1301: Electric Vehicles | Skeptical Sunday

25:57With 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 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.

26:41Lithium is extracted from either hard rock spodamine, which requires high temperature processing or brine evaporation ponds, and which pumps underground saline water to the surface to dry out. Brine extraction consumes 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, you said 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 we're just getting started.

27:32Iron and 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 interest in seeing lithium and cobalt recycled more easily. you're also looking at 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.

28:08So the mining and the effect 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 inspector a bribe.

28:52Cobalt 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 artisanal miners, many of them children, down on the ground using hand tools.

29:34I 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 Siddharth Kara, who discusses the horrific conditions that people are mining in. Think pregnant mom with infant on her back digging with her bare hands in mines with no PPE, with toxic chemicals everywhere, like wading waist deep in mercury-filled water. It's just horrible. Yeah, sneak preview of that episode. A lot of times the mines are located in territory controlled by militias.

30:12So 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 mess. The rule of law is extremely weak in Congo. I talked about the artisanal miners. This is about 15 to 30 % 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 seven engaged in artisanal 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.

30:56And for all this, it's very common to earn between$1 and$2 per 12-hour day. Yeah, disgusting and horrifying to say the least. Acid leaching, unregulated runoff, and open-air tailings contaminate rivers and farmland. Mining waste releases uranium, lead, and arsenic, exposing miners and the nearby communities. In southern Congo, you'll find elevated levels of cobalt and other heavy metals in the residents' blood and urine. There is little to no remediation or cleanup 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 a cynic in some ways and partly because it's probably or possibly a huge scam.

31:47You know, I 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 makes your car run with it but yeah the supply chain is super muddy and i'm guessing that a 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 slaves 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.

32:24It 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 skyrockets because of, you know, responsibly sourced cobalt.

33:02Yeah. 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 its battery. Then there's operations.

33:38Basically, this is wheel-to-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 natural gas or whatever in the power plant. One people don't normally think about is maintenance. All the replacement parts and repairs, those come with the emissions too. Tires, fluids, the works. Nick's out here daily driving a 68 El 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 life choices, try supporting the amazing sponsors who make this show possible.

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36:30Now 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'd just expect to own a gas car. But like, I've got a Tesla, I think we replaced the tires once it's been for a minor repair of like a plastic thing once. And I mean, they came to our house and did it in like, you know, a few minutes. So it's not like the things in the shop and getting, you know, oil changes all the time.

37:00I 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 to 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.

37:38It might get recycled. It might get junked. It might get reclaimed, taken 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 crow 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 in.

38:14But remember, electric vehicles have another dimension of their carbon deficit that 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 power car.

38:57Grain of salt there because it's the Union of Concerned 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 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.

39:31All 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. 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 ,000 to 20 ,000 miles. If you live somewhere like Norway that has a super green power grid, you're looking at 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 miles.

40:06If you live in India or West Virginia or somewhere else that's super coal intensive, it's going to be more like 40 ,000 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.

40:42I 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?

41:16Saudi 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 getting soiled in the process. Or Canada. Canada, yes, exactly. The United States. Well, I don't know.

41:53People are going to be like, what? Yeah. There's going to be some Reddit posts about this part of the show for sure. There are end-of-life problems with electric vehicles that aren't carbon-related. Only 5 % of electric vehicle batteries are recycled these days. Wow. Yeah. Well, 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 a dump, basically. This is particularly true in poorer countries and creates additional contamination problems.

42:32The 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 are electric vehicles better, worse, the same?

43:04Honestly, I don't think there's a clear-cut 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 Mack truck. But, you know, when I lived in the absolute middle of nowhere, you could not survive without a truck. Also, air pollution, which is a big issue in cities with lots of cars like L.A., improving air quality is good, even if you're not super concerned about carbon emissions.

43:45Yeah, 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 live in a world where you can get something for nothing. Kind of the weirdest experience of this is that I sort of want an electric vehicle now.

44:19What?

44:26I'm going to convert it to roll coal, of course. Okay. There we go. There we go. There we go. The sleek, futuristic aspect of them, that glowing mono light in the front. I'm into, you know, I could, it's like I'm driving something from Tron. 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?

45:00It 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 silo surrounded by electrified barbed wire. I don't know. Man, I wish. I know you do. 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 % Trump. 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.

45:42The kind of asterisk 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 tracts. 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.

46:24Yeah. 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? Are 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. Installing a home charging station runs between$800 and$2 ,000, which could save you money in the long run.

47:06But that's a fairly significant upfront 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.

47:23Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. Are all 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. And in that case, the smaller ones are going to be somewhat more carbon efficient because they don't need as many batteries. Right. And 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 EV efficiency.

47:58And all EVs fail when you put them against mass transit or cycling everywhere. But basically, no one wants to rely on 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 up market share in ground air or sea shipping anytime soon. And that is where the bulk of emissions comes from.

48:42The issue is the charging bottleneck. It 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. I mean, that would just, I don't even know how you would do that, right?

49:18Half 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. It's kind of not. 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.

49:54So 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. A lot of people do get sticker shock when they go to buy an EV. The average cost is about$53 ,000 compared to$36 ,000 for a gas-powered compact.

50:32That's a lot more money, especially if you're financing the car. Batteries are between 30 % to 40 % of that cost. Other drivers of cost are supply chain bottlenecks and limited market competition. I mean, you say 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 it cheaper depending on how long you drive it, how much you get in the way of tax credits.

51:12really briefly on tax credits. They used to cap out at 7 ,500 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 the government taking your money and then giving you back some of it later. I mean, you know, it's better than a 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.

51:47Sure. The bad news is those tax credits are gone now. Womp womp. 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 get reduced costs on car registration or discounts for installing a charging station in your home. 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 happened with solar. What about the resale value of EVs? EVs depreciate 15 % compounding year over year.

52:24The big risk you're taking buying a used EV is 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 there's always a 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 off the top of my head. I think they do honor that. Use coupon code Jordan at Tesla.com. Yes. Tell them Jordan sent you for your new batteries once the thing stops working two weeks after you buy it.

52:58Jordan Harbinger 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 buying a used mattress, which I've done. Gross. Hey, man, I was poorer than I am now. I wouldn't buy a secondhand 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.

53:36Electric 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 to Nick for helping us unplug from the rhetoric and recharge with the facts. And thank you all for listening.

54:11Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday directly to me, Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at JordanHarbinger.com slash deals. I'm at JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show, it's created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tata Sidlowskis, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, 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.

54:42So 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 doled 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.

55:13Humans 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. 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.

55:55It 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, oh, we should stop all 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 the really existential risks this technology poses?

56:40Join me on episode 1068 as Yuval Noah Harari explores the risks and responsibilities we face as AI transforms our society.

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