Electric Transportation Isn’t a Free Lunch
As cars and trucks with internal combustion engines give way to electric transportation, a great deal needs to be celebrated. Certainly the environmental gains are important, but probably no more than ridding ourselves of the horrific geopolitics of oil.
And it’s most definitely happening. As Aljazeera reports here, “Big corporations and car manufacturers are ditching combustion engines, with Toyota saying it will have an electrified or hybrid version of all vehicles by 2025.” They add, quite correctly, “But there is a dark side to this revolution.”
At present, cobalt is an important part of the batteries found in EVs, more than half of it is currently mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and children as young as seven work in dangerous conditions in Congo cobalt mines. The entire mining process is almost completely unregulated, and the working conditions for those poor and desperate enough to wind up there are horrific.
Though my heart goes out to all exploited people everywhere around the globe, the sad truth is that we’re a very long way away from having the resources–as well as the political will–to do much about any of it. And this is as true in the case of the slave labor used to process seafood in Thailand and the genocide of the Rohingya Muslins in Myanmar as it is to the cobalt mines in central Africa.
For the foreseeable future, as long as there is money to be made in some enterprise, regardless of how depraved, and a vulnerable population to exploit, there will be plenty of cruel and unprincipled people rushing to cash in at the expense of enormous volumes of human suffering.
Getting rid of oil will do our civilization a great deal of good, but, at least for now, it will provide just one more profit-making enterprise for the greedy and wicked.
As a species, we’ve flirted repeatedly with the idea of a global governing body – such as the League of Nations and the UN. Our leaders have been reluctant to cede sovereignty, and suspicions are understandable.
We’ve not even been able to rid ourselves of aggressive war-making, or even punish it reliably. Regrettably, it will likely be some time before we establish binding international accords thoroughly preventing the exploitation of humans by other humans.
Craig,
“Getting rid of oil will do our civilization a great deal of good”
Actually, civilization would completely collapse ! The more than 350,000 products made from oil are essential for maintaining, and feeding, the human population. I think what you mean is gasoline, diesel, aircraft and marine fuels, yes?
Like the rest of the Automotive industry, Toyota really means some form of hybrid when referring to ‘electrification’.
But the gradual adoption of hybrid technology as standard will pave the way for greater EV development with new ESD development research continuing.
Yes Craig is correct, EV technology is rapidly expanding in places that are able to afford it; and this will continue.
Globally this trend will expand from the current minuscule <1% of the global fleet, onward and upward to a maximum of around 10% of the global fleet over the next 25 years, and stabilize around this figure.
This will amount to a massive number of vehicles and deservingly indicate that EV technology globally had indeed achieved a most significant place in the global transport sector.
It begs the question though, where does that leave the remaining (90%) of the global transport fleet?
And why must that be so?
Anyone out there familiar with the math on this subject as it applies to a global context?
Lawrence Coomber
Lawrence,
I fear you may be a little pessimistic with a figure of only 10%. It all depends if you include serious hybrids into any equation. . Within 15 years hybrids will account for 75% of all light vehicle sales and serious numbers of heavier transport.
Pure EV’s need a really radical advanced ESD to advance beyond 2%.
Oil companies will still sell gasoline and petrol for a very long time for use in hybrids and existing vehicles. The volume will diminish and that’s good for the environment.
@MP
Interestingly around 8 weeks ago I stood in front of a control room screen (3 screens joined about 8 mtrs x 4 mtrs each screen) operated by 9 console operators seated behind terminals at ground level in front of the screens, at the headquarters of Optimum-Nano in Shenzhen.
My first visit to Optimum-Nano was 7 years ago and they were excited about a French auto contract they just secured for battery packs for small EV vans. They have had a meteoric rise since then, vertically integrating and now leasing EV buses and light trucks from manufacturers that use their batteries, and then sub leasing the entire managed bus/truck package out to end user fleet owners/operators.
Hence the IMAX size screens in the control centre. Every one of their entire China EV fleet was lit up on the screen. Tiny red lights moving around like ants everywhere in real-time. Click on a red light and you are connected in real-time with the moving vehicle and a dropdown menu with about 100 battery pack performance parameters and truck details explode out. The console operator has complete control and communication with the vehicle drive chain, and instructions to the driver’s visual display if needed. It is the ultimate fleet management model.
In the left hand screen corner is a counter showing 78,118 which represents the size of the fleet on the screens, as of Dec 2017.
All up there would be about 15 – 20 million EV’s operating every day in China at the moment (included E Scooters).
We manufacture our own RE storage systems using Optimum-Nano 32700 lithium cells and do some joint venture development in high voltage battery stacks for Off Grid systems. They are in the top 5 in the world in this type of lithium technology manufacturing for buses and light trucks.
China has a head start over other countries in take up of EV’s through the manufacturing industries plus government initiatives and fleet subsidies, but despite this huge advantage, it is still very early days for EV’s and cars are not high volume production operations like bottle tops for example (just check the Tesla annual production stats and any other conventional car maker for that matter).
Displacing around 5 billion gasoline/diesel vehicles globally, going about their daily business as usual very successfully also, is simply not possible, probable, attainable, or affordable. If we can get 500 million (10%) into the global market within 25 years, the industry would have exceeded its wildest expectations.
My earnest guesstimate is 250 million plus associated infrastructure to support and keep them operational at best within 25 years.
Lawrence Coomber
Lawrence,
I’m not sure where you get 5 billion ? The world motor vehicle fleet is only about 1.3 billion vehicles.
Global new vehicle sales are approx 80-90 million. Growth in the global vehicle is fairly small, most new vehicles replace older scraped vehicles. The exceptions are the PRC and India where fleets are expanding.
I thought the 14,600 buses operated by the three bus services in Shenzhen (I’ve been a guest of the Shenzhen Bus Group) operated BYD buses. Shenzhen bus operators received a massive incentive to purchase buses from the Beijing, Provincial, and City governments amount to nearly 50 % of the purchase price and an additional 8 year interest free loan to finance the rest with heavy grants provided for infrastructure.
While Shenzhen’s bus operators have benefited, the Beijing government recently conducted a nationwide investigation into EV subsidies resulting in five major EV manufacturers punished for defrauding the government of a total of ten billion yuan. Subsidies on consumer electric cars have since been reduced, and sales have slumped.
500 million EV’s would be half the existing world fleet. As ESD capacity increases, and refueling times drop, the need for charging infrastructure stabilizes especially with self driving and other technology.
@MP
LOL
Like you have said before MP the devil is always in the detail. In my profession that translates to ‘show me the math’.
Let’s focus for a moment just on this one very sobering spreadsheet calculation. It’s about the impact forthcoming (the next 25 years – running up to 2043) on the global vehicle manufacturing (presumably the EV industry by everyone’s reckoning) by people who at this very moment DON’T EVEN EXIST!
Fasten your seat belt!
The current population of 7.3 billion people on earth is expected to grow to around 9.3 billion by the expiration of the next 25 years (2043); an increase of 2 billion. Just through natural population growth alone, and we can reasonably expect that 50% of that population increase (1 billion in total) will have become eligible for and interested in becoming vehicle owners/users during the run up to that date (2043).
If we were to surmise that they would be likely to prefer to become electric vehicle owners/users, that would mean that collectively global EV manufacturers would need to churn out, distribute and sell, (1,000,000,000 / 25 years) = 40,000,000 EV’s per year; or 110,000 EV’s per day! Just to meet that forthcoming demand and production to meet those forecasts is based on starting tomorrow: followed by 110,000 EV’s for each and every day thereafter for 25 years!
And that sobering equation is totally independent and divorced from the vehicle demands (presumably EV’s by Craig’s calculations) of the existing 7.3 billion population during that same 25 year period running up to 2043.
Presumably that additional requirement for EV’s would be proportional to the ‘haven’t been born yet cohort’; ie (73,000,000,000 * 50%) / 25 = 146,000,000 EV’s per year; or 400,000 EV’s per day!
Add this to the demand of the ‘yet to be conceived’ population running up to 2043: 400,000 + 110,000 = 510,000 EV’s per day collectively manufactured, distributed and sold; every day for 25 years starting tomorrow.
Interesting!
The point to all this is that everybody’s mind is in overdrive about all this fanciful and fantasy stuff, just like the fantasy of artificially elevating solar PV generation to stratospheric heights that don’t and can’t possibly ever stack up on the spreadsheet, and of course have been totally overlooked by genuine research scientists as having any relevance at all in the future Global New Age Energy context.
Time is of the essence readers with regard to New Global Technologies that are capable of ushering in an orderly; attainable and sustainable and enduring Global New Age of prosperity for all people.
Importantly, the New Age Technologies need to be ‘fit for purpose’ going forward. It’s no good looking at what is today or yesterday and simply rebadging it as something else that takes on magical properties through simple scaling factor calculations.
The appropriate answers must always emanate from science and cutting edge high science at that. Not consumer driven fanciful and feel-good consumerism based product development alone that lacks endurability.
Let the world’s best and brightest physicists, researchers and scientists do their stuff and take us into the Global New Age of technologies, through patience and support and a recognition that ‘timing is of the essence’ in all things.
Not everybody will see immediate benefits in their own lives through this approach, but the proper pathways will have been set in place in a global context, for the ultimate benefit of all those who follow.
And that’s what Global leadership, forward planning, and future focus is all about.
Lawrence Coomber
Hi Lawrence,
Just two observations. Wouldn’t most people born over the next twenty-five years be too young for vehicle ownership ? Hmmm..given the aging population in both China’s, Japan and most populous Western nations, and the growth of that trend as populations become more prosperous, population increase is by no means certain for car ownership.
In twenty-five years the growth of auto drive cars may promote greater car sharing, especially among urban populations. The desire to ‘own’ a car among young people is no longer as great as previous generations.
Ownership of a car once meant freedom, independence, travel,social progress and status symbol. (and a mobile mating abode, half of Australia was conceived on the back seat or surf wagon ).
With the rise of social media, internet and increasing urbanization, today’s youth are less inclined to obtain a drivers license and buy a car.( In most Western nations, licensing rates for people under 25 have dropped from 77 per cent to 66 per cent since 2001, in 1990 it was around 94 % . A poll of young people under 25 cite cost, difficulty, no necessity and lack of interest in getting behind the wheel).
I’m afraid, “consumer driven fanciful and feel-good consumerism based product development”, has always been the basis of civilized economies and humans being human, will never change !