Subject: Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?
Mark P Mills on why EV’s will not work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
EV’s will gradually replace oil use. If it were the case that 50% of all vehicles were EV’s, which is functionally impossible to achieve in the remote future, it would only reduce the world’s oil needs by about 10%. Gasoline consumption reached a record this year and global oil demand continues to grow, albeit at a slightly slower pace -
EV’s are saving CO2. EV’s are “elsewhere” emitters. Obviously, there is the emission in charging, but there is also the emissions created in mining the resources needed for the battery. A typical Tesla battery – (the fuel tank) - weighs 1000 pounds, for which you need to mine 500,000 pounds of rock with oil burning machines. The rocks need to be transported, crushed and refined all with fossil fuel powered machines. The emissions associated with this can be higher than that associated with an IC engine through its life. As the resources deplete, this will get worse.
EV’s are inherently simpler vehicles. This is not the case. Whilst its engine is far simpler – the drive train or motor has only a few parts – the battery or “fuel tank” has thousands of parts, thousands of welds, a cooling system, a structural system, power electronics, and safety systems. It’s a very complex electrochemical machine that also wears out, is difficult to make. It is not simpler than an IC vehicle, just the complexity is in a different place. EV vehicles are as labour intensive as IC vehicles, although in a slightly different areas and skills. The EV supply chain overall is more labour intensive than for an IC, and if you include the upstream supply in mining etc, it results in 20% more labour than an IC car, with much of this upstream labour in China.
Mineral requirement. The vision of forced global EV rollout will require an increase in global mining of the relevant metals of between 400% and 7000% depending on the metal. There are no plans to open these mines, and those mines would take 10 – 16 years to roll out. The pursuit of these goals – (huge demand pressure) – will lift prices.
How do we get the energy to the EV’s? Putting aside the generation of the electricity or the chargers, the cost of transporting electricity is around 5 times that of transporting gasoline because of the infrastructure and cables needed. There are not the scale of transformers etc being built worldwide that would be needed.
To reduce gasoline consumption. A far better way would be to promote more efficient IC engines. Even the IEA did an analysis a few years ago which concluded that promotion of more efficient IC engines over the next decade would reduce oil use by more than would the shift to 300m EVs. Given that we know the former would be far cheaper than the latter, why are we doing this? The answer is the EV only lobby, who actually know all this, but by their own admission want to reduce the number of vehicles we have. They want “behavioural intervention”; consumers need to be convinced to drive less. They specifically call for “increasing the share of people worldwide who don’t have a car” from 45% to 70% by 2040. California already has a law that scales in the reduction of people’s annual milage by 25% from 30 years ago.
In the States, 0.5% of all commuters use a bicycle. 70% use a car driving alone. For those who cycle to work, the average age is 20 – 30, they are white and have a degree, so we are changing city streets with cycle lanes for this very specific group of “elites”, not for the population as a whole who are bearing the cost of this in terms of reduced road space and slower moving traffic. As people have shifted to working from home, they have de-urbanised, but the need to go to the office once or twice a week means they need to travel longer distances – “super commuters” - so want bigger cars. The idea that the need to travel is being replaced with the Internet is completely incorrect; the two go up with each other. Whilst the longer distanced means people will want autonomous cars, they will be personal as otherwise there would have to be so many available that there wouldn’t be enough space for them.

We will run out of political tolerance for this waste of money, which, like with renewable energy, is on an enormous scale.