
Electric Vehicles Won’t Save the Planet or Survive Without Subsidies - prostoalex
https://www.city-journal.org/electric-vehicle-batteries
======
tompccs
This is so stupid that it reads like a funded hit-piece. To take a few choice
quotes:

"its battery is a half-a-ton electrochemical machine with thousands of parts
and welds, along with wiring, electronics, and cooling. It’s every bit as
complex as—and far more expensive than—the combustion-mechanical drivetrain
that it replaces."

Microchips are the most complex objects on earth, and also the most reliable.
Lack of moving parts is why.

"Manufacturing automotive batteries is surprisingly labor intensive. Tesla’s
gargantuan battery factory in Nevada produces about 1,000 propulsion batteries
per year per 12 workers. Meantime, a modern engine and transmission factory
produces about 1,000 mechanical-propulsion systems per year per four workers."

Uh, so a 100 year old industrial process is only....3x less labour intensive
than a less than 20 year old industrial process. Colour me surprised.

"coal and natural gas still account for 70 percent of electricity generation."

In the US, sure. But France has been generating the vast majority of its power
without fossil fuels for decades. Carbon-free electricity is now price
competitive with fossil fuels.

"Embracing batteries at automotive scales would lead to an unprecedented
global expansion in mining"

I'm sorry, what is it we've been doing for the last 200 years since the
industrial revolution?

Can't even be bothered to go through the rest. This is a shill piece, no
question.

~~~
pmorici
Yeah, for those interested in an honest take on the costs involved in EV
manufacturing and how they have come down and will continue to take a look at
this analysis from ARK Invest

[https://ark-invest.com/research/wrights-law-predicts-teslas-...](https://ark-
invest.com/research/wrights-law-predicts-teslas-gross-margin)

~~~
xiphias2
It writes about Model 3's gross margins improving over time, but it looks like
Model Y will be the real winner with its improved wiring and the huge body
press machine if it works.

We'll see how much of Model Y's technology will be backported to Model 3.

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codeulike
This is the usual bullshit. There is some interesting stuff to be gleaned by
comparing the carbon footprint of the whole manufacturing cycle of ICE vs EVs,
but they seem to often leave out the global petrochemical industry
infrastructure from those sorts of things.

And these people keep going on about coal, forgetting that its pretty easy for
consumers to switch to renewable-only electricity suppliers should they wish
to* . If you've got an EV, that makes zero-emissions travel possible. If you
dont have an EV, that isn't possible. Its as simple as that.

Would like to know who's paying this guy. * *

* Certainly in the UK its trivial to switch to 100% renewable electricity, and I'm told its similarly possible in the states.

* * Oh right he works for Cottonwood Venture Partners who sell IT stuff to the oil and gas industry. Source: [https://www.city-journal.org/contributor/mark-p-mills_255](https://www.city-journal.org/contributor/mark-p-mills_255) [https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio](https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio)

~~~
masta
> Would like to know who's paying this guy.

Well, the Manhattan Institute, which owns City Journal, is a big proponent of
the Oil and Gas business. They have a track record of denying man-made climate
change. So this just fits their usual canon.

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arethuza
Something about the tone of this article seemed a bit off to me so I wondered
who the author was - turns out he is a partner in a firm that appears to do a
lot of investing in companies that have "oil and gas" in their descriptions:

[https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio](https://www.cottonwoodvp.com/index.html/#portfolio)

This bit in particular seems a bit silly:

 _" While the EV’s electric motor is simple, its battery is a half-a-ton
electrochemical machine with thousands of parts and welds, along with wiring,
electronics, and cooling."_

Edit: Just for the record, I own a ICE car, I love ICE engines (the sounds
made by Ferrari V12s and BRM V16s are music as far as I am concerned) but I
also recognise that they are at the end of their time and electric cars are
the future (mind you - prices need to come down before I will buy one).

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akmarinov
Well to be fair, if we take out gas subsidies and ICE manufacturer subsidies,
ICE vehicles won’t survive as well.

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mikestew
Fuck this guy. He writes like someone wants to take away his toys. Here’s a
newsflash, dear author: as a Nissan Leaf owner for the past eight years, I say
fuck subsidies, too. I mean for me personally, anyway. Because I am so done
with ICEs, I’ll pay a _premium_ to not drive one of those rattling, smelly
contraptions that my parents were enamored with (and myself, too, as a younger
man). You know what’s nice? After I laid floor tile in the garage (man, why
didn’t I do that 20 years ago?), we can now pull the car out, lay some yoga
mats, use it as a yoga studio. But that only works if your car is electric,
otherwise wait 30 minutes while the exhaust clears out (watch the oil spots,
too). As just one example.

I’ve bought my last ICE, subsidies or no. I don’t represent the general
public, but I have to represent more than a few.

But what is this guy afraid of? It reads like “you, sir! You, who (except for
the in-dash system) are completely tickled with your Nissan Leaf! Don’t be
happy! You should be miserable with your electric car! Why aren’t you
miserable?! Look, here’s reasons your car is a bad idea!” In other words, this
sounds like a guy who’s trying to sell me something, not inform me.

------
pmorici
Man this piece contains so many obviously wrong and dishonest arguments mixed
in with a defeatist attitude. It even manages to contradict itself.

It simultaneously argues that it takes 3x the number of workers to produce a
battery pack as it does to produce a engine and then says that the switch to
EV's will decimate jobs.

It claims it takes 100 barrels of oil to build a battery pack capable of
storing 1 barrel of oil worth of energy implying that's a bad thing as if you
use the battery once and then dispose of it. Good quality lithium ion
batteries last for 5,000 cycles and Tesla claims their current battery
technology should last up to 500k miles implying something like 15,000 cycles.
A barrel of oil makes roughly 20 gallons of gasoline so if the 100 barrels of
oil to make a battery pack is true that sounds pretty amazing to me.

On the mining thing Lithium mining is some of the cleanest mining in the world
because you can extract it from water pumped in and out of the mine.

The list goes on.

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jungturk
> Mark P. Mills, a Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow

[https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Manhattan_Institute_fo...](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research)

Not that we should dismiss his claims outright, but definitely approach them
carefully.

------
jmpman
The author discusses the Tesla Gigafactory and then drops the following
sentence “There’s no prospect of creating a domestic EV supply chain anytime
soon, regardless of incentives.” I’m trying to understand how the author can
come to that conclusion. A domestic EV supply chain already exists - it
happens to be a captive supplier to Tesla. There’s no reason GM or Ford
couldn’t build a Gigafactory too.

As for the title that electric vehicles won’t survive without subsidies,
against I’m shaking my head. The Tesla subsidies have almost completely
expired, and each time the subsidy expires, Tesla just lowers the price. Tesla
turned a profit, and the vehicle is displacing BMWs and Mercedes.

As for charging off dirty energy, my Tesla charges overnight from the nuclear
power plant’s base load.

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cesis
Electric vehicles(e.g.electric scooters) already are ubiquitous in cities.
Unsubsidized.

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tetron
Read the piece waiting for the obvious conclusion that if we can't build EVs
we need to massively build out public transportation... Still waiting...

------
nrjames
A lot of EVs simply drive better than ICE cars. The acceleration, lack of
noise, and more pleasant charging atmosphere go a long way.

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sprash
The solution to the climate problem is actually "sun-to-liquid" synthetic
fuel. The whole chain from air carbon capture, creation of synthesis gas of H2
+ CO from H2O and CO2 via a catalyst, to finally the production of fuel via
Fisher-Tropsch has been demonstrated to work on large scale pilot projects and
can be easily powered in some remote dessert with sunlight.

Fuel is the best way to store energy. It has a really high energy density it
is not volatile like e.g. pure Hydrogen and it is a liquid which means it can
be easily transported because it obviously can take any shape or form.

The longer you think about the concept of electric cars the stupider it gets.
The ICE is peak mobility technology.

~~~
masta
The efficiency of the whole chain is pretty abysmal. Capturing free-air CO2 in
large quantities is expensive, you better just store that in the ground and
keep it there. I would not expect an efficiency above 20-30% for the synth-
fuel generation, and then you put it into ICEs which also just have a 15-30%
efficiency. You're burning 90% of the original energy, instead of using it to
charge EVs with an 80-90% panel-2-wheel efficiency.

Power-2-X is still important as a long-term storage technology, but it's
better to synthesise Methan which can can be generated with a better
efficiency and can also be burned cleaner and with 55-65% efficiency in modern
gas turbine power plants. This also allows for capturing CO2 at the power
plant and create a complete cycle.

Synth-fuels will be a niche, used for long-haul trucking, heavy machinery and
airplanes, but even there Hydrogen is going to be the better option at some
point.

~~~
sprash
Energy efficiency doesn't matter, there is enough sun available in remote
areas. The problem is energy storage. Storing electricity is really expensive,
and cumbersome. It can not be easily transported without a vast expensive
infrastructure effort especially concerning remote areas.

We have loads of fluctuating energy generation from renewable sources and
hugely fluctuating energy consumption. This means we need loads of storage.
Nobody ever talks about the storage.

Also staying 20 min at a charger just to fill up my battery is absolutely
impractical. Fast charging is already at its technical limits. Compare that
with the 45 seconds I need to fill my gas tank and have enough energy to drive
thousands of miles.

~~~
xbmcuser
You use your car for how many hours a day 4-6 hours max. The rest of the time
it is parked at work or home just put it on the charger when it is parked. We
are used to ice cars so think about filling up once the tank is almost empty
and can't get fuel everywhere it is not so with electric cars. You should not
be visiting a charger unless going on a long trip so in actual fact 5 min
spent at the gas station filling up is more time than you will spend filling
up an electric car.

