if not all,
will have to be evs, and within a decade if
that rule goes in place, and frankly, that's a disaster
for consumers, and it's also quite bad for the environment.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
But wait a minute, if if we can't make and
tell me, stop me where I'm wrong, If if I've
been following what's going on and reading the material that
you and others have provided, If if I understand this correctly,
we can't provide enough material to make enough batteries for
(05:39):
enough evs for everybody.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
We Well it right?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So so are we going to be walking? Should I
buy more sneakers? Is that what they're really trying to
tell us?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Well, everything takes time, you know, in the real in
the real world again, things don't happen overnight. It's not
like in the world of atoms. Building things and mining
stuff and versus bits, you know, sitting social media apps
to people. The atoms world moves more slowly, so I
would say that the capacity to provide the minerals needed
to make batteries will be exhausted one to two years
(06:16):
from now. It's not We're not there. Maybe it could
be three years, depends, but we're the reasonable short term
site of the capacity to mine the material to make
the quantity of batteries imagined that are needed in all
these mandates. So we're not there. It's not that there aren't.
Let's be clear, maybe back up a step. But a
(06:38):
lot of people don't know still, is that an electric
car's battery is a very complicated, heavy beast. It's about
a half a ton, one thousand pounds electro chemical engine.
Unlike an internal combustion engine, which is a thermal mechanical engine.
Batteries are electro chemical engines. The distinction is important only
in this sense that batteries weigh a lot more inter
(07:01):
combustion engines. An engine in the car a few hundred pounds,
right for big one small ones a couple hundred pounds.
Battery weighs a thousand pounds and of course the electric
motors weigh a lot too, But the batteries is a
big kahuna, and you have to mind somewhere close to
half a million pounds of the Earth to produce one battery.
So that's you know, the copper, it's not just lithium.
(07:23):
You need lifium of course, and graphite, and some batteries
have cobalt, some don't, most have nickel and the aluminum.
All these metals have to be mined somewhere. That process
has environment impacts, as I mentioned. But what's more important,
just from the viewpoint of can we provide enough minerals,
is are we mining enough? And we know the answer
(07:43):
to that question, We're not mining enough. This is an
extraordinarily shallowly disingenuous trope running around now in the evy
enthusiast community that people like me are saying we don't
have enough minerals on Earth, and there's plenty of minerals
on the planet to make enough batteries. This is really
an infantile observation. Yes there are. The Earth has functionally
(08:07):
an infinite supply of all the metals we can want,
whether it's gold or nickel or iron ore. The trick
is finding it and then opening minds up in an
expeditious way, in a way we can tolerate in time
to produce the quantities we need. So the issue has
never been are there enough minerals in fact on our planet.
(08:28):
It's whether or not there's enough mind and whether or
not the world's mining industry is expanding mining fast enough
to meet the demands that will be imposed on their
supplies from the mandates to build more evs. So even
the most basic metal, copper, which is arguably the oldest
mind metal and humanity predates written history, copper alone, the
(08:53):
capacity to supply copper alone will be exceeded in about
two years. And if we continue with these mandates and
try to supply all the mattery factories that are being subsidized,
will exceed the world capacity of mine and produce copper
by a factor of two to three. So you know,
there's another way of saying it won't happen. I mean,
we're not gonna if you exceed the If you see
(09:15):
the many seeds supply, two things happen. Prices go up, and.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
There's a there's a long line. There's a long line
at the EV store.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, yeah, And and they get more expensive, and and
everything else uses copper gets more expensive, from houses to
buildings to you know, appliances because copper, you know, copper,
for the sake of discussion, is five percent of the
cost at appliance. But you increased the cost of copper
by fivefold, Suddenly it becomes an inflationary impact on the
(09:44):
whole appliance. And that's the kind of trajectory that we're
being put on by these mandates. That's the part that
defends me out. I like the acceleration of electric cars.
I like most electric cars. Something there's a lot of
a bunch of them. I don't like very much in
terms of design, but personal not engineering obs very aesthetic.
I think kessels are nice cars. He's, in fact, Eli
(10:05):
Musk has done something nobody's ever done in one hundred years.
He's he's competed with successfully established automakers, and you can't
explain away his success on the basis of a climate
change or subsidies. It's it's a good car. I like
other EV's more personally driven them, but it's a good car.
(10:28):
And he actually, it's a matter of fact, until very recently,
his engineers produced the best battery design of any automaker
until very recently, good engineering terrific. You know, hats off,
But can everybody drive an EV in the next decade?
This is beyond beyond silly. In fact, I have a
(10:49):
new report coming out and I'm calling it the Obvious,
stealing from the song It's the Impossible Dream.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Listen, I'm gonna go back to a recent paper you wrote.
We're gonna pull over and take a pause. But when
we come back, I want you to react to this.
This this, this statement you made in a recent paper
Electric Vehicle Illusions. You wrote, the rush to subsidize and
mandate evs is animated by a fatal conceit, the assumption
that they will radically reduce CO two emissions. All right,
(11:16):
when we come back, let's pull over, take a pause.
We're here with Mark Mills. I'm running Eni and the
car doctor. We'll both return right after this. Good time.
(11:37):
Write it on the wall so you don't forget to
call for car advice.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Done right?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Eight five five five six zero nine nine zero zero.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Now back to Rod.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
So we're here with Mark Mills. Mark, when we when
we pulled away to take that pause, You recently wrote
an article as you're always writing for it is it?
It's City hyphen Journal dot org.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
I believe right right, that's the magazine for the Manhattan Institute. Great,
great magazine. We are reading it, they should all right.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of interesting things
in there. And and in this recent article that you wrote,
the rush to subsidize in mandate evs is animated by
a fatal conceit the assumption that they will radically reduce
CO two emissions.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
What are you saying there, Yeah, it's a pretty I mean,
it's a pretty amazing thing when you think about it, because,
as you know, the entire motivation for these mandates, not
you know, banning ternal combustion engines, subsidizing evs is predicated
on that they will radically reduce combon dioxide emissions. And
(12:37):
it is true that you're not burning hydrocarbons, you're not
burning gasoline to drive an ev it has no tailpipe.
This is a to use the technical term, a giant,
no doubt, this is not this is beyond obvious. But
carbon dioxide emissions occur upstream, that is, in the processes
to make the battery. This is this is where we
(12:58):
have a massive domain of no none knowns, remember that
great great line underknowns, no none known. We know for
a fact it takes hundreds of thousands of pounds of
mining and to produce a one battery. We know that
that mining is done. More than half of it is
diesel fuel. The other half of the energy used is
natural gas and coal. We know that that happens. What
(13:21):
we don't know, this is the unknown part, is just
how much of the energy use goes on with a
specific battery at a specific point in time in a
specific part of the world. Because it's a huge, opaque,
sort of labyrinthine industry, the global mining and refining industry.
So let's we put some numbers on it. Numbers are hard,
(13:41):
you know, easier to read than talk about them. But
just lithium batteries weigh a lot way have ton, but
there's only all give or take, you know, depends on
the battery type. But say twenty or thirty pounds of
lithium actually in the battery, and there's something like one
hundred to two hundred pounds of copper in the battery,
so it doesn't sound like very much except to get
(14:04):
thirty pounds of lithium you have to mind something like
twenty to thirty thousand pounds of lithium brine or a
lithium rock to get that, you know, one to two
hundred pounds of copper. You need to mine sort of
ten to twenty thousand pounds of rock to get that
copper for one battery. And you think about that, it's
not complicated. That means you're using big equipment burning hydrocarbons,
(14:27):
mostly diesel fuel, meaning carbon dioxide to make the minnerals
to make the battery. So you would want to know
what the carbon dioxide emissions were to make the battery
in the first place, because they in effect create a debt,
and a carbon debt, you like, for the vehicle. It
has to pay it down because you're not burning gasolene beyond. Obviously,
(14:49):
we do know this is the known part that it's
a lot. What we don't know is whether it's enough
to wipe out most or all of the emissions you
save burning diesel fuel or gasoline. Right, And this is
not me saying it because I'm anti ev I like
EVS as that before it impressive vehicles is a great
(15:09):
option for a lot of a lot of utility options.
War EVS will be millions, tens of millions more evs
bought without subsidies. But the fact is the upstream emissions
for making evs is far greater than upstream emissions for
making a conventional car. Conventional cars are eighty percent of
the weight of a conventional car is iron and steel
eighty of its weight. Iron and steel are extremely abundant
(15:32):
the ore grades. This is a cheap, key fact. The
quantity of iron in the ore you dig up half
of the ores iron. The quantity of copper in ore
you dig up to make you know, electric vehicle half
to one percent. You can do the math here. You're
going to dig up a lot more rock to make
the copy you need to make electric vehicle than the
(15:53):
iron you have to dig up to make a steel
conventional engine. So these these things result in Carbonda set emissions.
There's all kinds of silly words for this, you know,
like scope two, scope three emissions. Basically they're talking about
elsewhere emissions. This is not about the emissions from charging
the battery, be clear, those occur too, But the emissions
(16:14):
from making the battery are so great and the variables
are so great that we know the offset somewhere between
a third to two thirds of all the emissions you say,
from not burning hydrogasoline in the first place. And then
you have to charge the battery. And that's in the
world we live in, not the world we imagine, but live.
And that means wherever you happen to live, the time
(16:37):
of day you charge the battery determines how much carbon
diox that you emit to refuel your electric car. Now,
with a conventional car, it doesn't matter where you fuel it,
when you fuel it, how you drive it. When you
drive it, the carbon dioxide emission emitted per gallon of
gasoline consumed is essentially the same everywhere all the time.
(16:58):
You probably have some listeners that are really smart that know, yes,
altitude and temperature slightly change the efficiency of a combustion
engine and slightly therefore alter carbon DIOXI emissions. But it's
a trivial change. With electric vehicles. If you happen to
charge it at night a dozen or two dozen states,
you're going to be fielding with coal. If you happen
(17:19):
to charge it in China, where half of the world
electric vehicles are, you're charging that electric vehicle with coal,
for sure, not maybe, but for sure. And if you
happen to charge it Norway where they love EVS. That
was in Oswa in January, A great time to be there.
You're charging with a hydro dam and good on you,
you know. But if you buy a tesla before you
(17:42):
even charge it the first time, you've caused something on
the order of twenty to thirty tons of CO two
to be omitted somewhere else on Earth to make that tesla.
Wo all the minerals and materials needed.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Hey, Mark, take a pause. We're going to take a
pause here when we come back. In your book you
talk about well, talk about Wales and whale oil, chapter ten,
page one fourteen. I want to talk about that a
little bit when we return, and let's dig into that
a little bit and see how that affects EVS, because
I think there's a connection there. I'm running ending of
the Car Doctor. I'm here with Mark Mills. We'll both
return right after this. Don't go away right Welcome back,
(18:39):
Running the Car Doctor here with Mark Mills. Noted author
noted everything he from the physicist, Well to me, you're
still to me, you're still a physicist for the Manhattan Institute.
Mark here, someday we're gonna sit down, have a cup
of coffee. We're talking time travel. So but in your book,
The Cloud Revolution.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
My favorite subject after robots.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yeah, well that you know. I I'm telling you, I
you know, I keep telling you Star Trek is going
to happen twenty sixty three. I got to stick around
another forty years. The Cloud Revolution available on Amazon. By
the way, Chapter ten, page one fourteen. You talk about materials,
the next energy or the energy nexus, right, And there's
(19:19):
a paragraph here that really got me. It talks about,
as a student of wildlife conservation knows, mankind hunted whales
almost to extinction in the pursuit of what was then
the best known material for illumination, you know, whale oil
to light lamps. Whale oil was prosed over other animals
and vegetable fats that have been used for lamps and
candles in the past, but demand for whale oil collapsed
after the eighteen forty six invention of kerosine is synthetic
(19:40):
oil derived from coal. And I read that and I
started thinking to myself, Gee, it's good thing that kerosene
worked out, because otherwise we would have had to revert
back to whale, oil hunting or whale you know, and
could we And I start thinking about the evs that
were being told that we're going to be driving in
(20:00):
ten years or less, and you know, is that indicative too?
You know, there was a material problem, then there's a
material problem. Now is there a point of no return
where we're so deep into evs we box ourselves into
a corner?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Well, yes and no. I mean I think the corner
that we boxed in will be for politicians and policy makers,
because I think there will be a we'll call it
a vigorous public reaction to the destruction done to convenience
and costs of personal mobility, the favor and phrase for
driving cars. So I think it's going to be an
(20:37):
epic collision between reality of what people want and what
can be built and what politicians policymakers are pushing. But
the cold story is fascinating because, as you know, a
chapter of my book, and thank you for reading it,
I appreciate that, it's you know, the information revolution. The
cloud is the thread through the book. But it's about
more than that. It's about materials and the materials and
(20:59):
energy NEXIT about you know, machines and robots and manufacturing
and healthcare and education, because these things all interrelate. And
the information revolution in a sense that began in eighteen
forty six was when the Canadian chemist and physician figured
out how to convert coal into a liquid fuel kerosene.
He came up with a process for that, and that
(21:20):
predates the first oil well by about I take forty years,
and it predates Spindletop, which was the kickoff in Texas
of the sort of the giant oil revolution of the
just in the right around nineteen hundred by sixty years.
So you know, the oil industry often like say they
saved the whale. No, no, no, they didn't. The coal
(21:41):
industry saved the whaley of a Canadian chemist because whale
oil consumption totally collapsed. If you see a graph of
the entire nineteenth century consumption of whale oil for purpose
of elimination, it totally collapsed. After he invented kerosene. His
process was really lousy compared to what we do today.
(22:02):
But here's the key to your point. In the conservation
of materials. Our footprint on the planet is determined by
materials and land we use. By that, I mean an
environmental footprint totally determined by the quantity materials we need
to do something and the quantity of land we need
to do something. And you know, harvesting whales pretty grotesque,
pretty grow teste thing to do it for elimination, But
(22:23):
the whale oil was magical, but it was more than
three hundred percent reduction and the quantity of materials you
needed to harvest coal versus whales to get the same
amount of illumination. And of course it's far easier to
harvest a third as much coal as a three times
more whale. So the cost of illumination utterly collapsed, right,
a spectacular change in quality of life to have illumination available,
(22:48):
civilization of far lower cost. Now, electric cars are essentially
a reversion. It's an increase to your point, not a
decrease in the consumption of land and material to achieve
the same thing. The same mild driven electric car and
a gasoline powered car are exactly the same from all
troll intents and purposes, so just different models of propulsion.
(23:11):
It's really not much different than going from you know,
a gasoline to a diesel engine with a different fuel.
So we're going to use electric chemistry and we're going
to use batteries aliciated chemicals. But it's just a different
way propelling the same thing. Fill a car. That was
a revolution. It's a big deal. But the fuel to
get the car to go increases our material footpitting on
(23:31):
the planet by one thousand percent over the fuel to
get a conventional car to go, So we have one
thousand percent increase per mild driven to go e these
versus stay with what we got. How can any You
don't have to know anything about any any specific electro
chemistry or environmental issues to know that that can't be good.
(23:55):
That's not a movement in the right direction. Now, if
only a few percent of cars do that, okay, whatever,
not a big deal, but make a significant share of
cars increase their footprint on the planet in terms of
materials requirements by one thousand percent. This is consequential in
all kinds of ways, but certainly in environmental ways and
certainly in social ways. Because of where we do the mining.
(24:16):
We don't do it in America. We import the mind
materials and the refined materials from the countries, and some
in Canada and Australia of course my homeland Canada, but
most of it comes from Africa and China and South America,
Central America. You know, so we export the challenges in
the pollution to other countries. We export the social challenges,
(24:37):
we export the pollution, we export the land use, we
export the incredible increase in ecosystem destruction. We need copper,
Copper is essential for civilization, but we don't need to
make cars electric and increase our copper consumption by three
hundred percent. That's you know, you know, for me, it's
(24:58):
not only silly, it's borderline, uh to say it's a
moral it's in a moral direction, and it's yes, yes,
people claim that it's you know, cutting CO two missions.
That claim is not supported in any significant way. But
the data, yeah, it might cut it a little bit,
depending where you live, when you drive the car. It
might increase COO two missions depending on where you live
(25:19):
and you drive, who you drive your car. Who's hardly
a good bargain in terms of CO two. It's a
terrible bargain in terms of environmental impacts, and it's a
terrible bargain in geopolitical terms because we don't mind, we
don't increase the mining of copper in America. We mind
copper here, we haven't increased mining of copper. It's in
probably fifty or sixty years in any significant way in America.
(25:41):
All the net new copper comes from elsewhere. So material dependence,
geopolitical dependencies, export challenges, import you know, for exporting dollars,
exporting problems. It's you know, all of this earns one
the label of being you know, I guess a critic
of EVS. I guess you have to say, I am,
But I'm not a critic of EV's per se. I'm
(26:03):
a critic of a monumoniacal pursuit of everybody being forced
to drive an EV. That's that's the essence of where we.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Welcome and I agree with that one hundred percent. I
like you. I appreciate EVS. I appreciate what Tesla's done.
I appreciate the engineering that's gone in it. But going
along saying, hey, everything needs to be an EV because
this is going to save the planet. You know, the
emperor has no clothes, brother, you know, it just it
just doesn't make any sense. Hey, let's pull over, take
a pause. When we come back, I want to talk
(26:31):
a little bit about Well, I'm going to tell you
my approach to how I would electrify the So I'm
gonna I want you to be the critic of my
thoughts and tell me, tell everybody what you think about
what I'm thinking. So stay put, Mark, I'm running any
of the Card Doctor. We'll both return right after this.
Don't go away. Welcome back Running the Card Doctor here
(26:58):
with Mark Mills and talking about EV's and all things
in between. The Cloud Revolution. Mark's book available on Amazon
as well as his writings. Mark, here's my pitch. Here's
how we're going to solve all these problems. You ready? Okay? Well,
first of all, by the way, did I tell you
I'm running for president. I've decided. I've decided to instigate
a writing campaign. I'm ron An Any and I'm running
(27:20):
for president. All your problem solved in twenty minutes or less,
re double your money back. I just have to figure
out how I'm going to do all that. But I'm
thinking about it.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
You could, you could, You could join a very long
line of people on both parties. Right.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Yeah, it's you know, well, I figured i'd go to
I'd go to Area fifty one, and after I make
the promise, I'll step in do the time travel thing
and go back to a pivotal moment. That's a whole
nother story. That's a whole nother show. Why don't we
you know, why? Why why don't they? You know, EV's okay,
we want to we want to cut down on pollution.
Why don't Why isn't the mandate more along the lines
(27:52):
of all delivery vehicles, all utility vehicles, taxis, buses, Uh,
you know, some emergency vehicles, policemen out on patrol, fire trucks,
that kind of thing. Maybe not fire trucks, but you know,
mandate those to be electric, and then a certain percentage
of electric vehicles for the for the general welfare for
the consumers. Because they've taken on this broad scope in there,
(28:16):
as you say, the push is going to come to
shove when they realize, listen, I want to be eighteen
again and lose forty pounds. Neither one of them has happened.
You know, at what point does that become the reality.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Well, let's just stipulate that I think mandates are a
bad idea a period, just just a bad idea. There
are very very few things we should mandate, very few things,
very few things like we should ban so and they're just,
you know, two slides of the same coin. The problem
with mandating for those markets is that in those markets,
(28:50):
if the easy were superior in its performance to the
diesel or gaslan engine, you would have no difficulty convincing
the auto owners and operators and businesses buy those vehicles
to buy them. Right. People are people are rational. You
couldn't get out of their way, right, they would would
run to buy these things. They're not more convenient, they're
(29:12):
not less expensive, So they're more expensive and they're less convenient.
With very few exceptions or applications where the convenience is superior.
It's certainly indoor electric vehicles. That's why trains in subways
are electric powered, because you can't combustion. It can close areas.
But here let me make a counter suggestion, which which
(29:34):
is perhaps beyond obvious. If if governments and policymakers feel compelled,
they just can't stop themselves from spending our money to
reduce oil consumption burning it, right, that's what that's the goal. Here.
Let's just stipulate we should all agree what they're really
trying to do is reduce commonducts emission of burning oil.
And when they learn, But if you want to do
(29:55):
it in the most cost effective way, what you want
to do is target the incentives to so called super users.
About twenty percent of the driving population in the United
States use something like sixty or seventy percent of all gasoline.
Super users. These are it doesn't matter whether the personal
driving long commutes or they're they're the guys doing the
(30:16):
lawns that in all the wealthy neighborhoods, delivery vehicles. There
are many different they're the super users. Super users consume
most of the gasoline. You could easily imagine a subsidy
instead of targeting the wealthy giving him big checks to
buy Tesla's and Mercedes and Jaguar evs, to give a
(30:36):
subsidy to a super user and give the super reserve
a choice. If they buy a vehicle that reduces their
oil and gas consumption based on the odometer and the
vehicle they turn in, then they'll get a pro ratic credit.
The more the more they say, the bigger the check.
What most people will buy is a more efficient internal
combustion engines, but if they buy electric one whatever, it
(30:57):
doesn't matter that you would let the consumer then choose
what would work for them is the most effective option,
practical option in terms of what the vehicle is to
save money and cut fuel emissions. And that would be easy,
be easy to implemat it'd be easy to target, be
easy to track, and it would not result. What's going
(31:17):
on now is a wealth chance between the middle class
who pay taxes and the wealthy who buy evs. It's
unequivocally the case. We notice in the data the two
or three car families in the higher income brackets buy
ninety percent of evs, and the taxes to pay for
that come from not them, they come from middle class families.
That's where the most of the taxes come from. It's
just a rithmetical fact. So this is an easy solution
(31:40):
if we feel compelled to do that, that's the solution.
Not to order dump trucks or garbage trucks or ups
trucks to use electric drive, but the super users trade
in the vehicles for a more efficient engine. And if
the morefficient engine is an internal is not internal combustion whatever,
let's and choose right now for occasional use vehicles that
(32:02):
you can actually charge overnight, which is inexpensive. Way, that's fine.
If you happen to be UH an EV owner and
you know you can put your vehicle in overnight at
your home. That's great, But fast chargers are very expensive.
Fast chargers are UH the damage batteries. Fast chargers are
using power when it's in the greatest demand, using peak
(32:25):
time during the days. So those uses are not great uses.
But the business or the consumer has a second or
third car, an occasional use utility vehicle that can be
charged overnight, great, give but give them a check. And
for the person who needs the drive lawn thatsances needs
a high hauling capacity, uh, let them trade in if
(32:46):
you like, for the the most efficient and maybe a
hybrid that may just be a more efficient engine, just
just just you're the car guy.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, well right, and I get that. Hey, Mark Tay,
what sit tight? Let me, let's pull over. We're gonna
we're gonna finish up here and then we're gonna close out.
We'll have up minutes when we get back on the
other side of this, I'm running any of the Card
Doctor here with Mark Mills. We'll return right after this.
(33:15):
Welcome back, Running of the Card Doctor here with Mark Mills. Mark,
we got about two minutes. Brother let's talk about next month.
Let's start there. I got to get you to come back.
I want to I want to hear more about EV's
for everybody. Your next article coming out in the City
Journal for the Manhattan Institute, the magazine for the Manhattan Institute.
So Tom will reach out to you and get you
(33:35):
in the queue for next month sometime and we'll talk
more about that. I think your comments and points today
were spot on. The name of the book is the
Cloud Revolution for everybody out there that's gonna call later
or write later and ask. It's available on Amazon. I
will say this, I think you hit the nail on
the head so many times about you know, the look back,
(33:56):
the look forward, and the analogy and the comparison to
EV's spot spot on the money, my friend spot on
the money.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Well, thank you man, thanks for the good words in
the book. And there's a little bit for everybody in
the book, as you know, and we get maybe next
time we can talk about flying cars and autonomous vehicles
and robots, and of course the robots are the next revolution.
And it's no surprise that some automakers are also robot makers.
There's a reason for that, right, got it?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Well, and you know, next time let's talk about lithium
ion batteries. And now Toyota is talking about a solid
state battery. But if you read the article, it says
at some point, so it's not.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, there's that I want to be eighteen and lose
forty pounds thing again, So always always a pleasure. Mark listen,
you'll be well and we'll talk again real soon. Thanks
for taking the time with us today. I know the
listeners appreciate it, and Tom and I do too, so
you'll be well, my friend. I'm running Ady and the
car doctor and we're going to say goodbye now. And
just remind you once and for all whether you driving
(35:00):
an e D or an internal combustion engine, whatever it is,
as always, good mechanics aren't expensive, they're priceless. See you
Ron An Aian.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
It can't be about how cheap. It has to be
about how right, because ultimately, if you're looking to do
it cheap, you're not going to be successful at some
point where it's going to come up and bite you. No,
the Car Doctor.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
So it's happening between twenty five and thirty five, and
he says, but there are no codes. There's nothing we
can do for you at this time.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Boy, there's so much well I'm driving, there's so much
wrong with this conversation. How could they not drive twenty
five to thirty five miles an hour? Let's just talk
about that. What's the speed limit around the dealership?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Fifty Welcome to the radio home of ron Anian, the
Car Doctor. Since nineteen ninety one, this is where car
owners the world overturned to for their definitive opinion on
automotive repair. If your mechanics giving you a busy signal,
pick up the phone and call in. The garage doors
are open.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
But I am here to take your calls at eight
five five five six ninety nine.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Hundred and now.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Running.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
We have a wild hour for you this week. A
little bit of a change from our normal format. We're
not taking calls. This hour, we have with us the
often imitated, never duplicated, one and only, no boloone, not
a phony. How is that for a great intro? Mark Mills.
Mark is back with us this hour, and uh, we're
we're going to talk EVS and the energy future and
might even talk about his book. We're definitely going to
(01:29):
talk about his book, The Cloud Revolution, which I'm still
working my way through. I've got a couple of questions
and comments about that, But without any further ado, mister Mills,
welcome backs are always.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
A pleasure, great to be back, Thanks for having me,
always always a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
No bolone, no boloney, it's you know, it's it's often imitated,
never duplicated, and not a phony, no baloney, the one
and only.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Let's see you get a better billing from that from
anybody else.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Right, Stoscile doesn't get better.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Stossel doesn't introduce you like that, right, not see? So
what's uh? You know, there's a lot of things I
want to talk to you about this hour, but I've
got a couple of real simple questions. You know, a
year ago we started talking you and I and looking
forward to the ev future and what it might become
(02:17):
and what it is. You know, if you look back
twelve months prior to this, does your expectations of what
the EV future does it match that? Are you still
in that same mode so to speak? Do you see
the EV future better, worse, coming faster, coming later? What
are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Well, there is some there are some things that are worse.
What's worse as the enthusiasm of governments both federal and
state are here and overseas to ban internal combustion engines
in the misguided belief that electric vehicles are inherently better
cheaper than conventional vehicles. I mean, it's got worse. It's
(03:00):
gotten worse. There's been real progress, incremental but real progress
in battery technology. They're all there will be. It will
be a lot more yet. It's exciting. But I anticipated
that and brought about it earlier. But that's good. I mean,
that's it's not game changing by definition of what matters
and game changing. I guess what's better also is is
(03:22):
you know, since you and I talked first talked about
this a year ago, A number of the surprising outlets
Washington Post, New York Times, not to be mean, but
surprising because they've undertaken serious investigative reporting on sourcing of
minerals to make batteries in Indonesia, Congo, other places in Africa,
(03:44):
South America, Chile, looking at the real environmental impacts. Don't
but I don't. I don't mean carbon dioxide. I'm talking
about in pluting water, hurting people, you know, destroying ecosystems.
They're looking at those things now, and that's that's a breakthrough.
They were pretty much ignoring those shoes for a long time.
And that's progress because you know, in the real world
(04:05):
we live in. It's it's unimagined to to say, but
it requires saying. There's no free lunch. You have to
look right, balance the things, and they're doing it. Let's
let's progress. So the overall report card of the last
year mixed bag. But with the EPA's new tailpipe emission
rule they're planning implement, this is real bad for American
(04:27):
consumers and car owners and drivers if that actually goes
into place.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And what is the tailpipe rule.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
They're going to They're going to ratchet down the tail
because they have in principle the authority to do this.
They ratchet down the emissions of carbon dioxide specifically, which
they're legally allowed to do by a virtue of how
these issues have played out to such an extent that
functionally automakers by twenty thirty two will be able to
(04:58):
manufacture evs almost closely. They'll be able to make maybe
a quarter or a third of the cars that they
manufacture with internal combustion engines, but the majority, if not all,
will have to be evs, and within a decade if
that rule goes in place, and frankly, that's a disaster
for consumers, and it's also quite bad for the environment.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
But wait a minute, if if we can't make and
tell me, stop me where I'm wrong, If if I've
been following what's going on and reading the material that
you and others have provided, If if I understand this correctly,
we can't provide enough material to make enough batteries for
(05:39):
enough evs for everybody.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
We Well it right?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So so are we going to be walking? Should I
buy more sneakers? Is that what they're really trying to
tell us?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Well, everything takes time, you know, in the real in
the real world again, things don't happen overnight. It's not
like in the world of atoms. Building things and mining
stuff and versus bits, you know, sitting social media apps
to people. The atoms world moves more slowly, so I
would say that the capacity to provide the minerals needed
to make batteries will be exhausted one to two years
(06:16):
from now. It's not We're not there. Maybe it could
be three years, depends, but we're the reasonable short term
site of the capacity to mine the material to make
the quantity of batteries imagined that are needed in all
these mandates. So we're not there. It's not that there aren't.
Let's be clear, maybe back up a step. But a
(06:38):
lot of people don't know still, is that an electric
car's battery is a very complicated, heavy beast. It's about
a half a ton, one thousand pounds electro chemical engine.
Unlike an internal combustion engine, which is a thermal mechanical engine.
Batteries are electro chemical engines. The distinction is important only
in this sense that batteries weigh a lot more inter
(07:01):
combustion engines. An engine in the car a few hundred pounds,
right for big one small ones a couple hundred pounds.
Battery weighs a thousand pounds and of course the electric
motors weigh a lot too, But the batteries is a
big kahuna, and you have to mind somewhere close to
half a million pounds of the Earth to produce one battery.
So that's you know, the copper, it's not just lithium.
(07:23):
You need lifium of course, and graphite, and some batteries
have cobalt, some don't, most have nickel and the aluminum.
All these metals have to be mined somewhere. That process
has environment impacts, as I mentioned. But what's more important,
just from the viewpoint of can we provide enough minerals,
is are we mining enough? And we know the answer
(07:43):
to that question, We're not mining enough. This is an
extraordinarily shallowly disingenuous trope running around now in the evy
enthusiast community that people like me are saying we don't
have enough minerals on Earth, and there's plenty of minerals
on the planet to make enough batteries. This is really
an infantile observation. Yes there are. The Earth has functionally
(08:07):
an infinite supply of all the metals we can want,
whether it's gold or nickel or iron ore. The trick
is finding it and then opening minds up in an
expeditious way, in a way we can tolerate in time
to produce the quantities we need. So the issue has
never been are there enough minerals in fact on our planet.
(08:28):
It's whether or not there's enough mind and whether or
not the world's mining industry is expanding mining fast enough
to meet the demands that will be imposed on their
supplies from the mandates to build more evs. So even
the most basic metal, copper, which is arguably the oldest
mind metal and humanity predates written history, copper alone, the
(08:53):
capacity to supply copper alone will be exceeded in about
two years. And if we continue with these mandates and
try to supply all the mattery factories that are being subsidized,
will exceed the world capacity of mine and produce copper
by a factor of two to three. So you know,
there's another way of saying it won't happen. I mean,
we're not gonna if you exceed the If you see
(09:15):
the many seeds supply, two things happen. Prices go up, and.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
There's a there's a long line. There's a long line
at the EV store.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, yeah, And and they get more expensive, and and
everything else uses copper gets more expensive, from houses to
buildings to you know, appliances because copper, you know, copper,
for the sake of discussion, is five percent of the
cost at appliance. But you increased the cost of copper
by fivefold, Suddenly it becomes an inflationary impact on the
(09:44):
whole appliance. And that's the kind of trajectory that we're
being put on by these mandates. That's the part that
defends me out. I like the acceleration of electric cars.
I like most electric cars. Something there's a lot of
a bunch of them. I don't like very much in
terms of design, but personal not engineering obs very aesthetic.
I think kessels are nice cars. He's, in fact, Eli
(10:05):
Musk has done something nobody's ever done in one hundred years.
He's he's competed with successfully established automakers, and you can't
explain away his success on the basis of a climate
change or subsidies. It's it's a good car. I like
other EV's more personally driven them, but it's a good car.
(10:28):
And he actually, it's a matter of fact, until very recently,
his engineers produced the best battery design of any automaker
until very recently, good engineering terrific. You know, hats off,
But can everybody drive an EV in the next decade?
This is beyond beyond silly. In fact, I have a
(10:49):
new report coming out and I'm calling it the Obvious,
stealing from the song It's the Impossible Dream.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Listen, I'm gonna go back to a recent paper you wrote.
We're gonna pull over and take a pause. But when
we come back, I want you to react to this.
This this, this statement you made in a recent paper
Electric Vehicle Illusions. You wrote, the rush to subsidize and
mandate evs is animated by a fatal conceit, the assumption
that they will radically reduce CO two emissions. All right,
(11:16):
when we come back, let's pull over, take a pause.
We're here with Mark Mills. I'm running Eni and the
car doctor. We'll both return right after this. Good time.
(11:37):
Write it on the wall so you don't forget to
call for car advice.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Done right?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Eight five five five six zero nine nine zero zero.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Now back to Rod.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
So we're here with Mark Mills. Mark, when we when
we pulled away to take that pause, You recently wrote
an article as you're always writing for it is it?
It's City hyphen Journal dot org.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
I believe right right, that's the magazine for the Manhattan Institute. Great,
great magazine. We are reading it, they should all right.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of interesting things
in there. And and in this recent article that you wrote,
the rush to subsidize in mandate evs is animated by
a fatal conceit the assumption that they will radically reduce
CO two emissions.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
What are you saying there, Yeah, it's a pretty I mean,
it's a pretty amazing thing when you think about it, because,
as you know, the entire motivation for these mandates, not
you know, banning ternal combustion engines, subsidizing evs is predicated
on that they will radically reduce combon dioxide emissions. And
(12:37):
it is true that you're not burning hydrocarbons, you're not
burning gasoline to drive an ev it has no tailpipe.
This is a to use the technical term, a giant,
no doubt, this is not this is beyond obvious. But
carbon dioxide emissions occur upstream, that is, in the processes
to make the battery. This is this is where we
(12:58):
have a massive domain of no none knowns, remember that
great great line underknowns, no none known. We know for
a fact it takes hundreds of thousands of pounds of
mining and to produce a one battery. We know that
that mining is done. More than half of it is
diesel fuel. The other half of the energy used is
natural gas and coal. We know that that happens. What
(13:21):
we don't know, this is the unknown part, is just
how much of the energy use goes on with a
specific battery at a specific point in time in a
specific part of the world. Because it's a huge, opaque,
sort of labyrinthine industry, the global mining and refining industry.
So let's we put some numbers on it. Numbers are hard,
(13:41):
you know, easier to read than talk about them. But
just lithium batteries weigh a lot way have ton, but
there's only all give or take, you know, depends on
the battery type. But say twenty or thirty pounds of
lithium actually in the battery, and there's something like one
hundred to two hundred pounds of copper in the battery,
so it doesn't sound like very much except to get
(14:04):
thirty pounds of lithium you have to mind something like
twenty to thirty thousand pounds of lithium brine or a
lithium rock to get that, you know, one to two
hundred pounds of copper. You need to mine sort of
ten to twenty thousand pounds of rock to get that
copper for one battery. And you think about that, it's
not complicated. That means you're using big equipment burning hydrocarbons,
(14:27):
mostly diesel fuel, meaning carbon dioxide to make the minnerals
to make the battery. So you would want to know
what the carbon dioxide emissions were to make the battery
in the first place, because they in effect create a debt,
and a carbon debt, you like, for the vehicle. It
has to pay it down because you're not burning gasolene beyond. Obviously,
(14:49):
we do know this is the known part that it's
a lot. What we don't know is whether it's enough
to wipe out most or all of the emissions you
save burning diesel fuel or gasoline. Right, And this is
not me saying it because I'm anti ev I like
EVS as that before it impressive vehicles is a great
(15:09):
option for a lot of a lot of utility options.
War EVS will be millions, tens of millions more evs
bought without subsidies. But the fact is the upstream emissions
for making evs is far greater than upstream emissions for
making a conventional car. Conventional cars are eighty percent of
the weight of a conventional car is iron and steel
eighty of its weight. Iron and steel are extremely abundant
(15:32):
the ore grades. This is a cheap, key fact. The
quantity of iron in the ore you dig up half
of the ores iron. The quantity of copper in ore
you dig up to make you know, electric vehicle half
to one percent. You can do the math here. You're
going to dig up a lot more rock to make
the copy you need to make electric vehicle than the
(15:53):
iron you have to dig up to make a steel
conventional engine. So these these things result in Carbonda set emissions.
There's all kinds of silly words for this, you know,
like scope two, scope three emissions. Basically they're talking about
elsewhere emissions. This is not about the emissions from charging
the battery, be clear, those occur too, But the emissions
(16:14):
from making the battery are so great and the variables
are so great that we know the offset somewhere between
a third to two thirds of all the emissions you say,
from not burning hydrogasoline in the first place. And then
you have to charge the battery. And that's in the
world we live in, not the world we imagine, but live.
And that means wherever you happen to live, the time
(16:37):
of day you charge the battery determines how much carbon
diox that you emit to refuel your electric car. Now,
with a conventional car, it doesn't matter where you fuel it,
when you fuel it, how you drive it. When you
drive it, the carbon dioxide emission emitted per gallon of
gasoline consumed is essentially the same everywhere all the time.
(16:58):
You probably have some listeners that are really smart that know, yes,
altitude and temperature slightly change the efficiency of a combustion
engine and slightly therefore alter carbon DIOXI emissions. But it's
a trivial change. With electric vehicles. If you happen to
charge it at night a dozen or two dozen states,
you're going to be fielding with coal. If you happen
(17:19):
to charge it in China, where half of the world
electric vehicles are, you're charging that electric vehicle with coal,
for sure, not maybe, but for sure. And if you
happen to charge it Norway where they love EVS. That
was in Oswa in January, A great time to be there.
You're charging with a hydro dam and good on you,
you know. But if you buy a tesla before you
(17:42):
even charge it the first time, you've caused something on
the order of twenty to thirty tons of CO two
to be omitted somewhere else on Earth to make that tesla.
Wo all the minerals and materials needed.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Hey, Mark, take a pause. We're going to take a
pause here when we come back. In your book you
talk about well, talk about Wales and whale oil, chapter ten,
page one fourteen. I want to talk about that a
little bit when we return, and let's dig into that
a little bit and see how that affects EVS, because
I think there's a connection there. I'm running ending of
the Car Doctor. I'm here with Mark Mills. We'll both
return right after this. Don't go away right Welcome back,
(18:39):
Running the Car Doctor here with Mark Mills. Noted author
noted everything he from the physicist, Well to me, you're
still to me, you're still a physicist for the Manhattan Institute.
Mark here, someday we're gonna sit down, have a cup
of coffee. We're talking time travel. So but in your book,
The Cloud Revolution.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
My favorite subject after robots.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yeah, well that you know. I I'm telling you, I
you know, I keep telling you Star Trek is going
to happen twenty sixty three. I got to stick around
another forty years. The Cloud Revolution available on Amazon. By
the way, Chapter ten, page one fourteen. You talk about materials,
the next energy or the energy nexus, right, And there's
(19:19):
a paragraph here that really got me. It talks about,
as a student of wildlife conservation knows, mankind hunted whales
almost to extinction in the pursuit of what was then
the best known material for illumination, you know, whale oil
to light lamps. Whale oil was prosed over other animals
and vegetable fats that have been used for lamps and
candles in the past, but demand for whale oil collapsed
after the eighteen forty six invention of kerosine is synthetic
(19:40):
oil derived from coal. And I read that and I
started thinking to myself, Gee, it's good thing that kerosene
worked out, because otherwise we would have had to revert
back to whale, oil hunting or whale you know, and
could we And I start thinking about the evs that
were being told that we're going to be driving in
(20:00):
ten years or less, and you know, is that indicative too?
You know, there was a material problem, then there's a
material problem. Now is there a point of no return
where we're so deep into evs we box ourselves into
a corner?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Well, yes and no. I mean I think the corner
that we boxed in will be for politicians and policy makers,
because I think there will be a we'll call it
a vigorous public reaction to the destruction done to convenience
and costs of personal mobility, the favor and phrase for
driving cars. So I think it's going to be an
(20:37):
epic collision between reality of what people want and what
can be built and what politicians policymakers are pushing. But
the cold story is fascinating because, as you know, a
chapter of my book, and thank you for reading it,
I appreciate that, it's you know, the information revolution. The
cloud is the thread through the book. But it's about
more than that. It's about materials and the materials and
(20:59):
energy NEXIT about you know, machines and robots and manufacturing
and healthcare and education, because these things all interrelate. And
the information revolution in a sense that began in eighteen
forty six was when the Canadian chemist and physician figured
out how to convert coal into a liquid fuel kerosene.
He came up with a process for that, and that
(21:20):
predates the first oil well by about I take forty years,
and it predates Spindletop, which was the kickoff in Texas
of the sort of the giant oil revolution of the
just in the right around nineteen hundred by sixty years.
So you know, the oil industry often like say they
saved the whale. No, no, no, they didn't. The coal
(21:41):
industry saved the whaley of a Canadian chemist because whale
oil consumption totally collapsed. If you see a graph of
the entire nineteenth century consumption of whale oil for purpose
of elimination, it totally collapsed. After he invented kerosene. His
process was really lousy compared to what we do today.
(22:02):
But here's the key to your point. In the conservation
of materials. Our footprint on the planet is determined by
materials and land we use. By that, I mean an
environmental footprint totally determined by the quantity materials we need
to do something and the quantity of land we need
to do something. And you know, harvesting whales pretty grotesque,
pretty grow teste thing to do it for elimination, But
(22:23):
the whale oil was magical, but it was more than
three hundred percent reduction and the quantity of materials you
needed to harvest coal versus whales to get the same
amount of illumination. And of course it's far easier to
harvest a third as much coal as a three times
more whale. So the cost of illumination utterly collapsed, right,
a spectacular change in quality of life to have illumination available,
(22:48):
civilization of far lower cost. Now, electric cars are essentially
a reversion. It's an increase to your point, not a
decrease in the consumption of land and material to achieve
the same thing. The same mild driven electric car and
a gasoline powered car are exactly the same from all
troll intents and purposes, so just different models of propulsion.
(23:11):
It's really not much different than going from you know,
a gasoline to a diesel engine with a different fuel.
So we're going to use electric chemistry and we're going
to use batteries aliciated chemicals. But it's just a different
way propelling the same thing. Fill a car. That was
a revolution. It's a big deal. But the fuel to
get the car to go increases our material footpitting on
(23:31):
the planet by one thousand percent over the fuel to
get a conventional car to go, So we have one
thousand percent increase per mild driven to go e these
versus stay with what we got. How can any You
don't have to know anything about any any specific electro
chemistry or environmental issues to know that that can't be good.
(23:55):
That's not a movement in the right direction. Now, if
only a few percent of cars do that, okay, whatever,
not a big deal, but make a significant share of
cars increase their footprint on the planet in terms of
materials requirements by one thousand percent. This is consequential in
all kinds of ways, but certainly in environmental ways and
certainly in social ways. Because of where we do the mining.
(24:16):
We don't do it in America. We import the mind
materials and the refined materials from the countries, and some
in Canada and Australia of course my homeland Canada, but
most of it comes from Africa and China and South America,
Central America. You know, so we export the challenges in
the pollution to other countries. We export the social challenges,
(24:37):
we export the pollution, we export the land use, we
export the incredible increase in ecosystem destruction. We need copper,
Copper is essential for civilization, but we don't need to
make cars electric and increase our copper consumption by three
hundred percent. That's you know, you know, for me, it's
(24:58):
not only silly, it's borderline, uh to say it's a
moral it's in a moral direction, and it's yes, yes,
people claim that it's you know, cutting CO two missions.
That claim is not supported in any significant way. But
the data, yeah, it might cut it a little bit,
depending where you live, when you drive the car. It
might increase COO two missions depending on where you live
(25:19):
and you drive, who you drive your car. Who's hardly
a good bargain in terms of CO two. It's a
terrible bargain in terms of environmental impacts, and it's a
terrible bargain in geopolitical terms because we don't mind, we
don't increase the mining of copper in America. We mind
copper here, we haven't increased mining of copper. It's in
probably fifty or sixty years in any significant way in America.
(25:41):
All the net new copper comes from elsewhere. So material dependence,
geopolitical dependencies, export challenges, import you know, for exporting dollars,
exporting problems. It's you know, all of this earns one
the label of being you know, I guess a critic
of EVS. I guess you have to say, I am,
But I'm not a critic of EV's per se. I'm
(26:03):
a critic of a monumoniacal pursuit of everybody being forced
to drive an EV. That's that's the essence of where we.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Welcome and I agree with that one hundred percent. I
like you. I appreciate EVS. I appreciate what Tesla's done.
I appreciate the engineering that's gone in it. But going
along saying, hey, everything needs to be an EV because
this is going to save the planet. You know, the
emperor has no clothes, brother, you know, it just it
just doesn't make any sense. Hey, let's pull over, take
a pause. When we come back, I want to talk
(26:31):
a little bit about Well, I'm going to tell you
my approach to how I would electrify the So I'm
gonna I want you to be the critic of my
thoughts and tell me, tell everybody what you think about
what I'm thinking. So stay put, Mark, I'm running any
of the Card Doctor. We'll both return right after this.
Don't go away. Welcome back Running the Card Doctor here
(26:58):
with Mark Mills and talking about EV's and all things
in between. The Cloud Revolution. Mark's book available on Amazon
as well as his writings. Mark, here's my pitch. Here's
how we're going to solve all these problems. You ready? Okay? Well,
first of all, by the way, did I tell you
I'm running for president. I've decided. I've decided to instigate
a writing campaign. I'm ron An Any and I'm running
(27:20):
for president. All your problem solved in twenty minutes or less,
re double your money back. I just have to figure
out how I'm going to do all that. But I'm
thinking about it.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
You could, you could, You could join a very long
line of people on both parties. Right.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Yeah, it's you know, well, I figured i'd go to
I'd go to Area fifty one, and after I make
the promise, I'll step in do the time travel thing
and go back to a pivotal moment. That's a whole
nother story. That's a whole nother show. Why don't we
you know, why? Why why don't they? You know, EV's okay,
we want to we want to cut down on pollution.
Why don't Why isn't the mandate more along the lines
(27:52):
of all delivery vehicles, all utility vehicles, taxis, buses, Uh,
you know, some emergency vehicles, policemen out on patrol, fire trucks,
that kind of thing. Maybe not fire trucks, but you know,
mandate those to be electric, and then a certain percentage
of electric vehicles for the for the general welfare for
the consumers. Because they've taken on this broad scope in there,
(28:16):
as you say, the push is going to come to
shove when they realize, listen, I want to be eighteen
again and lose forty pounds. Neither one of them has happened.
You know, at what point does that become the reality.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Well, let's just stipulate that I think mandates are a
bad idea a period, just just a bad idea. There
are very very few things we should mandate, very few things,
very few things like we should ban so and they're just,
you know, two slides of the same coin. The problem
with mandating for those markets is that in those markets,
(28:50):
if the easy were superior in its performance to the
diesel or gaslan engine, you would have no difficulty convincing
the auto owners and operators and businesses buy those vehicles
to buy them. Right. People are people are rational. You
couldn't get out of their way, right, they would would
run to buy these things. They're not more convenient, they're
(29:12):
not less expensive, So they're more expensive and they're less convenient.
With very few exceptions or applications where the convenience is superior.
It's certainly indoor electric vehicles. That's why trains in subways
are electric powered, because you can't combustion. It can close areas.
But here let me make a counter suggestion, which which
(29:34):
is perhaps beyond obvious. If if governments and policymakers feel compelled,
they just can't stop themselves from spending our money to
reduce oil consumption burning it, right, that's what that's the goal. Here.
Let's just stipulate we should all agree what they're really
trying to do is reduce commonducts emission of burning oil.
And when they learn, But if you want to do
(29:55):
it in the most cost effective way, what you want
to do is target the incentives to so called super users.
About twenty percent of the driving population in the United
States use something like sixty or seventy percent of all gasoline.
Super users. These are it doesn't matter whether the personal
driving long commutes or they're they're the guys doing the
(30:16):
lawns that in all the wealthy neighborhoods, delivery vehicles. There
are many different they're the super users. Super users consume
most of the gasoline. You could easily imagine a subsidy
instead of targeting the wealthy giving him big checks to
buy Tesla's and Mercedes and Jaguar evs, to give a
(30:36):
subsidy to a super user and give the super reserve
a choice. If they buy a vehicle that reduces their
oil and gas consumption based on the odometer and the
vehicle they turn in, then they'll get a pro ratic credit.
The more the more they say, the bigger the check.
What most people will buy is a more efficient internal
combustion engines, but if they buy electric one whatever, it
(30:57):
doesn't matter that you would let the consumer then choose
what would work for them is the most effective option,
practical option in terms of what the vehicle is to
save money and cut fuel emissions. And that would be easy,
be easy to implemat it'd be easy to target, be
easy to track, and it would not result. What's going
(31:17):
on now is a wealth chance between the middle class
who pay taxes and the wealthy who buy evs. It's
unequivocally the case. We notice in the data the two
or three car families in the higher income brackets buy
ninety percent of evs, and the taxes to pay for
that come from not them, they come from middle class families.
That's where the most of the taxes come from. It's
just a rithmetical fact. So this is an easy solution
(31:40):
if we feel compelled to do that, that's the solution.
Not to order dump trucks or garbage trucks or ups
trucks to use electric drive, but the super users trade
in the vehicles for a more efficient engine. And if
the morefficient engine is an internal is not internal combustion whatever,
let's and choose right now for occasional use vehicles that
(32:02):
you can actually charge overnight, which is inexpensive. Way, that's fine.
If you happen to be UH an EV owner and
you know you can put your vehicle in overnight at
your home. That's great, But fast chargers are very expensive.
Fast chargers are UH the damage batteries. Fast chargers are
using power when it's in the greatest demand, using peak
(32:25):
time during the days. So those uses are not great uses.
But the business or the consumer has a second or
third car, an occasional use utility vehicle that can be
charged overnight, great, give but give them a check. And
for the person who needs the drive lawn thatsances needs
a high hauling capacity, uh, let them trade in if
(32:46):
you like, for the the most efficient and maybe a
hybrid that may just be a more efficient engine, just
just just you're the car guy.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, well right, and I get that. Hey, Mark Tay,
what sit tight? Let me, let's pull over. We're gonna
we're gonna finish up here and then we're gonna close out.
We'll have up minutes when we get back on the
other side of this, I'm running any of the Card
Doctor here with Mark Mills. We'll return right after this.
(33:15):
Welcome back, Running of the Card Doctor here with Mark Mills. Mark,
we got about two minutes. Brother let's talk about next month.
Let's start there. I got to get you to come back.
I want to I want to hear more about EV's
for everybody. Your next article coming out in the City
Journal for the Manhattan Institute, the magazine for the Manhattan Institute.
So Tom will reach out to you and get you
(33:35):
in the queue for next month sometime and we'll talk
more about that. I think your comments and points today
were spot on. The name of the book is the
Cloud Revolution for everybody out there that's gonna call later
or write later and ask. It's available on Amazon. I
will say this, I think you hit the nail on
the head so many times about you know, the look back,
(33:56):
the look forward, and the analogy and the comparison to
EV's spot spot on the money, my friend spot on
the money.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Well, thank you man, thanks for the good words in
the book. And there's a little bit for everybody in
the book, as you know, and we get maybe next
time we can talk about flying cars and autonomous vehicles
and robots, and of course the robots are the next revolution.
And it's no surprise that some automakers are also robot makers.
There's a reason for that, right, got it?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Well, and you know, next time let's talk about lithium
ion batteries. And now Toyota is talking about a solid
state battery. But if you read the article, it says
at some point, so it's not.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, there's that I want to be eighteen and lose
forty pounds thing again, So always always a pleasure. Mark listen,
you'll be well and we'll talk again real soon. Thanks
for taking the time with us today. I know the
listeners appreciate it, and Tom and I do too, so
you'll be well, my friend. I'm running Ady and the
car doctor and we're going to say goodbye now. And
just remind you once and for all whether you driving
(35:00):
an e D or an internal combustion engine, whatever it is,
as always, good mechanics aren't expensive, they're priceless. See you
Host
Ron Ananian
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