The Road Ahead for EVs
In 2021, President Biden issued an executive order setting a sales goal for electric vehicles, or EVs. By 2030, half of all new passenger car, SUV, and pick-up truck sales would be comprised of EVs. Sales are less than 10% today. Will America hit the 50% goal in just six years? Mark Hyman takes a close look at EVs.
“It was a '56 Ford, new Ford, Customline,” said Jack Fitzgerald.
Jack Fitzgerald remembers the first car he sold. Nearly 70 years later he won’t even guess at how many he’s sold at his nearly three-dozen dealerships. He’s certain it’s a lot.
Fitzgerald has sold just about every car make and model, including EVs. Does he think America will hit President Biden’s 50% EV new car sales goal by 2030?
“No, no, no. No, there's no chance of that,” Jack Fitzgerald when asked about the president's 2030 50% EV sales goal.
“No, no, no. No, there's no chance of that,” he said.
Fitzgerald is among the 5,000 car dealers that signed letters urging the White House to pump the brakes on “proposed regulations mandating EV sales.” Among their concerns, he told us, was the lack of charging capacity. “The grid is not prepared to charge all those cars,” he told us.
Where's my next station that I plug into? wonders those suffering from range anxiety.
By grid, he means the nation’s electrical power grid and enough charging ports to eliminate range anxiety. “Range anxiety,” Bob Galyen explained, “is people get into an electric car and they're concerned about, ‘Where's my next station that I plug into?’”
There may be no bigger cheerleader for EVs in America than Bob Galyen. He was the lead battery engineer for General Motors’ short-lived EV1, the nation’s first mass-produced electric vehicle that debuted in 1996 before EVs entered the mainstream. It turns out America was not ready for electric cars back then.
Correspondent Mark Hyman asked Galyen, “Is it reasonable for us to achieve a 50% sales goal in the next six years?” “I don't believe it is,” he replied.
Galyen is known worldwide in the electric vehicle industry. Some consider him the godfather of EV batteries. After he retired from GM, he founded and sold a battery company, then he became the Chief Technology Officer for China’s CATL. It’s the world’s largest maker of batteries, including for EVs. In nearly 8 years he had a front-row seat to China leading the world in EV sales. One reason is power.
“Because they did put the charging infrastructure in place." Galyen explains why China has better success with EV adoption.
“Because they did put the charging infrastructure in place,” Galyen noted, continuing, “You could take your car to work and charge it, you could take it home and charge it.”
Global consulting firm McKinsey estimates the US will need 28 million charging ports by 2030. There are just two million charging ports today. A charging station may have one, two or more charging ports. About 12,000 new public and private charging ports would need to be added every single day starting right now to reach the 28 million goal by 2030. With just a fraction of chargers in place today, California utilities have warned customers that EV charging has strained that state’s power grid.
“The very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built." Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explaining why only 7 charging stations have been built with $7.5 billion since 2021.
In a recent Face the Nation appearance, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg conceded very little progress has been made in building charging stations. Buttigieg told the moderator, “The very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built. But again, that's the absolute very, very beginning stages of the construction to come.” Just seven have been built with $7.5 billion allocated to his department for that purpose in 2021. Buttigieg declined our request to answer questions regarding EVs.
However, a senior administration official spoke with Inside Your World on background and insisted the nation will reach 28 million charging ports in 6 years. Galyen is doubtful it will happen. He told us why. “The raw materials it would take to build that many charging infrastructure ports would be an amazing spike in the amount of copper that's used.”
“That doesn't mean we're going to have electricity for them," cautions Jack Fitzgerald who has been waiting weeks for a charging station permit.
Aside from questionable copper availability, Galyen noted local governments are notoriously slow to approve such electrical work. The dealership where we spoke with Jack Fitzgerald had been waiting weeks to get a required permit to install a charging station.
Fitzgerald told Mark challenges may await even after a permit is issued. “That doesn't mean we're going to have electricity for them. We got the charger, but we may not have electricity.”
Sales price is another key obstacle to consumer adoption. EVs cost a bundle. A comparison of identical cars found EVs cost more to purchase than the gas counterpart. Chinese imports are not the solution for price-conscious consumers. In May, President Biden doubled price of Chinese-built EVs when he announced a 100% tariff on them.
“It's the Gucci purse thing. They want everybody in the neighborhood to know that they're green.” Fitzgerald explaining why its mostly only the wealthiest who are buying EVs.
According to the University of California at Berkeley, 8 out of 10 EV sales have gone to the wealthiest Americans. The top 20% of income earners.
Fitzgerald told us, “It's the Gucci purse thing. They want everybody in the neighborhood to know that they're green.”
EVs “may fail to generate any emissions benefit over [gas vehicles]” Harvard study.
But they’re not so green, according to a Harvard study. Gas vehicles sold in the US today are 99% free of the pollutants they used to emit decades ago. Because of this, the study found EVs “may fail to generate any emissions benefit over [gas vehicles]” for the first 56,000 miles of use. The study also reported the total cost of ownership -- that is the sales price plus maintenance expenses -- makes an EV more expensive than a fossil-fuel car unless driven at least 159,000 miles in the first 6 years of ownership, or nearly 27,000 miles annually.
Large batteries offer benefits to society other than just building EVs. Cutting the power cord is the future, Galyen told us. “Electrification is a lot more than just an electric car. It's taking battery technology and applying it in so many different ways,” he said.
There is a bottleneck when it comes to battery production. China accounts for more than 70% of global EV battery production capacity. Two of the five critical minerals necessary for EV batteries are concentrated in mines heavily controlled by China in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congo’s fragile democracy survived a coup attempt in May that reportedly included some Americans. Making matters worse, the Congo’s trade relations with the west have recently soured. And the International Energy Agency forecasts shortages by 2030 of some critical resources for battery manufacture, especially cobalt which is critical to extending battery life.
Internal Toyota documents obtained by Inside Your World claim the amount of critical minerals used to build a single EV can be used to manufacture 6 plug-in hybrids, or 90 hybrids like a Toyota Prius. Both versions of hybrids can be powered by gas or battery.
However, the president’s executive order does not count hybrids toward the 50% EV sales goal. That doesn’t matter, Fitzgerald told us. The public will only buy cars they want. After peaking last year, EV sales have since stalled. Still, he believes America’s automobile future will be a combination of gas, EV and hybrids. He remined us, “The people that write those rules don't have to sell the cars.”
Earlier this year, more than 5,000 auto dealers co-signed a letter to the White House opposing federal regulations mandating EV sales. The dealers warned “Our customers continue to bypass EVs over concerns about affordability, charging infrastructure, performance in cold weather, and resale value.”
