When an engineer cuts thru the EV cultists crap
 

This guy produces great videos on engine technology. But a number of viewers question focusing on "obsolete" ICE vs electric motors. It's a question of technology and psychology. Great ending.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/k8CnlL8I4HE" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Anyone that has traveled much from state to state has stopped at the typical mega gas station - convenience station - and multiple restaurant mega center. Some have 50 or 60 gas pumps, and as many truck spots for the semis. When I stop at one of those and see hundreds of cars pulling in and out of there or getting fuel, I just know it will be decades before the electric cars have anything remotely like it. And they will need a private sub station or power plant to make enough electricity to provide the energy of gasoline.

It will happen someday, but it took us 60 years or more to build the current interstate system and all the gas stations. Gasoline has a lot of energy per gallon and can be pumped in short order.

If I was commuting 20 or 30 minutes per day like I did back in the 90s and 00s I would likely have a cheap electric commuter car. It would not be a Porsche Taycan, I will never spend that much for a car, I am too cheap.

I looked seriously at dual fuel gasoline and natural gas conversions for my El Camino. Right now the certified installations and the compressor needed to hook up to household natural gas and refill is just too expensive. I would have to be driving a ton more than I do, and I am really happy I don't have to drive that much. CNG is still about a $1.50 to $1.00 per gallon and has similar power as gasoline.

This technology is in its infancy and still, it makes perfect sense for certain people depending on their driving applications. Looking forward, there is no question in my mind that all cars will one day be electric. That day is not today, or next year, but the technology will evolve and small ICE passenger vehicles will go away. Large ones, trucks, etc....they will go away too.

And so...I consider today's critics to be in the same category with yesterday's complainers when ICE vehicles was a new technology.

My wife's EV fits our situation perfectly right now & into the forseable future. We have solar and it supplies electricity (net metering) for the house (3.3K s.f.) and her car. Last year we had to pay $288 at true up time. That's not bad for an all electric house and car. If we go on a trip, I prefer to take the van, since I like the room and ride, & it gets 20+ mpg. The EV doesn't require trips to the gas station, doesn't have fluids, hoses, lines, filters, etc., etc. Basically I jut put air in the tires and wash it. It's fast, quiet, and so far problem free. I don't trust the network of chargers for highway use, although I'm sure it OK but for our uses, I'm really glad we went that route.

Watch the video? The author is not saying ICE is the permanent mobility solution. He is saying EV is a long way off from mass adoption and that ICE will be around for many, many years, and that it is not unreasonable to further develop ICE. How advantageous would EV be w/o solar and EV subsidies?

Would be so much better if EV's could simply be designed to quickly (and automatically) switch out battery modules at "refueling" stations. Simply drive over a "target," car then gets automatically aligned with underground battery swap mechanism - old battery extracted and refreshed battery installed. Five minutes tops. Why has this not been considered?

Yet we have states, like my own (Washington) who are eagerly passing law to ban the sale of ICE vehicles in either 2030 or 2035, depending on state. Anyone here think we'll be even remotely ready for that even by 2035? No way in hell.

Different size batteries for different cars. What would owner of a new $150k Taycan think of swapping his new $20k battery with some guy with a beat up Prius who drove the piss out of his. People would purposefully game it bring in worn out crap or compromised from accidents. So, batteries need to be QC'd and certified. Imagine storing hundreds of batteries at your local station.

I had that same thought when this 'goal' was set. I like stretch goals as much as the next guy but not guaranteed-fail ones.

And yet, it will be interesting to see what things look like in 15 years. If I live that long. I never had a plan to be 65 but here I am.

And when electric cars can beat top fuel dragsters in the quarter-mile, I'll think that's just adorable and go see (and hear and smell) the top fuelers.

I love my wife's Tesla Y. Its an 'appliance' to be sure, its fast as hell, an I like the single huge interface. But the fact is when my wife want to drive here from Rochester, NY where she is currently working, she has to charge at least once. It takes 45 minutes. And that is if she does not have to wait to get a charger. For now, I will stick with my gasser, but as soon as the range goes beyond 600 miles I think it will be a different ball game.

OK so I watched the whole thing and even went back and skipped through it a bit to take some notes. This guy is a f'ing moron. The smug smarmy millennialness of him doesn't help. And he jumps around and conflates meaningless, not well thought out concepts.

I do not have time for a well-constructed rebuttal to the video but here are some thoughts.

First, the thing that struck me the most was his conclusion is in direct contrast for his reasons why electric cars won't work. He contradicts himself to the highest order. Why won't electric vehicles work? The infrastructure to support them is too big of a challenge.

That's ridiculous of course. It's just building infrastructure. In fact CHina has 1.419 million public EV charging stations. Let me say that again. China has 1,419,000 (that's million) public charging stations, NOW. Not 10 years from now. They have them now. Now.

By the way there are varying numbers on this. Some sources say 2.2 million. So whatever. Yeah, building out an EV charging infrastructure is WAAAAAAAYYYYYY to hard and will take decades.

What's funny and I actually laughed at his conclusion is that we are the problem and we have to change and we can't use technology to change. I have no words for the latter. The former, we have to change, that was hysterical.

Why?

He thinks building infrastructure is too difficult. But he wants people to change how they interact with the world IN THEIR CURRENT ENVIRONMENT BUILT ON DRIVING AROUND. So TWO things there.

First, he wants to change human behavior. That's pretty easy. I mean when 100s of thousands of people were dying from a virus everyone, and I mean everyone, to the last man, put on a mask and proudly wore it to protect his fellow citizen.

So yes, modifying human behavior, especially of humans who don't believe in climate change, is CAKE.

But then, you've modified your behavior but you live in an infrastructure designed around moving around by car, at least here in the U.S. More on that later. So now it's easier to change how people live and where they live and how they move around. OK, moving on.

It is a little ironic that he uses an apartment complex in Europe to show all these cars there that people need to use to go to work and such but dollars to donuts, he was filming at 2PM on a Tuesday when everyone was at work. Why? Because the majority of people in cities in Europe use their EXCELLENT MASS TRANSIT SYSTEMS to go to work. Americans drive 14000 miles a year. Europeans drive 7000. Why the difference? Do Europeans only drive to work accounting for that 7000 and then never touch their cars at night or on weekends? Of course that's the answer.

So that bring us to:
Americans: 14K
Europeans: 7K
Japan: 3.8K
India: 7.5K
China: 7K

So yes, we drive more that anyone in the world and we should change our behavior but we DON'T HAVE EXCELLENT MASS TRANSIT SYSTEMS so we don't use them to go to work. So we can either build an EV infrastructure of charging stations or create a whole new mass transit system in every city above 100K. That's easy and cheap, right? I mean compared to installing charging stations. Cake.

And why the **** does he even go into how much time it takes to charge your car when you charge it at home and at work. Just so he can tee up how hard it will be create charging stations at apartment complexes. What a waste of time. And you get to install some solar on the tops of buildings to help. Every little bit helps.

What's most annoying about him is his position that because no magic silver bullet solution has fallen from the sky, we just say **** it and keep going full steam ahead with no thought to the future or the very nature of progress is incrementalism which, wait for it, sometimes creates magic bullets either through happy accidents or through the continuous process of scientific achievement. His absolutely moronic 1930 hp to 2018 hp illustration should have told anyone watching this that he's just getting you to click so he can get another surf shark payment. The complexity of that comparison is way beyond the scope of this discussion taking government regulations in terms of gas mileage into account more than anything.

And then we get to power plants and mining for lithium. It's been only a decade since we've taken renewable energy seriously. There is tremendous room for growth. Yes, coal sucks. And Chinese and Indian coal sucks more. But it's easier to clean coal plants than millions of cars. Wind and solar are just getting going. And again, there's money to be made in scientific advancement in these areas so it's not like anyone said, hey, let's put windmills up and we're done, let's go get a beer. Why aren't we building out nuclear. that's your question.

On lithium mining, that's a problem. And there isn't as much as we would like in the Earth. Quick googling shows sodium isn't as energy dense but it works. And we've got a decent amount of salt on the planet. But that's not even the point. The point is Li-ion batteries aren't the end solution. They are a stepping stone. They will be used for years to come but I'm pretty sure within 5 years from now the flat-earthers will have another battery to ***** about.

The net net is he glued all kinds of random thoughts together to get to a 5 second money shot that most of the world is already doing. And of course he doesn't say how you can effect change. Maybe send Greta a Christmas card or something.

I think mainstream electric cars are simply a series of step-changes in technology and probably 20 years away rather than the 10 that Gavin Nuisance is pushing for.

The motors, controllers, and regeneration are already pretty well developed technologies. The big hurdles that are being worked now are localized micro-generating stations, light weight mass energy storage, and rapid transfer of energy from the charging station to the car.

4th gen micro nuclear power plants are being explored and tested now including thorium, and walk-away safe fission. Imagine a modern version of a nuclear submarine power plant complete with high energy storage and rapid transfer that occupies the space of 4 shipping containers. Easily transportable and can run 24/7 loading up the storage medium for easy energy transfer during peak usage. These are completely mobile that could be moved to different locations as demand shifts. This is the goal to deliver localized independent generation around the world and will happen as engineers continue to work the problem. Give it 20 years.

High capacity energy storage is being worked at a feverish pace because this offers the greatest potential for increase range. This will make a technology step change in the next few years.

The final step is to transfer a lot of electrons in a hurry so you can charge a car in a much shorter time than overnight.

Engineers are working these problems in many different ways and they will get solved at some point. Once these are well developed the ICE will still be around but more as cherished pieces from an earlier time like the Model T and steam cars than daily transportation.

He never says electric cars won't work. He actually says at 5:46 "sure, they may work in the long run".

I checked, and yes China has millions of "charging stations". In quotes because they are apparently AC powered, which is slow and causes damage to the batteries - a far cry from the Level 3 stations in the video.

It's hard to make comparisons from location to the next. Maybe mass transit is widely used in europe, but I'll bet per capita income is lower, while gas is much more expensive. Mass transit in LA doesn't work, for the most part. It's too spread out and people prefer driving.

I was going to go point-by-point with your rebuttal but it will take too long.

I don't know about all those confusing facts. All I know is:
We use our short range EV just for around town (which happens to be about 90 percent of our auto usage). We charge at night at home. Our home is solared. No money is spent on fuel, no time is wasted on fueling, there's no warming the car up on cold mornings and the vehicle is maintainence free except for checking the tire pressure once a month. I never give a thought about lubrication or cooling. This ugly little appliance has proven itself to be a blessing and now I'm spoiled

My perspective, I bought an EV in 2018. Only has about 100 mile charge.
This is my wife and I's primary driver. We are not retired, but we both work from home. I have worked from home since 2015.
We only need to charge once a week.
We have almost 8k on the car. Most of our driving is within 5 miles.
Make perfect sense for us. I don't need to tow anything. If I need a few yards of dirt, delivery is less than one month of truck payments. Hell, delivery on almost anything is less than a truck payment/tank of gas.
We still have some gas vehicles, but I know I spend more on oil and insurance than I do on gas. Average mileage over all our cars is less than 2500 a year, however ymmv.

I saw this video when it came out and agree w/ most of his points. I do think if I bought an electric car I would buy the cheapest one and use it for an around town grocery getter.

Our problem in the USA is that we are not developing infrastructure for electric cars. We need to build a ton of nuclear power plants and develop a HV smart grid. We are doing neither. And we can't even agree/mandate a universal charger plug design.

It will come with time, but the rate that legislators are saying we're going electric does not match the construction of infrastructure to support it. Not remotely.

Has there been anymore discussion on how roads are going to be funded? Or was that just glossed over?

Just 3 weeks ago, while in Japan, I met with high level execs from 2 very well known Japanese companies that produce HEV and EV batteries. The one company has the largest battery production facility in the world, they also have the largest battery winding machine in the world. Both groups said the same thing, The new NY and Cali laws are based on dreams not reality. It simply impossible to build enough batteries to support their fantasy laws. It cannot be done. Here in the USA we are building new battery plants at a fever pace, but it isn't enough. Incidentally, China and Japan are way ahead of us with this effort. IT will be at least 2040 and beyond before we can produce the batteries needed to sustain this dream.

China does what China wants the population be damned. Chinese govt also lies. China builds stuff that's not safe. China builds stuff that sometimes doesn't work or will never be used. I'm not sure China is a good comparison.

Were you here for Covid. There were people that refused to wear masks, and there was a lot of complaining about masks and other mandates. Hell, it wasn't just the general public. THere were a lot of folks on this board that thought it was BS and a bad move.

Comparing the US and EU is not the best comparison since the US is more than double the size of the EU with a lower population. That means that the EU has a much greater population density (more folks in a smaller area). Accomplishing the same sort of mass transit in the US would be a different undertaking to what exists in the EU.
I don't actually think his position was "EV is junk and should never happen." I watched the full video months ago when it was first posted here. I only watched a couple/few mins. At least in the beginning, it seems to me that he was addressing the people that comment that we should stop all development on ICE and go with EV. I believe his point is that we are not ready to shutdown all ICE production, fueling, etc... and switch to EV either today or in the near term. EV is still in its infancy and before we can/should stop all development of ICE, we need to wait for EV to be more mature.

I listened to the first few minutes. I didn't need to watch past "Combustion cars aren't dead and won't be dead anytime soon." I agree, full stop. I don't have to listen to his insufferable yammering for another 20 minutes to confirm it. The guy's presentation is so annoying I don't know how anyone could endure it for that long.