Comments by "jeppen" (@jesan733) on "Why EVs Aren't The GreenTech Panacea || Peter Zeihan" video.

About 25% of new cars in Europe are plug-ins, roughly 50% in Sweden (the latter with no EV subsidies but fairly high fuel taxes). I think Peter vastly overstates the difficulties in ev penetration and understates the environmental advantages. The momentum is huge, but of course now with the wars and high inflation and interest rates, investments are being postponed.
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@AWAVAVA Yes, 100 kWh goes 300 miles. And then that's 110 kWh before charging losses. And that's 275 kWh thermal energy in a thermal power plant at 40% efficiency. And 275 kWh is equivalent to 8.3 gallons of gasoline. So 300/8.3 = 36 mpg. And that's not better than highway Toyota Corolla mpg. Thus you have roughly the same fuel energy use in ICE and EV. I love EVs, but fact is they don't save energy, they only give flexibility to choose other energy sources.
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There's little to no benefit in energy efficiency for EVs. If you do fuel-to-wheel efficiency calculations for ICE vehicles and BEVs starting from a thermal power source, you'll end up on roughly the same energy use per mile.
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@Thai-Tanic. "How do you feel about Elon just slashing the retail prices by 20% (again)." This is great, shows how fast battery prices are coming down. "And therefore trashing the re-sale value for the Tesla's owners, that bought before the price reduction?" I feel the same horror as for the drops in prices and increases in performance of flatscreen TVs.
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@AWAVAVA it seems you're not really well. Your arguments in both the previous comment and this are unfocused and aggressive gish galloping. I stand by my comment: There are no significant energy savings with EVs.
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@srwven a few hundred kilos of battery will be valuable and recycled. So the minerals needed is basically a one-time cost for the switch to non-petro transport. I'm a fan of nuclear, but RE is a fairly good match to EVs since you can often charge the battery when electricity prices are low.
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@Ai-dz7ys "£60,000 to own a top of the range Tesla Y." So what ICE car would you compare that with? A bottom of the range Toyota Corolla? "Oh and don't forget, the batteries are screwed after a much shorter time than a combustion engine" Why do you think so? I think the opposite is true.
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@knpstrr no, they don't use energy 4x more efficiently. It's roughly the same efficiencies from thermal energy to wheel for ICE and EVs.
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@knpstrr why do you compare with 25 mpg? I remarked to another guy: "Yes, 100 kWh goes 300 miles. And then that's 110 kWh before charging losses. And that's 275 kWh thermal energy in a thermal power plant at 40% efficiency. And 275 kWh is equivalent to 8.3 gallons of gasoline. So 300/8.3 = 36 mpg. And that's not better than highway Toyota Corolla mpg"
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@knpstrr no, I'm not making an argument for better grid power generation. I'm making an argument against attempts to portray EVs as more efficient. Electricity's higher energy quality has been known like forever, and you pay for the higher energy quality by corresponding losses in conversion to electricity. There is no primary energy win in using EVs. They are not more efficient in a well/mine to wheel perspective and that's what matters. However they do give flexibility in choice of power source, including not only coal but also nuclear/wind/solar/hydro and that matters, obviously.
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@knpstrr I can't stop you from being disingenuous and refusing to acknowledge that EVs don't save energy.
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@think_ffs3934 it's definitely the case here. We've had "just 30 years of copper left" for 100 years now, while manifolding extraction.
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@knpstrr it's not fact, it's fact resistant. If you have a diesel or gasoline generator and plug the electricity into an EV, that EV will go about as far as an ICE using the same fuel. Is that really so hard to understand or acknowledge?
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@AWAVAVA look, I bought my third EV in 2019, and I live in a country with $7/gallon gas and $0.1/kWh nighttime electricity. You can bet the farm that I'm aware that electricity is cheaper! But I'm also an engineer and have difficulties letting misperceptions about physics stand, and you seemed to perpetuate the myth that EVs actually save energy through higher efficiency. They don't, they just provide the flexibility to not use oil. That's all I'm saying.
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@pelinoregeryon6593 EV electricity needs are pretty minor compared to overall electricity consumption, so no, cost of electricity will not skyrocket.
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@glynnec2008 no, not worried about EV fires. Are you worried about having a full tank of gasoline in your garage? No? Why not?
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@dantech1 US plug-in sales in 2022 was 7.7%. China 29%, Germany 31% and Norway 88%. I don't think you understand the momentum and cost curves involved. Sure the US sales may still be dominated by ICE in 2035, but most of the world will have plug-in dominance.
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Funny thing is that virtually all first-time EV buyers say the same: "It's the best car I've ever owned." I've heard it from owners of Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model 3, Volkswagen ID.4, Polestar 2 and Kia EV6.
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@AWAVAVA I gave you the calculations, so I have already proven my assertion on energy efficiency. You retorted with red herrings, like air pollution. The only substantive objection you had was that "Modern coal plants are closer to 60% efficient, not 40%.". That's simply not true, except perhaps some idealized slideware. Real-world coal plant fleets are rarely doing as well as 40% even.
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@knpstrr yes 25 mpg is the average for the US fleet's behemots with oversized engines, including pickups, but why would you compare that to the performance of smaller Teslas? Toyota Corolla is the most sold car and does 33 mpg combined city/highway and 40 mpg highway. 319wh/mi is like 38 mpg if you factor in losses in thermal power plant and charging losses. So again, EVs don't present primary energy savings, they only present primary power source flexibility. That's the benefit!
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@knpstrr repetition just makes it worse.
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@AWAVAVA "What would the mpg of a Toyota Corolla be if you account for the energy lost to drilling/offshore pumping, crude oil transport, crude oil refinement, and gasoline transport." It would lose exactly as much as an EV powered by a gasoline or diesel generator. "You chose to throw out an apple to oranges example as a false comparison." No, quite the contrary. I'm making sure to do an apples to apples comparison. "I'm perfectly fine keeping the conversation confined to mpg" And again, the mpgs are very similar. If you don't acknowledge that, you apparently feel the need to subtly mislead because you don't think the actual advantages of EVs are sufficient. "the bottom line is that EVs are 66% cheaper to fuel per mile based on current gas price" Yes, because oil is that much more expensive than coal, nuclear, hydro and wind. Not because it saves energy. "But my statement about the negative externality of gas still stands." Yes, EVs are much cleaner for cities and lets us use other power sources than oil. Those are both very important advantages.
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@marcsyrene3781 "And the fact that electric motors are 3 times more efficient than ice motors." Dude, you need to spend 3x the energy in thermal power plants to get the electricity. It evens out.
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@AD-pb4vq my point is that EVs aren't more energy efficient, they just present primary power source flexibility. And I do agree with you that this is a major benefit.
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@Thai-Tanic. as a user of new and rapidly evolving tech, I wouldn't expect the prices and performances to remain as-is. I think Tesla buyers will survive. As for me, I buy my cars new but then keep them for 10 years or something like that and then they're not worth anything much anyways.
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@LRRPFco52 batteries last longer than the cars' frames and longer than ICE engines, so the battery replacement cost is irrelevant.
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@dantech1 I don't like what Germany does, I think it should have spent the money on nuclear instead. Regardless, the US easily has the money to fix this and the other things you mention. Easily. You will hardly even notice the cost, even if you don't factor in gasoline savings. Do a napkin calc, you'll see.
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@juanzingarello4005 in the month of June 2023, around 1.3 million plug-ins were delivered globally, a rough 36% increase over June 2022. Growth continues. If GM and Ford doesn't want to keep up, they don't have to.
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@Quickshot0 this is true and it's also probably true that battery prices will drop considerably with added scale and market saturation regardless of fundamental tech improvements. In the first phase of a technology shift to tech with better characteristics, like LCDs and EVs, prices are high partly because of high demand/low supply + fabs are new and not written off yet. I actually think it will be fairly easy and that the EV momentum is unstoppable. This is what the "invisible hand" does best.
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@tech010101x BEVs have not gotten much better GHG-wise, the reason being that the battery improvements have been used for more kWhrs, not for less weight/cost. The 2014 Mercedes B class had a 28 kWh battery. The grids aren't that much better either. But the future is rather promising.
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@tech010101x I haven't tracked the details of GHG emissions in battery production, no, but I bought my first Nissan Leaf in 2015 and it had 24 kWh. I loved it and it was perfect for my commute (with free charging at work), yet I understood it would not suffice for mass market adoption. Then in 2017 I switched it for 30 kWh Leaf and in 2019 I bought a Leaf with 40 kWh, and I still have that one, and it still has too little battery for me to use it for longer trips. The latest Leaf is 60 kWh and I think that's in the low end of being adequate. So my simple assumption is that improvements in GHG emissions per kWh of battery has not yet resulted in lower GHG emissions per BEV. It should going forward though, as 60-80 kWh battery is probably the sweet spot for small to medium sized cars. Thus further improvements should result in price, weight and GHG reductions per BEV.
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@MarcoNierop mandatory solar PV canopies over parking lots in FRANCE of all countries!? The world has truly gone mad!
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@108doublestitches I live in Sweden and our government axed all the EV subsidies about a year ago. Still, in July to October this year, plug-in sales are 60% of total sales.
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@dcc70 if we need more copper mines, we'll open more copper mines.
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@comingverysoon agreed, and EVs are already pretty far up the S-curve outside of the US.
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@knpstrr how old are you?
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@marcsyrene3781 so you "non environmentalist are smarter eh?" The real environmentalists are the long-time nuclear proponents, right? That's the litmus test. People who refuse nuclear don't care about the environment, they care about their standing in the environmentalist sect.
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@marcsyrene3781 come up with what? How energy efficiency from thermal power evens out the difference between ICE and EV, or nuclear power as an environmentalist litmus test? Both are somewhat self-evident if you think about it.
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@marcsyrene3781 of course system level analysis would be exceedingly complex, but fundamentally it's a gish gallop to argue that all these small items matter a lot. Also, with a true system level analysis, you'd include the EV batteries as well and then it won't look good. Regarding hydro and so forth, yes, of course if the primary energy source isn't thermal, you could argue about what to do. But since electricity has higher energy quality, a standard way to calculate primary energy production is to multiply hydro/wind/... energy with a factor that puts it on even footing with thermal, so that e.g. nuclear power doesn't look three times bigger than hydro when the electrical energy production is the same. We have a system that helps us make priorities and helps us aggregate the effect of various resource drains. It's called "market economy". If costs are higher, then the system requires more of our resources. And I think we should be able to agree that a country currently cannot save money by switching from gasoline/diesel transportation to using the same fuel in powerplants, increased electricity infrastructure and battery-powered transportation. Quite the contrary. So why then assume any energy is saved, when the costs are higher? Yes, battery-powered transportation probably does save money, so the conclusion is that it does so by allowing us to use OTHER primary energy sources, not that it saves us energy. Coal, wind, natgas, nuclear etc are cheaper than oil.
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@Alexi7666 it seems the purpose of EVs are to deliver a superior user experience first and foremost. That seems evident from Tesla Roadster and forward. Linear super-strong acceleration response, quiet, vibrationless, odorless and virtually maintenance-free.
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