The government subsidizes the food you eat and the roads you drive on, maybe you should stop doing those activities if you hate the government so much.
Energy independence is a national security issue. BEV development is a worthy investment, and the government’s infrastructure law incentivizes domestic production.
Government should not subsidize anything not food and certainly not EV's
>>the government’s infrastructure law incentivizes domestic production
False in incentives north American production for GM most of that investment is in MX not the US
Lithium mining is supposed to be bad but we all seem to gloss over the fact that oil extraction is no different than mining. BEVs plain and simple use less total energy per mile by a long shot, and you can generate that energy however you prefer.
Compare replacing the weight of your battery every 10 years with the weight and volume of all the fuel you’ve burned in 10 years of ICE driving. There’s no such thing as recycling gasoline.
The charts in this article illustrate the issue nicely. Even with non-ideal unimproved current-state EV technology, the massive amount of oil burned in your gas tank is the biggest problem:
Copper is a greater issue, also the economical longevity of BEV's are another issue. You seem to focused on the idea of battery recycablity which has yet to be proven to be ECONOMICALLY viable (much like everything else beyond Aluminum) yet do not talk about all the other limited materials that go in an EV outside the battery like copper.
It is not uncommon for environmentalist to simply ignore economics as an inconvenient truth, or an irrelevant topic that does not need consideration but BEV's have all kinds of economic issues including a lower expected life due tot he cost of battery replacement, resell issues on the used market, etc.
That is with out getting into the technological problems with BEV's in winter..
If anyone is "glossing over" anything it is the BEV proponents that want to hand wave all of these things with whataboutisms (like you have in your comments) or simply pretending those are not issues, or worse that government can hand-wave a solution
These automotive companies lobby endlessly to sway various regulations in their favor, but they've seemingly rolled over and given up on the issue of EVs. They don't protest at California or Europe planning to ban ICE vehicle sales, and yet they have no difficulty discouraging the government from pursuing public transit and passenger rail investments. Why is that?
Why is Amazon building a custom EV delivery van with Rivian and outfitting their warehouses with expensive space-eating charging stations if the economics don't work and they expect battery materials to dry up? Are you accusing Amazon of acting against shareholder interests? Do you know of any public companies making investments of that scale without doing basic research? [2]
I'll tell you why it's happening: economically, EVs are less complicated to manufacture, more profitable, less expensive to fuel, and more desirable to consumers. I think that if we read between the lines, automakers aren't worried about securing enough batteries and finding enough materials. They're probably more worried about the way gasoline prices can fluctuate suddenly like in 2021, and how that fluctuation discourages sales of the most profitable types of vehicles (SUVs and trucks).
Economically, the US government knows that high gas prices alone can act as a trigger for recessions, and they most certainly have the data to know whether BEVs are a viable solution. 38% of Republican Senators voted for the infrastructure bill that introduces subsidies for electric vehicles. [1]
We can cynically look at that legislative action as a handout to corporations, but I see it as an admission that the world will change to BEVs whether any outside action takes place or not, purely due to the economics of the situation, and that incentivizing a domestic supply chain is necessary for economic stability and possibly even national security (i.e., shoring up energy independence: congress doesn't want the country's transportation infrastructure to be handcuffed to a new OPEC in the form of foreign battery suppliers).
I'm just following the money here.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/08/10/1026486578/senate-republican-...
[2] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/rivian-amazo...
True, GM only cancels and gives up on EV programs that cost single digit billions. ;)
https://www.gm.com/electric-vehicles
https://news.gm.com/newsroom.detail.html/Pages/news/us/en/20...
It's a "fun topic" because you can find an incredible amount of "fanboi-ism" about whether or not GM was on the side of good or evil. I live in SE Michigan, my Dad owned a business that was a supplier to GM and my long-term girlfriend works there[1]. And here's me ... I don't care about cars. I intentionally avoided "the big three" and any company that most of its business was "work for the big three[2]".
They either created it prematurely in order to destroy the market entirely, entered it prematurely in order to scare off smaller competition (akin to buying up the little guys and dismantling them in the manner of the electric rail cars), used it without any serious desire to create a legitimate product but only to harm their competitors through CARB regulations (them being the only EV manufacturer) ... frankly, I find all of that to be a bit tin-foil hat[3]. I've heard a million other arguments for and against but at the end of the day they poured a lot of money into it. I think they rightly recognized that "the issue was battery technology" and made a dangerous bet on it[3].
I suspect they expected the battery tech would improve, the cost would go down and they could control the losses by limiting production, refitting leased vehicles with newer tech and re-leasing them, eventually getting to a profitable state well before their competitors figured any of it out. Meanwhile, they'd take every advantage they could from government regulators/grants/programs (why wouldn't they?!). Unfortunately, 1999 tech wasn't up to producing a car that could be used to get to and from work in sub-freezing temperatures and there was no charging infrastructure at all.
Fast-forward to today ... I'm seriously considering a Bolt[4]. They have a lot of "regular old consumer" electric vehicles on the road for quite a while now and have had a few bumps in the road[4].
I think some of the GM hate originates from people being sore about the bailout. Hell, even living here and knowing how awful the impact would have been without it, I don't know how I felt about it at the time. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, it's kind of pointless to be sore about it any longer ...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
[1] Doing a job who's responsibilities are sufficiently complex enough that I can't explain them because I don't entirely understand them.
[2] Somehow I had a 17-year career at a global multinational telecom that nobody locally would be able to identify, then went on to conferencing software and a company that was mostly IoT but also did quite a bit with the autos, so I did end up doing a few (rather cool) things in the automotive space despite my efforts to avoid.
[3] An argument often made is that GM wouldn't sell these cars, they would only lease them. I'm not sure if that's true or not but I know the initial reason for the lease-only choice was that replacing the battery in the vehicle was $40,000 and was expected to be necessary after two years.
[4] I fully expected fires and the like ... and expect more of it as manufacturers figure out that "Li-Ion is hard" and municipalities discover that they need to refit their fire departments. I mean, I'm presently driving around with an incredibly flammable liquid in a device that operates by making it explode in a controlled manner. I don't believe for a second that the problems presented by these batteries can't similarly be solved.
The "sourness" is not about the bailout per say, it is the fact they took American Tax Payer money and used that to move the bulk of their manufacturing to Mexico, including parts manufacturing. The American tax payer built their automotive factories in Mexico. The bailouts was to "protect American jobs" but it simply delayed the layoffs until they got the Mexico factories going
> In just ten years we’ve gone from the first Model S leaving the assembly line to electric F-150 and Mustang. That’s as mainstream as it gets.
Let's just get out of the way and say if you have to use the term "silent majority" you better make sure you're not falling victim to confirmation bias (aka, "other automotive CEOs who are similarly viewed as 'behind' in the EV space feel the same").
But the bigger point is "the point at which the benefits of an EV exceed the trade-offs for most people in developed countries." I think we're there, or we're getting there once the initial cost of the vehicle comes down[0].
There's no question it's "mainstream" and I'm having a really hard time these days seeing any downside -- for my specific vehicle needs -- to owning an EV and several upsides without taking the cost of fuel into account[1]. Being that Volkswagen had let slip they were designing an electric version of the classic VW Bus, I figured I'd wait for that to be out a couple of years and purchased a used Dodge Caravan for the time being.
Family circumstances led to me no longer needing a van and because of how little I drive, I'm beginning to wonder if it makes sense for me to own a car at all. That was unthinkable where I live about 15 years ago but I'm driving so infrequently that I'm often finding I'm failing to do maintenance on time (well under miles, but past the date -- sometimes it matters). The car is paid off but I need to sit down and factor in the cost of maintaining insurance, registration, oil/transmission changes, tire rotations (which required new tires due to my failure to realize how past due I was), alignment, brakes (similar to tires, I'm often replacing rotors), fuel, cleaning and repair and just see what that is costing me per month. I own a motorcycle which I drive in the warm months in most weather -- total maintenance/insurance is $250/yr, tires/repairs, it's probably added $20/yr to the cost and I paid cash for it -- new -- in 2012. I'm easily past the point where "Uber/Lyft" would be much less costly than owning a car.
The loss of having a (safer) vehicle "on demand" and the way that might appear to someone I'm dating is a huge factor, though. I don't know what kind of regular maintenance is required for an electric vehicle, but I've read that some manufacturers are considering using drum brakes throughout[2]. There's no equivalent to oil changes, I'd expect there is (or will be at some point) a way to tell the vehicle to keep the charge at an "storage/idle state[3]" Stored in a garage between 40-80 (sorry, Fahrenheit) year round, what kind of other maintenance am I looking at? Could I sock some money away each month to replace the battery and how much would I need to plan to have/when?
I'm not what a lot of people would consider the mainstream EV buyer. External effects excluded, the cost of fuel would start affecting me, probably, at $10/gallon with my driving habits. I don't care abut the impact of my driving on climate change and generally do not make large purchasing decisions based on environmental concerns (character flaw as it is). I don't care how fast it accelerates, or how sexy it looks. For my driving needs (and wants), though, it's looking like an EV is by far the best choice.
Of course, astute observers will notice that this is a pretty non-optimal solution to my problem. The "Uber/Lyft" solution is cheapest, but involves someone driving me around. Because my driving tends to schedule well (mostly Friday-Monday, presently, though that will change), renting a car on the weekend would be a suitable option if it weren't an awful experience. I don't see a way for a company to swoop in and fill this space (without going bankrupt) with current technology/culture. For example, if the "Uber/Lyft" solution were self-driving vehicles, I'd be more apt to drop car ownership. I think a lot of people would. At what point does "getting places" become so generic that you simply "subscribe to transportation" and an array of options is available to you based on where you're headed/the purpose of your trip. At a certain point, that sort of thing changes "why we travel", as well.
[0] People are kind of terrible at factoring in total cost of ownership.
[1] The last time I was in the market for a new car, my driving needs were under 10,000 miles a year but most of those miles involved six passengers.
[2] Not a car guy but my understanding: Drum brakes are not exposed to the elements and otherwise last much longer but are more expensive to repair (they may also not stop the wheel as well but I don't know). With regenerative braking, drum brakes will last substantially longer than disc.
[3] Other EV devices I own recommend 40-60% to keep the battery from premature death.
Toyota was caught with their pants down. Compare the value proposition of the bZ4X to the Bolt EUV or Ioniq 5.
In just ten years we’ve gone from the first Model S leaving the assembly line to electric F-150 and Mustang. That’s as mainstream as it gets.