1301: Electric Vehicles | Skeptical Sunday

I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger.

“Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer and researcher Nick Pel.”

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we do here on the show, just visit jordanharbanger.com/start, or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, electric vehicles aren't exactly new, but something about them still feels futuristic. You see one glide by, and it's silent, sleek, often with that signature blue glow, it's

one of the few examples we have today of feeling like you're looking at the future. And if it's a Tesla cyber truck, you can't help but stare, whether you think it's brilliant or a Samsung refrigerator on wheels, it's hard to ignore. But for all their high tech promise, a growing number of people are asking uncomfortable questions.

Our EVs really the clean green revolution we've been promised, or are they just the next chapter in a century long story of selling us salvation through consumption?

“Because here's the thing, electric cars aren't a new invention.”

They've been around almost as long as the automobile itself. The idea of battery-powered transportation predates the model T. So what changed? What did we go from early experiments in abandoned prototypes to a world where Tesla, Ford, Hyundai, and even luxury automakers like BMW are locked in electric arms race? And maybe most importantly, our modern EVs actually better for the planet, or have we simply

swapped out one set of environmental problems for another. Mining, manufacturing, and electricity all come with costs. The question is whether those costs are worth it. Here today to help me go under the hood, or whatever EVs have instead of one of those, is writer and researcher Nick Pell.

Nick, do you own an EV? Not until they make a car truck.

Did you know the very first cars were battery driven?

Yes, duh, everybody knows that. I actually know a little bit about this because my dad worked in the automotive industry and Detroit, but you couldn't recharge the batteries, I guess, so they were kind of a proof of concept thing versus something you could actually use as transportation. This is, of course, back in the 1830s, which is crazy to think they had batteries back then

for cars. It's crazy to think they had cars back then. Right now, yeah, kind of, I'm a battery powered carriage that you can't really use for anything you actually need a carriage for is kind of a better phrase than cars, really. I don't think that they really weren't that useful to be honest.

No, they weren't. When we think of early cars, I think of, you know, these monstrosities, you had to crank by hand to get going. Yes, which is sort of accurate in why a lot of people opted for electric cars. They were quieter, and there was no hand cranking involved.

I don't want it the time agreed that the hand cranking sucked, essentially. We're decide chauffeur comes from the French word Stoker, like somebody who's Stokes in engine. I see. Fun fact.

“Yes, because, yeah, that's what you used to have to do with gas power cars to get them”

started. Speaking of weird facts, you live in a town with an electric vehicle museum, which is kind of wild because most people probably don't even know that electric vehicles are older than the Tesla. Well, they're not totally wrong.

Tesla was the first company that made electric vehicles practical for everyday use before Tesla

hit the scene. They were kind of just toys for rich guys or car enthusiasts with significant disposable income. The electric car museum in my town is thus kind of underwhelming. You're not looking at something that can win a race or really even be driven across town.

They're basically sort of glorified golf carts, if I'm not mistaken. That's a decent way of putting it except for one thing, like you said, the first cars on the road were electric vehicles. This was during an era where gas power cars, electric cars, and steam powered cars, shared the road.

It sounds like a joke, but it's not. Electric cars used to be advertised as ladies cars because they were cleaner and required less maintenance. So why did we get away from electric vehicles? Then like, hey, no, I want a dirty one that breaks all the time.

A lot of people chalk this up to conspiracy, there's this idea that big oil killed the electric car, and to be fair, there's some truth to that. The oil industry did spend much of the 20th century lobbying against policies that would make EVs competitive. Cheap gasoline, infrastructure built around the internal combustion engine, and heavy investment

This was not exactly a level playing field, but it's also not a mustache twirling plot,

“so much as it's a case of technological and economic inertia.”

Gas cars were cheaper, they were faster to refuel, they were more convenient. Early EVs were limited by lead acid batteries that sometimes barely got you across town before dying. And when the hand crank disappeared, and electric starters made gas engines easy to use, consumers overwhelmingly chose power and distance over quiet and clean.

By the time lithium ion batteries arrived in the 1990s, the world had already spent nearly a century building around fossil fuels. The infrastructure of the culture of the industry, these were all locked in. And the 2006 documentary, who killed the electric car, blames corporate and political collusion, and it's not wrong, but the bigger story is that the technology simply wasn't

ready yet, the economics didn't favor it. In other words, it wasn't just who killed the electric car. It was who failed to keep it alive. The development of lithium ion batteries is a big reason why we have a electric car. So today, I doubt that lead acid batteries are practical at all for automobile transport.

This does make some sense, because if you think about it, yeah, maybe the automotive industry is with a big oil sort of team up, and other countries aren't necessarily immune to that, but I don't know, you'd think they would have just built electric cars in Korea, and then everyone would have one, suddenly. But if the technology, it makes more sense the tech was just not ready for prime time.

And lead acid batteries, certainly not practical at all for automobile transport. They're super heavy. They take a long time to charge. You can't discharge them all the way down if you ever want to charge them up again.

“The Ford Model T, along with the Texas oil boom of 1901, I think that was kind of the end”

of electric cars. The Model T was cheap, it was mass produced, it ran on gas, which, as you said, was just a much more cost effective way of getting around in your car. So for about 50 years, the only EVs that you see are these, like, yeah, basically golf carts and forklifts, neither of those are known for performance.

You don't drive them long distance. So when does the comeback happen here? The comeback happens during the oil crisis of the 70s when the cheap oil part of the

equation comes to an end, almost all of Detroit's development ends in prototypes that never

get mass produced because, well, they're just glorified golf carts. You can't take them long distances. They top out at about 40 miles an hour, they're wildly impractical. You could usually get between 40 and 60 miles and then before you needed to recharge the absurdly heavy batteries and good luck doing that because not a lot of charging stations around during

the oil crisis of the 1970s. The technology and infrastructure, it just wasn't there as a popular form of transport. Now in 1990, California Mandate Zero Mission Cars, so GM makes the EV-1 and Toyota makes the RAV-4 EV, but again, they kind of suck. People want to describe this to conspiracy, but if there's money to be made, gigantic corporations

usually want to make it, and this is not something you would want to drive. Electrant vehicles didn't take off because people didn't want to buy them for good reasons. There weren't very attractive to the market. Sure, but there are companies whose entire business model is predicated on gas powered vehicles and they support regulations that favor their business over competitors to price a price.

Yeah, I mean, this is kind of like my objection to regulations in general as that the written buy people with power and influence and they say what they want them to say. Yeah, so wire Tesla is so hot now. Obviously, we both remember when the Prius came out, it was a very specific type of person who bought them generally shout out to all my door dashers and Uber driver homies out there.

But that's basically it, right?

Nowadays, I mean, back then, like the Prius was like a hair shirt for liberals, like nobody was buying these things because they were the coolest, most practical car on the market. You bought a Prius because it was this like way of performing concern for the environment.

“I think some people bought it because it was super efficient and seemed futuristic.”

And a lot of people are just like fewer trips than a gas station, no? Yeah, I think that's fair. I part of me just wants to make fun of a Prius, but I think it's fair, same. But I'm sure there's somebody out there who's going to disagree with this. But I just don't think anyone thinks a Prius is a cool car, like Tesla's?

Yeah, that's a cool car. But Prius's Prius, I don't know, Prius. I just, who's the guy who's like, man, this is a cool car. Prius. I'm sure the comment section and Reddit will jump to correct you on this.

I don't know. We're sort of just having a laugh at the Prius owner. I mean, sorry. I don't, I'm not the owner. Sorry, Prius owners.

Exactly. So, what the Prius had though that would prove transformative was the nickel metal hydride battery

The lighter they charge faster, you can charge them all the way down, you can go further on them.

They're just so superior to the lead acid battery that they're basically a totally different

animal. Then you get the Nissan Leaf to Chevy Volt, but what Tesla really does is make a cool looking car you'd actually want to be seen in. The Tesla Roadster was also the first fully electric vehicle to be highway legal and get over 200 miles of range without being prohibitively expensive, the charging stations were light

years better and Tesla took a gamble on making their own charging stations, which paid off. You know, it helped overcome one of the biggest hurdles to adoption, which is range anxiety. Range anxiety tells about that. Is that being worried that you're not going to find a charging station in time and you can get stranded somewhere?

Yeah. That's exactly it. People also have issues with the range and cold weather, so if there's one charging station that you can get to on a normal day, you may not be able to get there when it's 20 degrees out.

The batteries don't give the same range. They're in the cold, they're capacity degrades over time, these are real issues. China for what it's worth also really wants electric vehicles to be a thing. So there's huge investment capital that just previously was not there for the electric vehicle.

I'm a little skeptical of them as a market phenomenon because they're very heavily subsidized, which gives them some degree of advantage that they wouldn't have otherwise. They might be the most single heavily subsidized product in America.

Some argue with that said, EVs now account for between 15 and 20 percent of all cars on

the road. So regardless of government meddling in the market, it's a significantly growing market share. I hate this argument in some ways, but the oil industry is heavily subsidized. And if it wasn't a level playing field for the last 100 years, then okay, did we want

to sort of try to correct for that now? I don't know. It's very, very hard to apples to apples on this. Yes, they're both subsidized. The individual product of the electric vehicle is it's very hard to apples to apples on this.

For the record, I drive a Tesla. I really like it. Best car I've ever had. But then again, I'm coming, my car before I, this was like a Ford Fusion and a Torus before that.

Something called a Topaz, which let's just not even talk about that right now, because

that's like an early 90s piece of crap.

“I think it was like a 1989 Ford Topaz anyway, whatever.”

What did you drive when I was like afraid to drive my car to the beach? Because it was going to tie. Yeah, yeah. That would have been like a Ford Fusion possibly back then. Anyway, for the record, I drive a 1968 El Camino and I am polluting enough for the

both of us. Like the guy eating twice as much meat to offset your vegan buddy or something, except for in your case, you were the vegan guy also before that. It was, yeah, I'm making up for past time by eating lots of meat. That's right.

I drive the Camino to the gym and back, so it's like a five mile round trip. So this is probably actually a good time to start talking about the various pros and cons of electric vehicles with regard to the environment, because I know that they use less fossil fuels, right? Well, maybe.

Okay, let's explore that because otherwise intelligent people think that the electricity coming out of an EV charging station is made out of very dust rather than coming from power plants, which are often very much not a clean source of energy.

“How much of the energy is actually coming from coal-fired power plants?”

In the United States, about 16% comes from coal-fired plants with an increasing amount from natural gas, which is significantly cleaner. Yeah, that's definitely something that needs unpacking. Why don't we start there? I know there's more to the question of environmental impact like rare earth minerals and

shipping costs of materials, but how do electric vehicles stack up when it comes to fossil fuel consumption and emissions? The whole debate boils down to the difference between tailpipe emissions and life-cycally emissions. These are both exactly what they sound like.

Tailpipe emissions are what come out of the vehicle and life-cycle emissions are the total carbon emission cost of the vehicle, the entire time that it gets used. I've heard they also have more emissions because of the tires because of increased weight from the batteries and that not only puts more weight in something like that, puts more wear and tear on the tires.

And also the roads? So tailpipe emissions for electric vehicles are super easy to calculate. There's zero. The electric vehicles do not emit carbon, because no internal combustion happening, thus there is nothing to emit.

I'm sensing that there's going to be a very big butt dropped here at some point. There is. As you mentioned, they have greater emissions because of the tires, well, the emissions

“were related to the tires or greater, because you need to replace the tires more and”

electric vehicles are heavier, they blow through tires more quickly and there's more wear and tear on the roads. Also, as I've said, earlier electric vehicles require electricity, they get it in the form

power plants. For what it's worth, I think it would be way better if these charging stations were powered by nuclear plants, but, you know, we had one big accident in the United States once, and it was, it was decreed that henceforth we shall not use nuclear power. So.

Yes. And that big accident, it killed zero people. I've done shows on nuclear, and it's actually insane how fear mongering by environmental less has led to just a nutty amount of environmental destruction. The oil lobby couldn't have paid for something better.

Oil and coal couldn't have paid for something better than the environmentalist who hate nuclear power. I mean, that's their, yes, what dream is these people doing their work for free? And yeah, they didn't seem to get the memo in China, whether absolutely eating our lunch when it comes to nuclear power plants.

It's worth noting that there's a geographic element to just how environmentally destructive your electric vehicle is to drive. This is before we get into the other factors.

“So if you live in West Virginia or India, you should probably stop thinking of your car”

as running on electricity and think of it as running on coal. If, on the other hand, you live in Norway or California. Hey, I live in California. Oh, we know. If you live there, a significant portion of electricity comes from nuclear power or renewables.

Thus, it's much cleaner to drive than, well, a 1968 L Camino getting about nine miles to the gallon. Yeah, there's another phrase for this called wheel to wheel emissions. It's not quite lifetime emissions because that includes everything that went into the making of your car, certainly not tailpipe emissions because that's just what's coming

out of your car. But wheel to wheel emissions is a pretty good way of gauging the totally emissions created by driving an electric vehicle. Well, unlike the batteries in your car, here's something that probably weren't created using child slave labor.

We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Quilt Mind. If you're not on LinkedIn, you're probably making a mistake, not because it's so cool, but because it's practical. If you're trying to get hired, recruiters are there.

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That's Jordan [email protected]. This episode is also sponsored and part by better help. March includes International Women's Day and it's had me thinking about how much women carry that most of us don't fully see. I look at my wife Jen.

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Now back to Skepical Sunday. So say that I do live in West Virginia or India and I drive a Tesla.

“Does this mean that my car is dirtier than a traditional gas powered vehicle?”

It's hard to say, but probably not. OK, you're probably producing about 70 to 80% of the carbon of the average gas powered car.

The problem is that your electric vehicle starts with what you might call a carbon debt.

Because yes, electric vehicles are almost certainly more environmentally destructive to manufacturer.

Honestly, green energy is kind of a whole other show. Yeah, I am very skeptical that green energy is a viable alternative to fossil fuels. I'm certainly not alone in this.

Once again, we have a basically unlimited energy supply in the form of magic rocks that

boil water, aka uranium. And there are tons of countries building nuclear power plants out the wazoo, having no problems whatsoever with their nuclear powered grid. So that would maybe be the place to start looking for a replacement for dinosaur juice. And this is all without the development of fusion power that lets you create tiny little

sons. You can harvest power from anyone. Yes, this message brought to you by the nuclear power plant association of America. And sure, no, for part two, coming soon to HBO or Max or whatever, the hell that's called now.

Sorry, man.

It's just, it's so wild to me because, you know, the only people touting nuclear, like

me, you and three other weirdos, I know, anyway, go nuclear. And theory, yes, if the grid gets greener, this will make the electric vehicles greener as well. Worth mentioning, however, that the green energy boom is at the very least on hold until there's a Democrat back in the White House, because subsidies and tax credits were doing

a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to adoption of green energy. I wouldn't even necessarily bank on them coming back under a Democratic administration, because who knows what the future will hold, but they're definitely not coming back until then I would, you know, so says my crystal ball. You know, younger guy, I know, who was in solar sales, changed professions entirely because

his company, any way found. And, you know, I live in Arizona where there's a lot of sun. They could not give solar panels away once the tax credits came to an end. Yeah, I've heard a lot about how electric vehicles are inherently environmentally destructive in a way that gas powered cars are not.

And I'm super skeptical that this is actually true.

“I think it's fair to say that EVs are environmentally destructive in a way that traditional”

cars are not, but that's not the same thing as saying that they're more environmentally destructive. Yeah. I've only destructive in different ways, but whether that's worse or better is super complicated and kind of the meat of the show today, what goes into an electric vehicle that doesn't go into a gas powered car, batteries, but like what's what are we talking about here?

Lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and other rare earth elements are used for both motors and batteries. The cobalt mostly comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, there are two countries called Congo. I'm just going to say Congo for the rest of the episode, now that I've specified this introduces another layer of ethical considerations that we'll talk about. The Lithium comes from Chile, Argentina, and Australia.

How is mining cobalt or lithium different from mining? I don't know, iron or some other

“metal. They're different in a few key ways starting off with the fact that iron and aluminum”

are among the most abundant elements on earth. Iron ore, in particular, exists in massive high concentration deposits. It's dirty for sure, but it's also very efficient. A single large operation can produce millions of tons of iron. Yeah. I've seen some discovery channel documentaries on iron mining back in the day. You know, like the wire we still awake at 3 am watching in college, kind of stuff, and it's like iron

mining. And you're like, uh, roll up another split. I'm definitely going to watch this thing. Yeah. On the other hand, lithium and cobalt are much rarer and more dispersed, meaning you have to process far more material to get the same usable amount. So you might need to evaporate thousands of gallons of water for a few kilograms of lithium. With cobalt, the ore grades are often very low. So extraction is much more energy intensive per unit of metal. Short way to put

this is you're spending way more energy to get way less. Ah, okay. So it's a less efficient thing. Period. Yes. There's also a big difference in terms of our environmental impact. Iron ore mining

isn't harmless. It results in massive deforestation tons of energy use, which almost always means

“carbon emissions. This is for the smelting of the iron, which you need to do to have a useful”

finished product. Cobalt is typically a byproduct of copper or nickel mining that requires sulfuric acid leaching and generates toxic tailings. Lithium is extracted from either hard rock spodamine, which requires high temperature processing or brine evaporation ponds,

massive amounts of water, about 500,000 gallons per metric ton of lithium in some of the driest

places on earth. Yeah. That all sounds just terrible, super inefficient and really, really dirty. I'm betting it's also used at the driest places on earth. I'm going to go ahead and assume it's some of the poorest places on earth as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty bad. Lithium and Cobalt can permanently damage ecosystems where they're being mined and were just getting started. Iron aluminum are easily recycled. There's tons of infrastructure to do it. This is not true of Lithium

and Cobalt. Part of this is just a technology and infrastructure issue. There are definitely people who have a financial interesting thing. Lithium and Cobalt recycled more easily. You're also looking

where the rare earth minerals are mined and what being a miner there is like. You're going to say

“more about that at some point, right? Because I've heard about this. I think I've even done shows about”

this. Oh, I'm one step ahead of you. There are lots of hidden costs to electric vehicles on the environment and the people who make them. So the mining and the fact on the people in the environment. Iron and aluminum mining is a global phenomenon, but it's pretty heavily concentrated in countries with strong labor laws, relatively high levels of unionization, especially in the field of mining. In other words, it sucks to be a miner. Just by the nature of the work, but

the workers where iron and aluminum is mined tend to be treated like human beings, not disposable cattle. Australia, Brazil and the United States all have large, well-regulated, iron and aluminum mining industries. The rule of law is strong in all these countries, meaning it's much harder to slip the mine and spectra bribe. Cobalt comes almost entirely from one place, Congo. 70% of the world's cobalt comes from the Congo, which is one of the poorest and most politically unstable

countries in the world. Lithium production is somewhat more spread out and produced in countries that are almost certainly better places to be a miner. Chile, Argentina and Bolivia are known as the lithium triangle. Australia also produces a good deal of lithium. It's worth noting that iron and aluminum mining is largely mechanized, whereas with Cobalt, anyway, you're talking about artisinal miners, many of them children down on the ground using hand tools. I knew that a lot of

“rare earth minerals specifically Cobalt came from the Congo. And if you want to know why that is”

such a bad place to be a miner, beyond the fact that it's just an underdeveloped country without a lot of regulation, see episode 807 with Sadarth Kara, who discusses the horrific conditions that people are mining in. And like, think pregnant mom with infant on her back digging with her bare hands in mines with no PPE with toxic chemicals everywhere, like waiting waste deep in mercury refilled. Well, I was just horrible. Yes, Nick, preview of that episode. A lot of times,

the mines are located in territory controlled by militias. So people working in mines are there under threat of force or debt bondage. Armed groups are known to tax the mines. It's just a giant mass. The rule of law is extremely weak in Congo. I talked about the artisinal miners. This is about

15 to 30 percent of all Cobalt miners in the Congo. These are often families, including children

“working in extremely unsafe mines without proper safety equipment, without ventilation.”

Amnesty International has documented children as young as 70s engaged in artisinal mining. Tunnel collapses are sadly common, as is inhalation of toxic dust. Because again, total lack of proper safety equipment in all too many cases. And, for all this, it's very common to earn between one and two dollars per 12 hour day. Yeah, disgusting and horrifying to say the least. Acid leaching, unregulated runoff, and open air tailings contaminate rivers in farmland,

mining waste releases uranium, lead, and arsenic exposing miners and nearby communities. In Southern Congo, you'll find elevated levels of Cobalt and other heavy metals in the residence, blood, and urine. There is little to no remediation or clean up after the mining operations close. They just make a big mess and move on to the next spot. Jeez, I want to say something about responsibly sourced Cobalt, but I'm almost certain

you're going to tell me that that's a huge scam. Partly because you're acidic in some ways, and partly because it's probably possibly a huge scam. You know, actually, I don't think it's fair to say that. In some cases, it might be Cobalt passes through a lot of hands before Elon Musk

lot of people, you look the other way, pretend they don't know what's going on. Still, the cynicism around responsibly sourced Cobalt can be bad. Some people boycott Congolese Cobalt entirely, because they assume that it's all being mined by child's leads, and this is simply not true. Is this kind of just the cost of doing business? In other words, it doesn't seem like the problem here is necessarily Cobalt. It seems like there's a lot of environmental issues and human

rights issues that are maybe more of a function of a lack of government oversight and an absence

“of strong rule of law. Well, I think that's definitely one way of looking at it. There's nothing wrong”

with Cobalt per se that couldn't be fixed with safer, more responsible mining practices. Yeah, the issue is that your Tesla is about to cost a lot more than what it already does. And I don't think it's cynical to say that the appeal of a Tesla is going to be diminished for a lot of Westerners if the price guy rockets because of, you know, responsibly sourced Cobalt. Yeah, so yeah, your Tesla comes with some serious environmental and ethical concerns. Is it worse than a gas-powered

car? I think it's super hard to make that call. I think it's very complex. You talked earlier about the lifetime emissions of a Tesla versus a gas-powered car. How does one actually stack up against the other? Okay, so before we get into the specifics, we need to break down what lifetime emissions actually means. First, there's the manufacturing element. That means mining the materials, refining the materials once they're mined and building the car and it's battery. Then there's

operations. Basically, this is wield wheel emissions we talked about earlier. The emissions related to the operation of the vehicle, whether it's gas in the tank or coal or a natural gas or whatever in the power plant. One people don't normally think about as maintenance, all the replacement parts and repairs. Those company emissions too, tires, fluids, the works. Next, out here, daily drive in a 68-L Camino that kills a forest every time he starts it, I'm over here in a Tesla pretending

that that makes me a better person. If you'd like to feel marginally less terrible about your

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Let me know how it lands for you. I want to know what you think. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. All the deals discount codes and ways to support this podcast are searchable and clickable on the website at Jordanharbinger.com/deals. Now, for the rest of skeptical Sunday. We mentioned earlier that the tires are an issue because the vehicles are heavier. So, what's the cost on that? Because I hear a lot of people saying this like there's some huge

cost associated with owning electric vehicles beyond what you just expect to own a gas car.

“But like, I've got a Tesla. I think we replaced the tires once. It's been in for a minor repair”

of like a plastic thing once. And I mean, they came to our house and did it in like,

all the time. I don't, I don't really know, honestly. There's a bit of nuance here per mile cost for EVs is about half that of internal combustion engine cars. Now, the bummer is that you're probably going to get slapped with big bills all at once, rather than just having you shell out for oil changes every now and again. There's also a difference between maintenance and repairs. But I just

kind of want to skip right over that and count them both as the same thing. Sure. Finally,

there's the end of life emissions, because once the car isn't useful anymore, you know, it doesn't turn into a pumpkin. They need to do something with it. It might get recycled. It might get jumped. It might get reclaimed. Take an apart used for its constituent parts. Got it. And you mentioned

“earlier that electric vehicles start with a carbon deficit. So, remember, that's how much carbon”

it takes to create the electric vehicle in the first place. But wouldn't that also be true of gas powered vehicles as well? I mean, those aren't grown in pumpkin patches either. Right. It is true. And to people who like to grow about the carbon deficit of electric vehicles, you're kind of missing this part of it. Basically, all cars start with five to six tons of carbon dioxide,

you know, priced it. But remember, electric vehicles have another dimension of their carbon deficit,

the gas powered cars don't. And that's the batteries. That is going to add another three or four tons of carbon dioxide to that carbon debt for the average mid-sized electric vehicle. So, the electric vehicles start with a bigger carbon deficit than gas powered cars. But the difference in fuel source means that they make this up over time. Right. They're not creating carbon every time they run. Really. Yes. Correct. So, even if you do live in India or West Virginia,

the electric vehicle is going to potentially be getting as much as twice the carbon efficiency of a gas powered car. Great of salt there because it's the union of concern scientists, which I would consider to be a potentially biased source. But the basic idea is correct. You're buying your way out of that carbon debt every time you drive. They're about equal in terms of end of life carbon costs. So, you don't have to worry about like a balloon payment of carbon

when you're done with the EV. Again, skeptical of green energy in general, but even if we disregard that, the improvements in manufacturing technologies and battery recycling technologies are probably going to increase the edge that electric vehicles have over time. All of this math is done on the assumption that the cars are living out their entire life, which is about 150,000 miles.

“Let's say. At what point do electric vehicles overtake gas powered vehicles in terms of carbon?”

Does that question make sense? When do they start being more efficient based on this carbon debt? Yeah, like at what point do you drive away your carbon deficit compared to a gas car if you're driving an electric car? When are you out of your carbon debt? About 15 to 20,000 miles if you live somewhere like Norway that has a supergreen power grid, you're looking at 5,000 to 10,000 miles. If you live in India or West Virginia or somewhere else that's super cool intensive,

it's going to be more like 40 to 50,000, but the point is that even if you do live somewhere with a very dirty power grid, you're still coming out on top. The important thing to highlight is that no matter what, once the electric vehicle passes that threshold, every mile they drive is going to

be cleaner than it would be on a gas powered car. Gas cars never get to the point where they get

cleaner. In fact, the opposite might be true. If the fuel efficiency decreases as the car gets

“older or due to improper maintenance. I see, but electric vehicles come with additional”

environmental destruction and other ethical issues that aren't directly related to carbon emissions. Right, there are additional issues related to mining, human rights, water pollution, chemical waste, and the manufacturing footprint. There's also a shift from petroleum states to mineral ones, one of the biggest of the mineral states is China. We're not going to get super deep into China, but there are definitely human rights issues in the People's Republic of China.

Thankfully, we don't have any of those human rights. Those pesky human rights concerns when we're talking about where we get our oil from, right Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela. I'm talking about the world in general, not just the United States, right? We get our oil from some pretty dodgy place Russia. Yeah, Russia might even be one of the least bad actors when it comes to states that sell oil globally. And that, yes, I am including the invasion of Ukraine. I mean,

you just, you can't buy a large amount of oil from most places without doing, getting your hands dirty. Unless you're buying all your oil from Norway or something like that, you're, you're getting soiled in the process. Or Canada, Canada, yes, exactly. The United States, well, I don't know. Let's, people are going to be like, what? Yeah. There's going to be some Reddit posts about

carbon-related, only 5% of electric vehicle batteries are recycled these days. Wow. Yeah. Well, it's in a part of this is an infrastructure issue. Yeah. The recycling process is very complex, and it can release toxic fumes. If the batteries aren't recycled properly, the heavy metals can end up in landfills or informal recycling centers, which is a cute turn of phrase for, you know,

a dump, basically. This is particularly true in poorer countries and creates additional

contamination problems. The other thing I think that doesn't really get talked about is that electric vehicles don't get rid of some of the problems presented by gas powered cars. You know, you still need to park them in parking lots, depending on where you live. And that's just another

“carbon expenditure that's hard to calculate. Yeah. I think the main thing for people to remember”

is that the carbon emissions are only one of the problems presented by gas powered cars, and also the only one that the electric vehicles solve and electric vehicles come with another set of problems. So our electric vehicles better worse the same. Honestly, I don't think there's

a clear car answer to this. It's just kind of an individual choice people have to make. You have

to evaluate how you feel about the new issues presented by electric vehicles and decide if you think that the carbon savings are worth it. And some cars might make sense for some situations and not others. You know, trucks have become big villains in some circles by which I mean like a Ford F-150 not a Mac truck, right? But you know, when I lived in the absolute middle of nowhere, you could not survive without truck. Also air pollution, which is a big issue in cities with lots

of cars like LA, improving air quality is good. Even if you're not super concerned about carbon

“emissions. Yeah, I think that's a fair way of looking at it. There are costs associated with things”

like asthma or allergies that result from air pollution. I'm actually kind of surprised you didn't

use this occasion to take a giant dump all over electric vehicles. No, look, here's my beef with the electric vehicle phenomenon. People frame it as this magic bullet for environmental problems and it's just not that. In general, I think people should be skeptical of panaceas because there's just no such thing in this world. You don't, you don't live in a world where you can get something for nothing. How do the weirdest experience of this is that I sort of want an electric vehicle now?

What? I'm going to convert it to roll call, of course. Okay, there we go. There we go. The sleek, futuristic aspect of them that glowing mono light and the front, I'm into, yeah, like it's like a driving something from tron. Yeah, you know, I don't think reducing carbon emissions is a bad thing for anyone. People probably came into this with their own ideas about

“electric vehicles and I think they're probably just going to find confirmation of what they”

already thought. I mean, the whole topic is kind of just a cipher where people see what they want to see. Are there geographical issues involved in electric vehicle adoption? It seems like it's probably easier to own one where I live rather than where you live. I don't know. Jordan, where do you think I live? Some sort of compound in a missile silos surrounded by electrified barbed wire. I don't know. Man, I wish. I know you do. I live on. Yeah, I live outside of Vegas. There's like two

charging stations. I can think of off the top of my head in my tiny little town that went like 80% tromp. So they're all over. I suspect that owning an electric vehicle is harder if you live somewhere super rural, but 64% of Americans live within two miles of an electric vehicle charging station. The kind of aspirist of this is that a lot of these could be broken if they're in super rural areas. They're not very well maintained. 95% of Americans live in a county with a charging station.

That doesn't mean a heck of a lot because the county that I live in is nine times the size of the state that I grew up in. Yeah. Some counties are huge. 60 to 80% of census tracks. These are geographic areas. Not population divisions. They don't have charging stations, but no one really lives there. I see, you know, if you live on the coast near a big city, you don't really understand how empty a lot of the middle of the country is. Yeah. So it's complicated. Yes, I'm sure it's easier to own

an electric vehicle in San Francisco than in rural Mississippi, but most Americans live kind of near a charging station anyway. What the studies don't tell us is how good those chargers are or are they fast or they slow, are they affordable? Can't you just charge at home? You can, but without special equipment. It's not super efficient. A standard wall charger is going to get you 40 miles of charge in eight hours. Oh, wow. So I hope you live 20 miles from work. Yeah. And installing a home

But that's a fairly significant uprun cost for a lot of people. Electric vehicles solve a lot of

problems while quietly creating a bunch of others that will probably bite us in the ass in a few decades. Kind of like today's sponsors. We'll be right back. Now for the rest of skeptical Sunday, are all the electric vehicles equal when it comes to carbon emissions. My gut says yes because they're all zero emissions, but I'm not sure.

“Well, remember we're talking about life cycle emissions. Yeah. That case, the smaller ones are”

going to be somewhat more carbon efficient because they don't eat as many batteries. Right. This is where the EVs really fail. There's a real technological race on right now to improve batteries by making them lighter, easier to charge, more energy efficient. So that's another place where we might start seeing improvements in the EV efficiency. And all EVs fail when you put them

against mass transit or cycling everywhere, but basically no one wants to rely either of those

for their primary source of transportation unless you live somewhere super urbanized like New York or Tokyo or you know. Right. Yeah. I'm not giving up my car to rely on the non-existent subway here in the suburbs of San Jose. Yeah. The other thing worth mentioning briefly is that so far EVs are only an alternative for private transportation. They are not going to replace or even start

“taking a market share in ground air or sea shipping anytime soon. And that is where the bulk of”

emissions comes from. The issue is the charging bottleneck takes time to charge electric vehicles and for larger vehicles like semi trucks or transport ships that could be days. Yeah. Fast charging is more expensive beyond that. There's the impact of a massively scaled up amount of electricity to power the vehicles. Can the grid handle this? These are serious questions. Yeah. Can the American electrical grid handle it? I mean, I know we couldn't if we could even make one. You couldn't

just charge like a tanker or a container ship with electricity if it were electric power. I mean, that would just, I don't even know how you would do that. Right. Half the ship would be batteries at that point probably. But what about just for cars? I mean, can our grid handle this or would we need to upgrade all of the wiring in the whole dang country? It's super complicated. If half the cars on the road were replaced with EVs, there would be a 15 to 20% increase in electricity consumption.

That sounds like a lot but there's seasonal swings that are bigger than this. That makes sense. Yeah. If everyone plugs in and starts charging at 6 p.m, that could be an issue. This is kind of a whole other episode because it gets to questions of renewable power generally. How fragile the grid is.

“So I think the answer to can it handle it is sort of maybe depends on who you ask and when”

and where it's happening. Okay. So before we wrap this up, I want to talk about the economic aspect of all this because I suspect for a lot of people the issue isn't. Is it green? It's more like can I even afford this? Yeah. I think very few people are martyr enough that they're going to buy a car that doesn't make economic sense for them just because it's green. Right. A lot of people do get sticker shock when they go to buy a needy. The average cost is about $53,000 compared to $36,000

for a gas powered compact. That's a lot more money. Yeah. Especially if you're finance in the car.

Batteries are between 30 to 40 percent of that cost. Other drivers of cost are supply chain bottlenecks

and limited market competition. I mean, you say a electric vehicle. People automatically think Tesla are people even doing the cost of ownership math on these things either? Well, if people could do cost of ownership math basically no one would own a Jeep or a lifted truck with nuts on the back. Yeah. True. Here's a crazy shock though. The cost of ownership of an electric vehicle can potentially make a cheaper depending on how long you drive it, how much you get in the way tax credits. Really

briefly on tax credits. They used to cap out at 7500 and it's a rebate. So you had to pay that much in taxes to qualify for that high of a rebate. I also feel absolutely compelled here to mention that government taking your money and then giving you back some of it later. I mean, you know, it's better than I kick in the teeth, but in a sense, you're paying that whether you own an EV or not. Obviously, don't share your perspective on taxes entirely, but you're not wrong that the

government isn't handing you a check for buying an EV. They're just sort of giving you some of your own money back. Sure. The bad news is those tax credits are gone now. Wompwamp. Yep. I also know California offers an additional rebate and I assume other states do as well. Maybe those are gone now too. I haven't paid attention. Colorado, New Jersey, New York, a bunch of states. You can also

I wouldn't expect those state level tax rebates or other advantages to last forever. I think we're going to see some retreat on those tax credits. Similar to what Apple would solar. What about the resale value of EVs? EVs depreciate 15% compounding year over year. The big risk you're taking buying a used EVs that you might have to replace the batteries. But hey, you know, I bought a truck

once and had to replace the transmission a month later. So yeah, because always risk. Yeah,

Tesla comes with battery warranties that follow the car, I think. So if you're getting one with

“fewer than 100,000 miles on it. I mean, air quotes, you should be good. You know, not a guarantee.”

I do that. This is, yeah, I have no idea. But that's just kind of all the top of my head. I think they do honor that. Use coupon code Jordan. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Tell them Jordan sent you for your new batteries once the things stops working two weeks after you buy it. Jordan Harbin, you're told me that you guys would give me free batteries. So that's right. Yeah, electric vehicles also suffer from range degradation. So they can't drive as far as they used to on a single charge

once they start aging. You know, it's like by the use mattress, which I've done for gross. Hey,

man, I was poor. Or than I am now. I wouldn't buy a second hand EV, but other people might have

different comfort levels. Yeah. I think the takeaway for everyone at home is that there's no such thing as a zero emissions car. Electric vehicles may be better than gas powered cars when it comes to emissions. But they have other problems that are hard to quantify in comparison to gas powered cars. Electric vehicles are cleaner than gas powered cars, but still exist as a resource intensive system. Electric vehicles are neither a panacea nor a scam. They're a new technology that solves

some problems while creating other ones. But the good thing about human ingenuity is that we're pretty good at solving problems, even the ones that we ourselves create. The real question is, do EVs represent a meaningful step towards sustainable transportation or just a different version of the same old car culture. Thanks again and Nick for helping us unplug from the rhetoric and recharge with the facts. And thank you all for listening. Topics suggestions for future

episodes of Skeptical Sunday directly to me, [email protected]. Advertisers deals discounts, ways to support the show, all at Jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm @jordonharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. In this show, it's created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jason, Sanderson, Tata Sidlauskis, Robert Fogetti, Ian Beard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own and yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not

your lawyer. Also, we try to get these as right as we can, not everything is gospel, even if it is fact-checked, so consult a professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being. Remember, we rise by lifting others, share the show with those you love. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we dulled out today. In the meantime,

I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time. Imagine a world where money, religion, and nations are shifting under the rise of AI, capable of making decisions beyond human control. Humans are very good in solving problems, but they often focus on the wrong problems. The idea that information is truth, people will have more knowledge, everything will be okay. This is extremely naive. Most information

isn't truth. It is fictions and fantasies and delusions and errors and lies and so forth.

“The truth is a very rare and costly kind of information, which is why if you flood the world with”

information, the truth will not float up. It will sink to the bottom. The democracies all over the world are currently in crisis. They are undermined because of manipulations by AI. The one thing everybody should know is that AI is not a tool. It is an agent. AI can make decisions by itself. We already have autonomous weapon systems. It can even invent new weapons. Social media algorithms

are currently the most powerful editors in the world. They increase user engagement by manipulating

billions. The easiest way to capture people's attention is by spreading outrage. I'm not saying all we should stop on development of AI. No. Of course there is enormous positive potential, otherwise we wouldn't develop it. The key question is how do we enable the positive potential of AI to flower while avoiding them really existential risks. This technology poses. Join me on episode 1068. As you all know, a haraary explores the risks and responsibilities we face

“as AI transforms our society. Quick rake to put you onto another show you should be listening to.”

If you enjoyed my interview with Havir Leiva about romance scams back on episode 1195,

world of lies, manipulation and deception, but he's still a nice guy. And on pretend, he doesn't

“just tell these stories. He gets inside them. He talks directly to scammers, cult leaders and the”

people they've conned. He just says a way of getting them to reveal things that'll make you go away.

Okay, you're just going to admit that. And the cases are bananas. A cyber stalking story where

“the victims turned out to be the stalkers. A true crime podcaster accused of harassing victims”

for content. No, it's not him. And Havir is spending a day with a cult leader. Yes, including an

exorcism, that must have been a fun afternoon. Plus he digs into the real Frank Abigail from

“Catch Me If You Can. Let's just say the movie took some liberties. Pretend has been featured on”

Netflix's Don't Pick Up The Phone, Spotify Tagged It as a breakout hit. And it's consistently up there with the top true crime shows. Search Pretend, wherever you get your podcasts.