Electric Vehicles: Will they save or destroy us?

Transportation is a major contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions. Will electric vehicles be the key to stopping climate change or will they wreck the electrical grid? What are the major issues and drawbacks of electric vehicles? For this video, we have collected all you need to know for the ongoing transition to electric vehicles.

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00:00 Introduction
00:55 Current Situation
04:32 Regulations
05:17 Charging Availability
10:16 Grid Issues
13:39 Carbon Footprint
15:37 Production
16:27 Raw Materials
19:49 Human Resources
21:25 Summary
22:15 A Better Way for Reading News

#science #environment

[SabineHossenfelder]

As several of you pointed out, our video on electric vehicles which ran last week contained several mistakes and omissions. I was very unhappy about this and decided to revise and reupload it. Thank you all for your feedback, I really appreciate it.

[karllangham]

Full credit for owning any mistake and improving the final product. This is why I will keep watching you.

[lukeskywalker]

Sorry for being a week late with this comment.
Thank you for taking pride in your work. Too many youtubers don't look back to correct their content. I appreciate all of your videos. I love the humor and the density of accurate scientific information.

[uelmills]

We have been driving a Chevy Volt for 6 years. 90% of our charging is at home. Often you don’t use 100% of the power and don’t need to charge every night. And the big omission in the revised version is the cost savings of routine repairs. In six years: no brake pads replaced, no electric motor adjustments, no battery maintenance! Sure, replacing the whole battery would be expensive, but that is more like replacing an internal combustion engine rather than a gas tank. It happens, but very rarely. In my experience, the vast majority of EV drivers would never go back to the high cost of gas and routine maintenance. Thanks for asking for input Sabine. Your integrity is showing. 😊

[henvan]

Hi Sabine, your mind set for AC home charging is based on combustion engine fuel tank refills. You go to the service station when your fuel tank is low.

With an electric vehicle you top-up charge every time you drive into your car port or garage. On average most daily distance covered by a vehicle is less the 50km. This would require approximately 4 to 6 kwh of charging energy. With a 15 amp AC socket this will take approximately 2 hours or less. If you have solar and charge during the day the cost to do so will be small or nearly free.

It's great having control of your own electric fuel supply at home. Will never go back to ICE vehicle.

[synthandsoftware]

Biphase in the US. Every house has 240V coming in, and it's split into 120V. You just need to run a 240 circuit to your driveway for the charger (it cost us about $900, but 30% was a direct federal income tax deduction).

The problem is apartment buildings that don't have parking.

[larry]

I turned my bicycle into an electric bike. It weighs less than 30 pounds, has a top speed of 22 mph, and a range of 25 miles. With another six pounds of battery, the range doubles to about 55 miles.

[labutte]

Dear Sabine, thank you for all your interesting videos. YES, I'm driving an full E-vehicle, and that fact came in my life with different other events, all of them making sense together. First of all; I bought this car when I was 67, and liberated from professional pressure (I'm not sure it would have been possible if I was 40). Second point: I finally became strongly conviced about climat change and the absolute need of decarbonizing our lives. What means: accepting change, accepting reduction of expenses, reduction of consumption. What means: reduction of mobility. I don't fly anymore, I stopped eating beef, and try to convince my neighbours and family about reduction of green house gasses emissions, what is a sometimes a painfull challenge. So, I bought a LITTLE e-vehicle (Opel Corsa). I therefore abandonned my dream of driving a beautifull Volvo XC40 (abandonning dreams is also challenging). I charge aat homs, at night, and don't drive mors than 200 km/day. Living in Belgium, a little country where everithing is close to you, makes that not too difficult. For longer distances, I stop using the car and take the train. Decarbonizing our lives is an absolute piority!!!

[philippk]

I have to say that tens of billions doesn't really sound that much if one considers that the USA spends hundreds of billions on military each year...

[junkerzn]

I'm glad you pulled the other video, it had a huge number of serious mistakes in it. This one is much better. I'll make some additions, simple things that people can remember:

* A good rule of thumb for passenger-vehicle EV power consumption is 3 miles per 1 kWh. Tesla's get closer to 4, but 3 is a good conservative rule of thumb). From this it is easy to determine how much electrical energy is required, since statistics on miles driven are readily available and each individual has a pretty good idea how much they drive.

* So in terms of charging at home, the charge rate you need for convenience depends entirely on the above. If you drive the average round-trip commute of 40 miles a day, you need (40 / 3) = 13 kWh worth of charging each day. At a space-heater rate of 1000W (1kW) this would take 13 hours with an L1 charger. With a L2 charger set to 16A it would be (16A x 240VACrms = 3.84 kW, so (13 / 3.84) = 3.4 hours. At 35A, even less time.

For home charging, thus, it comes down to what is convenient for the consumer. A good rule of thumb is "overnight charging". L2 chargers are more convenient but to be very explicit here there is no need to charge at 35A. You can easily charge at 16A or even 8A or whatever, so being circuit-limited is not that big a deal. And if it came down to it, you could charge from a normal consumer outlet (120VACrms in the U.S., 12A = 1.4kW, or (13 / 1.4) = 9 hours to charge 40 miles.

* This determines, more or less, how dependent on fast DC charging one is. If you have no outlets at all, say you park on the street and can't string an extension cable without someone getting angry at you, or if you drive a lot but can't get L2 charging, or if you are driving long distance all in one go, such as when taking a trip, then you need to use a fast DC charger for at least part of your trip.

Most people do NOT need to use a fast DC charger for nominal work commutes. Not to mention that there is also such a thing as "destination charging" which is typically built-out by businesses that more and more EV commuters will be able to use over time.

* This means that Fast DC charging is really only necessary for longer trips. There does need to be a build-out, and Europe is way ahead of the U.S. on that, but it isn't really a show-stopper. That is, there will be push and pull just like any other build-out, but it is not necessarily something that needs to be 100% government funded. Demand creates supply creates demand.

--

This time around you made only two significant mistakes worth noting:

(1) The first was confusing what parts of the grid have to be upgraded. To be clear, the ENTIRE EV rollout can occur with only minimal distribution-side upgrades and, in fact, no home services need to be upgraded. Sure, it might be convenient for some home owners to upgrade, but it is absolutely not a requirement for any home. The serious upgrading of the grid has to occur on the generation side because the renewables generation expansion is "a larger number of smaller generators" and those generators need feeders and backbones. That's 99% of the problem.

Feeding residential power back to the grid does NOT require distribution line or transformer upgrades because backfeeds are limited to 20% of the service size anyway, which is less than peak consumption.

But it MAY require a substation transformer upgrade... mostly the reason for this is to upgrade to a transformer with better voltage regulation automation. substations transformers have various taps that the substation can switch them between to change the voltage ratio of the transformer. When feeding power in the reverse direction, the voltage is being scaled up rather than scaled down and if a large subdivision is pushing a lot of power it is generally doing so near the top of the allowed voltage range. Which means that the step-up in the reverse direction can sometimes exceed the substation's intermediate voltage rating. Hence the need to upgrade that particular transformer.

Distribution (e.g. pole) transformer upgrading is only a function of potential peak charging rates which for EVs can be significant, except that there is no actual requirement that an EV be charged at 35A. It can just as easily be charged at 8A or 12A or 16A, for example, which are far less stressful on distribution transformers. So is it actually a show-stopper? No. Just a convenience. The utility can simply require that homes with un-upgraded equipment charge at a slower rate until such a time as the equipment can be upgraded. That's it.

That's the technical explanation. But it should be noted that substation upgrades are only required piecemeal. The entire substations / all substations do NOT need to be upgraded because neighborhoods just don't all upgrade to solar, let alone reverse EV feeding, overnight.

The quoted dollar amounts or spectacularly over-estimated and completely ignore the dynamics of the rollout and adoption of EVs as well as the 30+ year time-frame involved. When you divide it all out, it really isn't as much money as people think it is.

(2) You, like a lot of people, greatly misunderstand the power of industrial scale in production when it comes to the cost of building an EV. This is the primary mover. You also are still a bit behind on understanding battery chemistries. Cobalt and Nickel are used in NMC and NCA chemistries, but are NOT required in LFP chemistries (you mention LFP later but you clearly got lost on the significance). So neither Cobalt or Nickel are show-stoppers. Lithium is a very abundant element all over the world that requires only the mining to be scaled up. That is happening. Just because there is some push and pull doesn't mean that it's actually any sort of problem that would stick with us.

You mention LFP, but you are a bit behind on the chemistry. Adding manganese (LFMP, for example), and other similar adjustments, has brought the energy density up to near the same levels of lithium ternary batteries (typically NMC) and this is clearly where the market is headed.

Sodium batteries are NOT in scaled, volume production yet. LFP batteries are. Sodium batteries are a bit behind on the technology scale but they could very easily grow into a competitive alternative.

==

That's everything in a nutshell. You did a much better job this time around. Just remember that the technology is progressing VERY quickly, which means that you have to keep up with it at the same pace.

[JaenEngineering]

The true solution is cheap, clean and reliable public transport systems for both commuters and freight.

[francomartini]

Well done, Sabine. You managed to discuss electric vehicles without mentioning the shortcomings of the currently dominant EV power source, namely lithium-ion batteries. Leaving aside the whole raw materials issue and the fact that Rio Tinto, the world's largest mining company, said at a recent industry conference that there simply isn't enough lithium in existence to meet demand, there's the issue of the chemistry.

While the dangers of Li-Ion may very well have been overstated, the fact is that they have very real consequences on the motor trade. Among them:

The escalating severe depreciation of EVs that can now be measured on a weekly basis;
the scrapping of battery packs with only superficial damage to the outer casing (which usually means writing off the entire vehicle because of the cost of replacement);
the refusal of used car dealers to take them as trade-in or to buy them at auction;
the increasing reluctance of insurance companies to insure them and steeply rising premiums for everyone, EV owner or not;
the inability of local mechanics to repair them because, amongst other things, manufacturers (especially Tesla) refuse to supply them with parts because they are not authorised repairers; and
the increasing unwillingness of body shops to take in crashed EVs because of the danger that a damaged battery pack will ignite and burn everything to the ground.

Note that I haven't even mentioned all the problems with battery disposal at end of life. As things stand, spent Li-Ion batteries go straight to landfill because they cannot be recycled and that means that they will be oozing toxic chemicals into the land and water for decades if not centuries to come.

Battery electric vehicles are an environmental disaster in the making. In fact, it's already happening in China. Maybe in the near future solid state batteries will arrive to save the day but right now what you have is a bunch of scientifically illiterate politicians pushing a suicidal agenda that will do lasting environmental harm down our throat for the purpose of establishing their green credentials.

[qubei]

Great that Sabine is willing to update the video with fixes. Is there a list of corrections?

[djparn]

One is reminded of the old question "When is the best time to plant a tree?" Answer - "Fifty years ago! The second best time? Now!"

[gordons]

Hi Sabine! I've been driving my Tesla Model Y since June of 2021 and my experience has been as follows:
- I never think about going to a gas station. No more calculating if I should stop at a gas station before or after my next destination (or wait until tomorrow). Just plug in at night and forget about it.
- No more standing outside in the wind, rain and cold to fill up the tank.
- On the rare occasion I do need to use a Supercharger, just plug right in. No swiping your credit card as the charger knows who you are and knows how to bill you.
- Driving is tireless as I rarely need to use the brake. Letting off the accelerator automatically switches to regenerative braking which slows the car to a stop. No more switching your foot back and forth in slow traffic.
- Tesla service staff comes to my house for certain service calls. Recalls have been handled via over-the-air software updates (thus far)
- Charging costs less than half the equivalent gasoline (according to the app). Easy to configure off-peak charging.

[peterwilliams]

I sold my diesel car in April 2022 and bought a secondhand 2018 BMW i3 94Ah. I drive about 15, 000 miles (24, 000kM) per year. At around the same time I had 40 solar panels with a peak output of 15.5kW fitted on my house roof and 45kW of battery storage. The latter was necessary in the UK because most houses only have a Single Phase supply, feed-in is therefore limited to 4kW and I didn't want to throw away available energy. 4kW is a ridiculous limit to impose. The peak output power from the panels had been factored to extend use of home generated electrical energy into October and March.

Apart from longer journeys when I have to use fast chargers the car runs on home generated solar energy. I don't suffer 'Range Anxiety'. I plan journeys beforehand, use Eco Pro on the i3 by default and on motorway driving often opt for slip-streaming large lorries.

The whole exercise has been fun (80% of the time - when my wife is with me she doesn't care for the risks I take with range but the closest we came to running out still left us with 3 miles when we reached a charger - she was not happy). I would certainly never go back to an ICE. I would say 70% of my mileage costs me nothing in electricity because it's "free" if you ignore the investment I've made.

Why did I do it? Because I know someone who lives near Barmouth in Wales who has been told by the Environment Agency that their house, along with 220, 000 other homes in England and Wales will be lost to the sea, as levels rise. We have also begun to see an exodus of climate refugees leaving equitorial regions to move to more Northern latitudes dying in small boats. We all owe a duty to reduce our use of carbon to help the rest of mankind. Where you are born is an accident of fate, not choice.

[HiveGod-kd]

THIS is why I appreciate your channel, you updated a video based on your current understanding of the topic.
IF everyone did this, it'd make things a lot simpler.

[Melds]

I haven't had any issues with using an EV, and now I charge my car using solar, so my grid demand has actually gone down. I hope we'll see more community electricity storage so that solar production could be stored more broadly and efficiently than residential battery storage.

[philippev.]

Thank you for painting a more complete picture in this revised video.
I'd like to point out, as an EV owner that is charging from a 230V wall socket, you don't need to charge for a whole day. Most of the time, you will not be at 0% but more around 50%.
Also, even if you charge from empty, you still don't have to charge it to 100% if you don't need it! You charge what you need.

[rosewood]

Great review Sabina. I am basically an environmental petrol head! Our home is now fully self sufficient for power water and outputs. We are actually on our second complete solar system. Technical efficiency has improved dramatically over the last 18 years and costs fallen dramatically. Our new battery hybrid 8.6kw system cost less than our original 2kw system! Everyone said back in 2009 when bought our Prius ITech that the batteries wouldnt last that it wasnt viable etc but the main batteries are still original and operating to specification. The only thing replaced was the inverter in 2022. So full EVs will be both better and worse than people expect IMO. There will always be a fundemental issue where mass is involved. For hauling loads long distance EVs cannot compete with efficiency of the modern Turbo Diesel. And so people are going to be faced with transformative change. Travelling long distances hauling caravans or trailers will be much more difficult. When you consider that the most popular new vehicle in Australia and the USA is 4wd SUV utility many are going to find change difficult.